Eastern Africa Workshop - Multidisciplinary approaches to investigating the spread of peoples, plants and animals in Holocene Eastern Africa
DA Workshop
- Date: Oct 26, 2017
- Time: 09:00 AM - 07:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Location: MPI SHH Jena
- Room: Villa V03
- Host: Department of Archaeology
- Contact: bleasdale@shh.mpg.de
Trajectories of food production in eastern Africa differ from models for the transition to farming and herding in other parts of the world. Mobile pastoralism developed in Africa before crop cultivation, and spread from the Sahara southward against the backdrop of dynamic climatic change during the Early to Mid Holocene. As herding and later farming economies spread into eastern Africa, they became enmeshed in a complex process of population dispersal, environmental modification, and technological transition. Although this process has fundamentally shaped the environmental, ethno-linguistic, and economic diversity of modern eastern and southern Africa, its dynamics remain poorly understood. This workshop aims to explore the ways in which new and innovative multidisciplinary approaches can reveal how specific opportunities and obstacles shaped the spread of peoples, plants, and animals in Holocene eastern Africa. By drawing together an international body of field archaeologists, geneticists and archaeological scientists, we will be able to review existing models, generate new ideas, and explore future avenues for research and collaboration.