Karim Sadr - The development of nomadism in ancient northeast Africa
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The development of nomadism in ancient northeast Africa
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Nomadism was one of the most important strategies for survival, and it is still the strategy of choice form many cultures in Africa and the Near East. Nomadism can be best understood through an examination of its origins, by asking why and how nomadism emerged as a way of life.
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It is clear that without what they secure from the towns and traders of the farming country, the Beduin would have so one-sided a culture that they could not survive by it; no clothing, shelter, weapons, few utensils, limited diet. In one sense, accordingly, their own culture is no more than a half-culture. At least they can produce only half of it, and are dependent on the Hadhar, the ''dwellers in brick,'' for the other half. Kroeber, Anthropology (278).
Kroeber's (1948) cultural view of nomadsfocusing on their crucial linkage with sedentary peopleshas only a few followers among archaeologists and historians (cf., e.g., J. Klein 1921; Braudel 1973; Galvin 1987). Many more subscribe to the ecological perspective (Ibn Khaldun 1396 [1958]; Spooner 1972; Khazanov 1984), which emphasizes nomadism's adaptive advantage in arid lands over its economic function in herder/cultivator symbiosis. The ecologists claim that nomadism emerged and persists in uncultivable lands where a mobile, pastoral way of life was, and remains, the only viable subsistence strategy (Coon 1943; E. Bacon 1954; Lattimore 1967; R. McC. Adams 1974).
In this book I argue that the ecological view does not universally explain nomadism. On the basis of original research by the Butana Archaeological Project (BAP) and the Italian Archaeological Mission in Sudan, Kassala (IAMSK), and of a re-examination of the published archaeological sequences of Egypt, northern Sudan and northern Ethiopia from ca. 5000 BC onward, I will argue that nomadism in northeast Africa was, as Kroeber suggests, a part of a larger entity, a cog in the machinery of state administered, super-regional economic networks: in short, the ranching industry of the early states.
To set the stage for documenting these claims, the theoretical framework of the study is presented in this chapter along with the "symbiosis" model to explain the rise and persistence of nomadism in northeast Africa. To begin with, however, of the many possible points of entry into the discussion I have selected the most basic: proper definition of nomadism.
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time to time and place to place and probably included such factors as warfare, population displacement, and decreased agricultural potential of an area.
The proposed development of nomadism is neither unilineal nor unidirectional. The immediate causes can be many and varied, and the route to nomadism can also be different in each case. Furthermore, at least theoretically, once inter-regional symbiosis breaks down, nomads can "devolve" into the smaller symbiotic structure of an agropastoral or mixed economy population, againone presumesfor a variety of possible immediate reasons and through one of several possible routes. Indeed, a population conceivably could evolve and devolve rapidly to and from nomadism.
Such short term tactical changes in adaptation, or failed attempts at maintaining a large scale symbiotic structure, are, however, ignored in the present study for two reasons. First, a society which was nomadic for, say, only a year or two could hardly be archaeologically visible: the data are too coarse-grained for that. Second, and more importantly, the present study is concerned with successful nomadic adaptations, those which existed for centuries at a time and which make the concept of nomadism theoretically relevant.
For similar reasons, the main concern here is the evolution from less to more specialized societies. Although there may have been isolated incidents to the contrary, what we know of the northeast African early neolithic, and today's adaptations shows that pastoralism has gradually become a more specialized industry. It is this trajectory which is here the focus of investigation.
The proposed explanatory model for this trajectory suggests an evolutionary staircase, with jumps from mixed economy to agropastoral and then to either agricultural or pastoral populations. These transformations may actually involve some minor stagelets along the way. Between the mixed economy stage and the agropastoral one, there may have been several intermediate forms of pastoralism with the scale of symbiosis gradually growing from an intra-family affair, to an inter-family one, to one between extended kin-groups, and then finally to a clan level characteristic of agropastoralism. Beyond that, there may have been as many forms through which a population transformed en route to true nomadism.
An example of such a stagelet between agropastoralism and true nomadism may be the Bisharin Beja of northeastern Sudan, who have three economically specialized tribal divisions, each including several clans (San-
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Figure 7.3. Northeast Africa, 2100-1750 BC. For key to symbols see figures in chapter 6.
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tion, although this assumption remains untested. The suggestion is to some extent supported by the tomb drawings from Meir (Blackman 1914, 1915a, 1915b), dating to the Twelfth Dynasty, which show Egyptian cattle in the care of Medjay herders.
By 2000 BC, Egypt, having regained its political stability in the Middle Kingdom Period after an episode of political breakdown during the First Intermediate Period (ca. 21812133/2040 BC), embarked on a new round of vigorous commerce with the cultures to the south (Steindorff 1937; Reisner 1923; Sve Sderbergh 1941). During the Middle Kingdom Period (2133/20401786 BC), Egypt protected her trade interests in Nubia with a string of mighty forts built along the Nile (Emery 1965; Sve-Sderbergh 1941). The main source of commerce in Nubia was Kerma, which, by now, during its Moyen period, had grown to a sizeable mudbrick town with a strong politico-religious leadership which manifested itself in elaborate burials and the monumental structures of the Deffufas (Reisner 1923; Bonnet et al. 1982, 1984, 1986; Gratien 1978).
At this time in Lower Nubia, the C-Group population lived to a great extent under the control of Egypt and its military forts like the ones at Aniba and Buhen. The Lower Nubian copper and diorite mines continued to be exploited by Egypt (Weigall 1907; Sve-Sderbergh 1941). Trade between Egypt and the C-Group had dropped off (Bietak 1968). In the absence of settlement hierarchies, and with only weak status differentiation in the C-Group graves of this time, however, their social and political organization appears to have remained at a relatively simple level (Trigger 1976).
The C-Group population of this time lived a settled life in small villages along the Nile River. At sites such as Aniba, single room circular structures and multi-room curvilinear ones have been excavated (Steindorff 1937). C-Group sites during this phase were located in the most fertile stretches of the valley, but areas which required irrigation for agriculture were left uninhabited (Trigger 1965).
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