ABSTRACT
Some years ago Professor Vansina (I: pp. 375-90) published a lucid analysis of long-distance trade in Africa in which he argued that the regional trading net-works already in existence in the far interior played a critical part in the later development of the ivory and slave trade. Ultimately, however, the expansion of trade in later centuries has its roots in the early development of inter-village traffic in raw materials during the first millennium A.D. The archaeological evidence for early trade in Central and South Central Africa is both limited and unsatisfactory; this paper is an attempt to place the evidence into a theoretical context. I
The fundamental economic changes which took place at the beginning ofthe African Iron Age led to major alterations in population distribution, settlement patterns, trading practices, and social organisation over much of the subcontinent. Nowhere were these more dramatic than in South Central Africa, where the transition from food gathering to food production coincided with the introduction by metallurgy into the region.
