Full Description

Covering more than 2,000 years this important region's history, this book is a groundbreaking contribution to the knowledge of pre-colonial Africa. It is the first historical work to reconstruct a Batwa or "Pygmy" past, thereby questioning Western epistemologies that have long portrayed the Batwa as a quintessential people without history.

Additional Resource Information

(click any section below to continue reading)

Contents

Maps, Figures, and Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction
(Re)Constructing Histories: Central African Societies and the Burden of Myth
Bantu Expansion in the Western Equatorial Rainforest, ca.4000-1500 B.C.E.
Of Indigeneity and Incorporation: Immigrants and Autochthons on the Central African "Frontier"
New Economies, New Communities: The Impact of Bananas and Iron
Bantu Societies and the Ideology of the Primordial Batwa
Altered Associations: Bantu and Batwa, ca. 1000-1900 C.E.