Collecting food, cultivating people : subsistence and society in Central Africa

"A rich analysis of the complex dynamic between food collection and food production in the farming societies of precolonial south central Africa. Using linguistic, archaeological, and other evidence, this sweeping study explores the place of subsistence in the precolonial history of south central Africa across nearly three millennia. Contrary to popular conceptions that place farming at the heart of political and social change, political innovation in precolonial African farming societies as actually contingent on developments in food collection." - P. [4] of cover