Economy and society in northern Namibia 500 BCE to 1800 CE

Abstract

Abstract provided by author:

Chapter One lays out the background to the study. It surveys previous work on the history, archaeology, and linguistic relationships of the region. It identifies the Bantu and Khoisan languages germane to the study and discusses earlier efforts at linguistically classifying them, and it briefly considers the earlier stages of Bantu language history, before 2500 years ago, out of which the southwesterly Bantu groups emerged

Chapter Two describes the approaches, techniques, and theory behind this kind of study and sets out the evidence for classifying the languages of the region. From these findings it sketches the early territorial history of the establishment, divergences, and spreads of these languages from the second half of the last millennium BCE onward. The group of languages central to the study is Kavango-Southwest Bantu, which divides into two primary groups, Kavango and Southwest Bantu. Each of these, in turn, breaks into further subgroups. Other languages of the region, belonging to other branches of Bantu, also are crucial components of the study. A tabling of lexical innovations substantiating the validity of each of the various subgroups concludes this chapter

Chapter Three investigates key aspects of economic and technological change at the different historical stages laid out in Chapter Two. Topics include early subsistence practices, developments in livestock-raising, the coming of metalworking to the region, and changes toward more dry-land types of agriculture. The chapter also views the changing interactions over time among peoples with differing economic practices - Khoisan herders and hunter-gatherers, and Bantu fishers, farmers, and livestock raisers

Chapter Four looks at correlating archaeology with linguistic historical findings. It finds some probable correlations between earlier speech communities and particular sites in the sparse, uneven archaeology of Namibia, the Okavango, the Caprivi, and northern Botswana. But most importantly it provides systematic proposals, derived from the linguistic historical inferences, about where extensive future archaeological work might prove especially fruitful and about what such work might uncover. The linguistic findings are also considered in relation to the oral histories

Chapter Five sums up the overall findings of the dissertation and suggests additional directions for future research by oral and linguistic historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists, all of whom can add important new dimensions to the history that Namibians will be writing and teaching their children