African Matrilineal Histories

Bibliography

Our work contributes to an effort to recover early Bantu history. Historians have made effective use of a multidisciplinary approaches toward that effort.  A particularly effective method, and one in which the three collaborators are trained, is Comparative Historical Linguistics. The following books are foundational to understanding the framework of Bantu history.

  • De Luna, Kathryn M. “Affect and Society in Precolonial Africa.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 46, no. 1 (2013): 123–150.
  • Desch-Obi, M. Thomas J. Fighting for Honor: The History of African Martial Art in the Atlantic World. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008. 
  • Ehret, Christopher. The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002. 
  • Ehret, Christopher. An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History 1000 BC to AD 400. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998.
  • —. History and the Testimony of Language. 1st ed. University of California Press, 2010.
  • Klieman, Kairn A. “The Pygmies Were Our Compass”: Bantu and Batwa in the History of West Central Africa, Early Times to c. 1900 CE. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003.
  • Schoenbrun, David L. A Green Place, a Good Place: Agrarian Change and Social Identity in the Great Lakes Region to the 15th Century. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1998.
  • Stephens, Rhiannon. A History of African Motherhood: The Case of Uganda, 700-1900. New York:   Cambridge University Press, 2013.
  • Vansina, Jan M. Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa. University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.

Central and Eastern African Regional Histories

  • Brantley, Cynthia. “Through Ngoni Eyes; Margaret Read’s Matrilineal Interpretations from Nyasaland.” Critique of Anthropology 17, no. 2 (1997).
  • Smythe, Kathleen R. Fipa Families: Reproduction and Catholic Evangelization in Nkansi, Ufipa, 1880-1960. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2006.
  • Willis, Roy G. A State in the Making: Myth, History, and Social Transformation in Pre-colonial Ufipa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981.
  • Willis, Justin. “For Women and Children: An Economic History of Brewing Among the Nyakyusa of Southwestern Tanzania.” In Alcohol in Africa: Mixing Business, Pleasure, and Politics, 55–73. N.H.: Heinemann, 2002.
  • Wright, Marcia. Strategies of Slaves & Women: Life-stories from East/Central Africa, 1993.

African Feminist Studies

Scholars doing early feminist history have contributed to the conceptual framing of our provocative approach to recovering Bantu women’s history since early times. These works have shaped some of our questioning of assumed subjugation of African women across time and place.

  • Arnfred, Signe. Sexuality & Gender Politics in Mozambique: Rethinking Gender in Africa. Oxford: James Currey, 2011.
  • Cornwall, Andrea, ed. Readings in Gender in Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.
  • Falola, Toyin and Bessie House-Soremekun, eds.Gender, Sexuality and Mothering in Africa. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2011.
  • Herbert, Eugenia W. Iron, Gender, and Power: Rituals of Transformation in African Societies. Indiana University Press, 1994.
  • Kent, Susan, ed. Gender in African Prehistory. AltaMira Press, 1998.
  • Njuki, Jemimah, Elizabeth Waithanji, Joyce Lyimo-macha, Juliet Kariuki, and Samuel Mburu. Women, Livestock Ownership and Markets Bridging the Gender Gap in Eastern and Southern Africa. Routledge, 2013.
  • Ogbomo, Onaiwu W. When Men and Women Mattered: a History of Gender Relations Among the Owan of Nigeria. Rochester, N.Y., USA: University of Rochester Press, 1997.
  • Oyewumi, Oyeronke. Gender Epistemologies in Africa : Gendering Traditions, Spaces, Social Institutions, and Identities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
  • Sacks, Karen. Sisters and Wives: The Past and Future of Sexual Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Anthropology

We make use of comparative ethnographic data published on our research region:

