ABSTRACT

T he Bantu expansion and the spread of agricul-ture are often bracketed together as two distinct manifestations of the same historical macroevent (Renfrew 1992). Holden (2002, p. 793) expresses this view clearly: ‘Th e Bantu language tree refl ects the spread of farming across this part of sub-Saharan Africa between ca. 3000 B.C.E. and 500 C.E. Modern Bantu subgroups . . . , mirror the earliest farming traditions both geographically and temporally’. Several factors, however, argue in favour of a more careful approach to the problem. Linguistically, the Bantu language tree does not exist: genealogical trees diff er according to the method used and the kind of language data considered (Bastin, Coupez, and Mann 1999). Neither a satisfactory complete internal classifi cation of the Bantu languages nor entire agreement on the way they spread over their current distribution area has been achieved (Schadeberg 2003, p. 155). Besides, as regards the earliest farming traditions, it is increasingly acknowledged that the development of agriculture in subSaharan Africa was ‘a slow revolution’ (Vansina 1995) and that a ‘dualistic concept of hunter-gathers and food producers as opposite and exclusive is not appropriate for Africa’ (Neumann 2005, p. 249). If early Bantu speech communities did produce food, which plants did they

cultivate, which part did these domesticates take in their nutrition, and what was their agricultural technology?