African Herders

Professor Andrew Smith has through the last thirty years provided researchers interested in African history with incisive analysis on a wide variety of topics, from southern Saharan archaeology to the colonial history of Khoikhoi herders at the Cape of Good Hope. In this book, he returns to one of his earliest interests, the comparative study of African herding populations through time. African Herders is a sweeping survey of the origins and development of pastoralist traditions in Africa, effectively blending archaeological, ethnographic, historical and other evidence in order to best interpret this extremely complex topic. Two of the particular strengths of the book are its attention to the modern contexts of herding lifeways on the continent, andto the central roles that women play in pastoralist communities. This attention is an effective antidote to some traditional reviews of the topic, which have treated pastoralist societies as moored in a timeless — and partiarchal — past. In the courseof African Herders, Professor Smith also points out intriguing relationships between herding populations in the Shara and East Africa, and between the cultural practices of ancient and modern pastoralists across the continent. In addition, he places