ABSTRACT
The Bemba are a small tribe. At the time when these observations were made they numbered about 150,000. But they live widely dispersed over the plateau at a density of some 3·67 per square mile, in villages of 30-50 huts built at anything from five to twenty miles apart. Their territory is therefore larger than their numbers might suggest. The Bemba practise shifting cultivation of the slash-and-burn type. Their staple food is finger millet but they grow sorghum, maize, beans, peas and cucurbits. The growing of cassava is a modern introduction which does not feature, as does the cultivation ofthe other staple foods, in the chisungu rites.