  • Arnfred, Signe. Family Forms and Gender Policy in Revolutionary Mozambique (1975-1985). Université Montesquieu-Bordeaux IV: Centre d’étude d’Afrique noire, Institut d’études politiques de Bordeaux, 2001.
  • Beidelman, T. O. The Cool Knife. Smithsonian, 1997.
  • Ehrenfels, Umar Rolf, Freiherr von. Mother-right in East Africa; Four Essays on Traditional Matriliny and Contemporary Changes of Status Among African Women in Tanganyika. Bwakira, Juu, 1958.
  • Feierman, Steven M. Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in Tanzania. University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.
  • Gordon, Robert J. Ordering Africa: Anthropology, European Imperialism and the Politics of Knowledge. Edited by Helen L. Tilley. Manchester University Press, 2011.
  • Green, Maia. Priests, Witches and Power: Popular Christianity after Mission in Southern Tanzania. Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology 110. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
  • Hodgson, Dorothy L, and Sheryl A. McCurdy, eds. “Wicked” Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2001.
  • Howell, Singe, and Marit Melhuus. “The Study of Kinship; the Study of Person; a Study of Gender?” Gendered Anthropology(1993).
  • Lugano Mwakilasa, and Clement Mashamba. Excluding Women from Inheriting  Land through Custom in Tanzania: The Implications of the Nyakyusa Customary Land Tenure on Women’s Land and Inheritance Rights in Kyela and Rungwe District. Dar es Salaam: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, 2009.
  • Moore, Henrietta, and Megan Vaughan. Cutting Down the Trees: Nutrition, and Agricultural Change in the Northern Province of Zambia 1890-1990. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1994.
  • Peters, Pauline. “Revisiting the Puzzle of Matriliny in South-Central Africa.” Critique of Anthropology17, no. 2 (1997).
  • Pottier, Johan. Migrants No More: Settlement and Survival in Mambwe Villages, Zambia. Bloomington; London: Indiana University Press ; International African Institute, 1988.
  • Richards, Audrey. Chisungu: A Girl’s Initiation Ceremony Among the Bemba of Zambia. 2nd ed. Routledge, 1982.
  • Swantz, Marja-Liisa. Blood, Milk, and Death: Body Symbols and the Power of Regeneration Among the Zaramo of Tanzania. Westport, Conn. [u.a.: Bergin & Garvey, 1995.
  • Wilson, Monica Hunter. For Men and Elders: Change in the Relations of Generations and of Men and Women Among the Nyakyusa-Ngonde People, 1875-1971. New York: International African Institute, 1977.

Archaeology

The following archaeological publications have shaped our deep understanding of Bantu History and comprise an added dimension of dialogue about early Bantu History.

  • Blench, Roger. Archaeology, Language, and the African Past. illustrated edition. AltaMira Press, 2006.
  • Blench, Roger and Kay Williamson Educational. “Was There a proto-Bantu Word for ‘whale’? Explorations in Early Bantu Maritime History,” n.d. http://www.rogerblench.info/Archaeology/Africa/Cambridge%202010/AARD_Blench_poster.pdf
  • Ehret, Christopher and Merrick Posnansky, ed. The Archaeological and Linguistic Reconstruction of African History. University of California Press, 1983.
  • Håkansson, N. Thomas, Mats Widgren, and Lowe Börjeson. “Introduction: Historical and Regional Perspectives on Landscape Transformations in Northeastern Tanzania, 1850-2000.” IJAHS41, no. 3 (October 2008): 369–382.
  • LaViolette, Adria, and Jeffrey Fleisher. “The Urban History of a Rural Place: Swahili Archaeology on Pemba Island, Tanzania, 700-1500 AD.” IJAHS42, no. 3 (October 2009): 433–455.
  • Laya, Edwinus. “From Fipa to Nyiha Case Study: The Bloom Refining Process in Mbozi.” Nyame Akuma no. 74 (December 2010): 23–35.
  • Mapunda, Bertram. Contemplating the Fipa Ironworking. Kampala: Fountain Publishers, 2010.
  • Stahl, Ann B. and Adria LaViolette. “Introduction: Current Trends in the Archaeology of African History.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 42, no. 3 (2009): 347–350.