The Upper Pleistocene and early Holocene prehistory of the Horn of Africa

The last major synthesis of the Upper Pleistocene and early Holocene prehistory of the Horn was published over thirty years ago. This paper therefore attempts critically to review the current state of knowledge and research pertaining to Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age hunter/gatherer culture history and adaptation in the region that now encompasses Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti. Although the archaeological record still suffers from major gaps in information, chronometric analyses as well as subsistence, settlement and other behavioural data from stratified excavated sites have begun to reveal the Horn's potential for providing important contributions to understanding late Quaternary hunter/gatherer cultural development.

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Résumé Plus de trente ans se sont écoulés depuis la parution de la dernière grande synthèse sur la préhistoire de la Corne de l'Afrique au Pléistocène Supérieur et au début de l'Holocène. Cet article essaie donc de passer en revue de façon critique l'état actuel des connaissances et la recherche sur l'histoire culturelle et sur l'adaptation Middle Stone Age et Later Stone Age dans la région qui comprend la Somalie, l'Ethiopie et le Djibouti. Bien que les documents archéologiques souffrent encore de lacunes majeures en ce qui concerne les informations, les analyses chronométriques et les moyens de subsistance, des données sur les habitations et sur d'autres aspects du comportement obtenus de gisements stratifiés fouillés ont commencé à dévoiler que la Corne pourra éventuellement fournir des contributions importantes à notre compréhension du développement culturel des chasseurs-cueilleurs du Quaternaire final.

     

Local institutional quality and conflict violence in Africa

All politics is local. In spite of this familiar dictum, most studies that have investigated how institutions shape the conditions for violence and peace have focused on national institutions, and neglected the local dimension. This paper investigates the effects of high-quality local political institutions on the location of violence in internal conflicts in Africa, demonstrating that the quality of local political institutions matters even when the characteristics of national institutions are accounted for. We combine georeferenced survey data from the Afrobarometer surveys with georeferenced conflict data, allowing us to study the links between institutional quality at the subnational level and the occurrence of conflict-related violence. Crucially, we find that administrative districts with high-quality local government institutions are less likely to experience violence in an internal conflict than poorly governed districts. This relationship holds when controlling for a number of relevant factors like economic development, demographics, political opinions, urbanization and country-fixed effects. We also use matching techniques to improve inference, finding rather robust indications that local institutional quality pacifies.     

Environmental limitations on prehistoric pastoralism in Africa

In several areas of Africa, pastoralism that existed prehistorically no longer survives today. Two such areas, the Southwestern Cape of South Africa and the Sahara, are discussed here, outlining methodologies for reconstruction of adaptive strategies on the basis of environmental parameters that constrained the pastoral economies.

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Résumé En plusieurs régions d'Afrique, le pastoralisme qui existait en temps préhistorique a maintenant disparu. L'article discute de deux de ces régions, le cap sud-ouest de l'Afrique du Sud et le Sahara, donnant un aperçu des méthodologies qui visent la reconstruction des stratégies adaptatrices en se fondant sur les paramètres écologiques qui ont contraint les économies pastorales.

     

Political hierarchies and landscapes of conflict across Africa

Almost all African states experience substantial and widespread political insecurity in a variety of forms. This analysis explains how relationships between groups and governments create incentives and disincentives for distinct forms of political violence to emerge. It argues that ethno-regional communities across Africa are situated within a power hierarchy that determines their relative importance to, and inclusion in, regimes. A dynamic power landscape emerges from relative group positions. Various positions within a hierarchy are associated with particular dominant forms of organized political violence as groups challenge political elites, but are bounded by their goals and characteristics. A failure to consider the political hierarchies and landscapes operating within African states has led to an under specification of the causal mechanisms driving different forms of violence, and an overstatement of benefits from declining civil war rates and inclusive governing coalitions.     

New insights on the first Neolithic societies in the Horn of Africa: The site of Wakrita,Djibouti

Abstract

The site of Wakrita is a small Neolithic establishment located on a wadi in the tectonic depression of Gobaad in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa. The 2005 excavations yielded abundant ceramics that enabled us to define one Neolithic cultural facies of this region, which was also identified at the nearby site of Asa Koma. The faunal remains confirm the importance of fishing in Neolithic settlements close to Lake Abbé, but also the importance of bovine husbandry and, for the first time in this area, evidence for caprine herding practices. Radiocarbon dating places this occupation at the beginning of the 2nd millennium b.c., similar in range to Asa Koma. These two sites represent the oldest evidence of herding in the region, and they provide a better understanding of the development of Neolithic societies in this region.     

Seeking peace and security in the Horn of Africa: the contribution of the Inter‐Governmental Authority on Development

This article assesses the contribution that IGAD has made to regional security in the Horn of Africa since the adoption of its peace and security mandate in 1996. It describes the evolution of IGAD and its mandate in the context of regional conflict and wider African peace and security processes. It explores the local dynamics of the two major IGAD‐led peace processes, in Sudan (1993–2005) and in Somalia (2002–2004), and discusses the effectiveness of IGAD's institutional role. A consideration of the wider impact of the peace agreements highlights the way IGAD has enhanced its role by setting the agenda on peace support operations in Somalia. The article concludes that IGAD's successes are more the result of regional power politics than of its institutional strength per se. Despite the obvious need for a better regional security framework, the scope for the IGAD Secretariat to develop an autonomous conflict‐resolution capability will remain limited. However, IGAD brings a new diplomatic dimension to conflict management that locks in regional states and locks out interested parties beyond the region. With regard to Somalia, the organization has played a pivotal role in directing African and wider international responses to conflict in the region.     

