Monday 31 May 2010
Ethnoornithology on the Kenya coast
Giriama is one of the Mijikenda idioms and is closely related to Comorian, Swahili, and other Sabaki Bantu languages. Cognate bird names can therefore be found in the Comoros as well on many of the islands off the East African coast from Somalia in the north to Mozambique in the south. Tracking the linguistic history and geography of these and other animal names can provide important information about people's migrations and interactions in the past (cf. my 'Island Subsistence: Hunting, Trapping and the Translocation of Wildlife in the Western Indian Ocean'). Bird names are particularly useful in this regard because we have better information about avian distributions and environmental preferences than we do for many other groups of animals.
(For more on the Dakatcha checklist and other aspects of Mijikenda ethnoornithology see the original post on 'Giriama Bird Names', and an earlier one on 'Birds of Omen and Little Flying Animals with Wings', at my East African Notes and Records blog.)
Saturday 22 May 2010
Trajectories to Malagasy Rice
This article has now been finally published and paginated as part of a special issue on rice.
Journal Issues on Bananas and Indian Ocean Plants
Friday 21 May 2010
Archaeological Fieldwork Kicks Off in Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian peninsula is in a critical geographical position for understanding human movements out of Africa, as exemplified in a number of papers in a book co-edited by Petraglia and Rose, “The Evolution of Human Populations in Arabia” (Springer, 2009). While some inroads have been made to understand the dispersal of modern humans and our archaic ancestors, relatively little interdisciplinary and long-term fieldwork has been conducted to tackle this problem. Our team aims to change this situation -- thanks to a new 5 year agreement with the Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities and in partnership with Dr. Abdullah Alsharekh of
In March of this year a small team of interdisciplinary specialists conducted a pilot study in the palaeolake region of the
The joint fieldwork programme is part of a 5 year agreement between the Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities and the