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Book | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Chronology, migration and drought in interlacustrine Africa |
Editor: | Webster, J.B. |
Year: | 1979 |
Pages: | 345 |
Language: | English |
Series: | Dalhousie African studies series |
City of publisher: | London |
Publisher: | Longman & Dalhousie University Press |
ISBN: | 0582646243; 0582646251 |
Geographic terms: | Burundi Rwanda Uganda |
Subjects: | droughts chronology |
Abstract: | Collection of essays most of which were first presented to the Canadian African Studies Conference at Dalhousie in 1974. Despite the variety of authors, the book achieves unity by concentrating upon the interlacustrine or inter-lake region of Eastern Africa and by focusing on one methodological problem: how to date the precolonial history of a region for which no documentary sources are available before the mid-nineteenth century. Ten distinct dating methods are described. The greatest number of chronological landmarks were found to be prolonged droughts, which might be used to link a king-list in one area with age-sets in another and with commoner genealogies in yet another. These droughts have been correlated with migrations, and with the emergence of rigid or fluid class structures. |