Climate triggers: Rainfall anomalies,vulnerability and communal conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa

The mounting evidence for climate change has put the security implications of increased climate variability high on the agenda of policymakers. However, several years of research have produced no consensus regarding whether climate variability increases the risk of armed conflict. Many have suggested that instead of outright civil war, climate variability is likely to heighten the risk of communal conflict. In particular, erratic rainfall, which reduces the availability of water and arable land, could create incentives for violent attacks against other communities to secure access to scarce resources. Yet, whether groups resort to violence in the face of environmentally induced hardship is likely to depend on the availability of alternative coping mechanisms, for example through market transfers or state accommodation. This suggests that the effect of rainfall anomalies on communal conflict will be stronger in the presence of economic and political marginalization. We evaluate these arguments statistically, utilizing a disaggregated dataset combining rainfall data with geo-referenced events data on the occurrence of communal conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa between 1990 and 2008. Our results suggest that large negative deviations in rainfall from the historical norm are associated with a higher risk of communal conflict. There is some evidence that the effect of rainfall shortages on the risk of communal conflict is amplified in regions inhabited by politically excluded ethno-political groups.     

Trends and triggers: Climate,climate change and civil conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa

The conventional discourse relating climate change to conflict focuses on long term trends in temperature and precipitation that define ecosystems and their subsequent impact on access to renewable resources. Because these changes occur over long time periods they may not capture the proximate factors that trigger conflict. We estimate the impact of both long term trends in climate and short term climatic triggers on civil conflict onset in Sub-Saharan Africa. We find that both operationalizations have a significant impact. Climates more suitable for Eurasian agriculture are associated with a decreased likelihood of conflict, while freshwater resources per capita are positively associated with the likelihood of conflict. Moreover, positive changes in rainfall are associated with a decreased likelihood of conflict in the following year. We also assess the outlook for the future by analyzing simulated changes in precipitation means and variability over the period 2000–2099. We find few statistically significant, positive trends in our measure of interannual variability, suggesting that it is unlikely to be affected dramatically by expected changes in climate.     

非洲史研究的新视野——环境史

与世界其他国家和地区的历史研究相比,非洲史研究起步晚、难度大。但是即便如此,20世纪的非洲史研究还是取得了长足进步,尤其是在民族解放运动取得胜利之后。非洲史研究不但成为世界史研究中一道亮丽的风景,而且为冲破历史研究中的“西方话语霸权”贡献出了自己的地方性知识,丰富了世界史研究的史料学、理论观点、方法论。环境史是继传统史学、殖民主义史学和民族主义史学之后的另一重要流派。本将从史学史的角度着重分析环境史在非洲史研究中的兴起发展、主要的观点和方法以及存在的问题。     

Commoditizing the safari and making space for conflict: Place,identity and parks in East Africa

Increased resource scarcity, the social construction of nature, the disintegration of moral economy and associated policy shifts are often cited as the main drivers of resource conflicts in East Africa. Research in geography, anthropology and rural sociology has unveiled how common explanations of resource conflicts overlook multi-scalar political, economic, social, cultural and environmental tensions. The purpose of this study is to provide more nuanced explanations of resource conflicts by incorporating three disparate but related threads of literature. Using literatures on the commodification of nature, multi-stranded notions of identity and geographical conceptualizations of ‘place’, I demonstrate how three transformational moments structure and propagate conflicts between herders and protected area managers around a national park in Kenya. I argue that the rise of a commoditized form of nature tourism coupled with idealized notions of ‘nature’ and ‘wilderness’ have altered the micro-geography of interaction between herders and protected area managers. These altered geographies of interaction have diluted the shared history and traditional relations of reciprocity, created new social milieux, and lead to the creation of binary identities among herders and protected area managers. The enforcement of these binary identities culminates in conflict.     

试论乌兰夫牧区经济工作思想

乌兰夫在领导内蒙古及全国牧区工作中,充分体现了他丰富的牧区经济思想、成功的牧区工作经验。牧区民主改革是发展牧区经济的重要前提条件;根据牧区的地区、民族、经济特点,制定发展牧区经济的各项政策;始终把发展和民生做为变革牧区生产关系的出发点和落脚点;把禁止开荒、保护生态、防沙治沙列为牧区经济发展的重中之重;把民族贸易、卫生、教育、文化事业做为发展牧区经济的重要举措。上述五个方面,充分体现了以人为本、发展是硬道理的理念。     

Frontiers of Disease: Human Desire and Environmental Realities in the Rearing Of Horses in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century South Africa

Abstract

Horses have played an important economic, military and cultural role in South African history. However, disease has always posed a threat to their survival. Horsesickness, a viral infection transmitted by midges from the genus culicoides, is endemic in much of the country but has historically assumed epizootic proportions in certain years. In the lowveld and Zululand nagana (trypanosomosis), spread by tsetse flies, has killed both horses and cattle and affected the distribution of human settlement and agricultural activities. In addition, much of South Africa is very arid, yet has rich floral taxa. Several plants, such as Senecio spp. are highly toxic to horses, but in times of drought and fodder shortages, equines are faced with the choice of starvation or potentially succumbing to toxicosis by eating poisonous weeds. This paper considers the environmental impact of these three types of horse diseases in South Africa and explores the scientific and ecological investigations undertaken since the late nineteenth century to try to control them. Research into horse diseases brought together the laboratory and the field and raised important questions about the part played by environmental factors, as opposed to just germs, in the distribution of livestock infections and the ability of farmers and scientists to tackle them effectively.