The transatlantic slave trade involved the capture and transportation of millions of Africans across the Atlantic for a period of approximately four hundred years. European and New World merchants, traders, and ship captains were behind much of the organization of this huge forced migration. They also captured and loaded Africans onto slave ships themselves via raids, warfare, or trade. However, the traffic would not have evolved as it did had they failed to rely on a series of mechanisms of enslavement indigenous to Africa. Some of these mechanisms included judicial proceedings, debts, pawning, trickery, kidnapping, and, of course, warfare. Each of them had an impact on Africa and her children, both those who stayed behind and those scattered across the Atlantic. Nevertheless, these mechanisms helped sustain the traffic as a long-lasting and complex historical event.
Article
Mechanisms of Enslavement
Daniel B. Domingues da Silva
Article
Archaeozoology: Methods
Veerle Linseele
Archaeozoology is the study of animal remains, mainly bones and other hard parts, from archaeological sites. It contributes to a more complete understanding of various aspects of human life in the past. Ideally, archaeozoologists, like other specialists, should be involved in the entire process of an archaeological research project, from its design, to fieldwork and data collecting, to final reporting and publication. For efficient communication and fruitful collaboration, the archaeologists involved in this process need to understand the basics of archaeozoological methodology and the range of questions that the discipline can answer. Methods vary among archaeozoologists—not least with regard to quantification—and it is important to be aware of these differences and their possible impact on results when comparing data for different sites. While the actual analysis of animal remains is done by the archaeozoologists, preferably in circumstances where they have access to a comparative collection of recent animal skeletons, the excavation and collection of remains is often the responsibility of the archaeologists. Animal remains are affected by a host of taphonomic processes of loss that are beyond our control. To avoid additional loss of information at the fieldwork stage, appropriate methods are particularly important. The use of sieves with a mesh size no greater than 2 mm is essential in order not to miss the smaller, but no less informative, animal remains. Project leaders play an important role in providing good storage facilities for archaeozoological remains after excavation and after study. With the rapid development in analytical methods, it can be extremely interesting to return to previously studied remains and sample them.
Article
Methods in the Study of African Historical Geography, Landscapes, and Environmental Change
Katherine Homewood
Increasingly, methods not traditionally used by historians are becoming available for the study of African historical geography, landscapes, and environmental change. Starting with an outline of the main determinants of vegetation formations across African landscapes, the article goes on to look at a selection of macro, micro, and modeling methods. Remote sensing allows analysis of land cover change over the past few decades but also shows enduring features useful in interpreting sources describing these landscapes at times long past. Google Earth–type software makes it possible to take a virtual walk through landscapes with key informants in the present day, exploring how the land was used and has changed. Geographical information systems make it possible to collate different spatially explicit types of information, including qualitative data, for quantitative and statistical analysis. At the other end of the scale, pollen, diatoms, foraminifera, and other micro-particles (spicules, phytoliths, cuticles, micro-charcoal) from lake or oceanic sediment cores, and the chemical and isotopic composition of organic remains, all convey information about the environmental context of a site and its surroundings. Carbon isotope or thermoluminescence dating techniques can pinpoint the changes they indicate across potentially very long time spans. Genetic, protein, and other molecular materials may allow precise lineages and migrations to be traced back across very long periods and distances. Finally, modeling makes it possible to use sparse historical and more robust recent data to predict possible pasts in exploratory but evidence-based ways. The disequilibrium debate in drylands illustrates how environmental narratives, strategically used, silence place-based knowledge in ways that science, seeing itself as apolitical, is not well placed to detect.
Article
Historical Demography: Methods
Harri Siiskonen
Africa has the least-known demographics in the world. Until the mid-20th century, not even the size of the population was precisely known in many areas of sub-Saharan Africa. Significant problems in African historical demography have been the lack of relevant sources, and the fragmentary and nonsystematic nature of the available records.
Since the late 1970s, African historical demography has taken noticeable steps forward by the adaptation of new methods in analyzing old “new” sources and by combining information of these scattered scanty records. These methods have been tightly connected with the nature of accessible sources. Until the establishment of permanent mission stations in the interior of Africa travel accounts, diaries, and maps of explorers, traders, and hunters are the most important literary sources informing about population and the way of life of African communities. Oral tradition and ethnological evidence complement travelers’ observations based on short visits. Methods used in history, ethnology, and anthropology are relevant in analyzing these descriptive sources.
Church registers have played an important role in Western historical demography. From sub-Saharan Africa, there are sporadic lists available of baptisms and marriages from the Congo area since the 17th century, but analyzing trends in fertility or mortality has proved challenging.
Discovering of complete continuous series of church registers from southern and eastern Africa in the late 1980s and 1990s enabled longitudinal analysis of fertility and mortality. Adapting methods used in Western historical demography, like family reconstitution, opened a new phase in African historical demography, but there are several limitations with parish registers, like under-registration of infant and child mortality and births. However, statistical methods provide tools to overcome systematic weaknesses related to these data.
Early population enumerations in Africa were restricted to the European population residing on the trading posts located on the coast. The first countrywide censuses conducted during the colonial period were imperfect concerning fertility, mortality, and age of the population and usually underestimated the size of the population. The reliability of censuses began to improve only since the 1960s when they were conducted following the United Nations’ data gathering principles. Modern censuses are widely used sources in making back-projections to population development during the first half of the 20th century. Demographic and health surveys available from the 1970s focus on fertility and reproductive health complement noticeably the census data. Understanding African population development since the turn of the 20th century can be deepened by mixed and comparative use of censuses, surveys, and parish registers and by utilizing methods familiar in history and anthropology, demography, and statistics.
