Indian Ocean Food Globalisation and Africa

Abstract

While Africa has sometimes been peripheral to accounts of the early Indian Ocean world, studies of food globalisation necessarily place it centre stage. Africa has dispatched and received an extraordinary range of plants, animals and foodstuffs through Indian Ocean trade and other avenues. Here we explore these patterns of food globalisation vis-a-vis Africa, focusing in particular on the arrival of new food crops and domesticated animals in Africa, but also touching on flows from Africa to the broader Indian Ocean world. We look at archaeological evidence, drawing in particular on new datasets emerging through the increasing application of archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological methods in African and Indian Ocean archaeology, and also draw on historical and ethnographic sources. We argue that the evidence points to a broadly Medieval and post-Medieval pattern of introduction, with little evidence for the earlier arrivals or culinary impacts argued by some. We also undertake consideration of questions about how and why new crops, animals, spices, and agricultural and culinary technologies come to be accepted by African societies, issues that are often overlooked in the literature.