Elisabeth Hildebrand : Plant Domestication in Northeast Africa
This Nubian farmer (left) is displaying an indigenous domestic cucurbit on Sai Island in northern Sudan. Peoples of the Nile have been farming its fertile floodplains for thousands of years, and were storing crops in a vast system of underground granaries at Sai by 4000 years ago. Some crops, like this cucurbit, were domesticated locally. Others, such as ful (in the irrigated field, below), were introduced from southwest Asia.
The development of Nilotic farming systems supported prehistoric complex societies in Egypt and Sudan. Dr. Elisabeth Hildebrand is studying relations between exotic and indigenous crops during the earliest periods of farming in Sudan, by recovering botanical remains from archaeological sites on Sai Island and the Fourth Cataract of the Nile .
All photos copyright Elisabeth A. Hildebrand.
Hildebrand also studies the history and prehistory of farming in a very different African setting: the humid montane forests of southwest Ethiopia (left). There, Sheko farmers cultivate tuber crops such as enset and yams. Knowledge of these crops, their wild relatives, and the ways that Sheko people manage wild and domestic populations have contributed to models of prehistoric plant domestication in Ethiopia .
In the long term, comparing trajectories of subsistence change in arid ( Sudan ) vs. humid (southwest Ethiopia ) areas can show diverse pathways to food production on the African continent.
Publications
Hildebrand, Elisabeth. 2001. Morphological characterization of garden vs. forest-growing Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman, Musaceae in Bench-Maji Zone, southwest Ethiopia . Biologiske Skrifter 54:Biodiversity Research in the Horn of Africa Region. Ib Friis and Olof Ryding, eds. Danish National Academy of Sciences, Copenhagen , Denmark . pp. 287-309.
Hildebrand, Elisabeth Anne, Sebsebe Demissew, and Paul Wilkin. 2002. Local and regional landrace disappearance in species of Dioscorea L. (yams) in southwest Ethiopia : Causes of agrobiodiversity loss and strategies for conservation. In Ethnobiology and Biocultural Diversity: Proceedings of the 7th International Congress of Ethnobiology, edited by J. R. Stepp, F. S. Wyndham and R. K. Zarger, pp. 678-695. University of Georgia Press , Athens ( Georgia ).
Hildebrand, Elisabeth. 2003a. Comparison of domestic vs. forest-growing Ensete ventricosum (Welw.) Cheesman, Musaceae in Ethiopia : implications for detecting enset archaeologically, and modeling its domestication. Africa Praehistorica 15. Food, Fuel, and Fields: Progress in African Archaeobotany, edited by Katharina Neumann, Ann Butler, and Stefanie Kahlheber, pp. 49-70.
Hildebrand, Elisabeth Anne. 2003b. Motives and opportunities for domestication: An ethnoarchaeological study in southwest Ethiopia . Journal of Anth. Archaeology.
Hildebrand, Elisabeth Anne. 2003c. Enset, yams, and honey: Ethnoarchaeological approaches to the origins of horticulture in southwest Ethiopia . PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis .
Marshall, Fiona and Elisabeth Hildebrand. 2002. Cattle before crops: The beginnings of food production in Africa . Journal of World Prehistory 16(2):99-143.