The Nyangatom: an outline of their ecology and social organization

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Book chapter

Title:	The Nyangatom: an outline of their ecology and social organization
Author:	Tornay, S.
Book title:	Peoples and cultures of the Ethio-Sudan borderlands / ed. by M.L. Bender
Year:	1981
Pages:	137-178
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Sudan Ethiopia
Subject:	Nyangatom
Abstract:	The 5000 agro-pastoral Nyangatom inhabit a part of the Lower Omo Valley in Ethiopia and adjacent western lowlands and mountain piedmonts in Sudan. They are one of the minor and least known tribes of the 'Karimojong cluster'. Linguistically, they are a branch of the Nilotic sub-family, within the East Sudanic family of the wider Nilo-Saharan phylum. Surrounded by a diversity of ethnic groups, alien to them for linguistic, cultural and historical reasons, and in strong competition with them for relatively scarce resources, they have a strong feeling of their cultural identity and of the specifity of their social organization. A look at their territory, climate and vegetation, and the annual sub-sistence cycle is followed by an examination of their framework of social life at a local and at a wider, tribal level. Relationships with neighbours are only briefly alluded to in the conclusion. Fig., map, notes, photos, ref.