古代乍得湖地区胡鲁夫政体政治经济形态演变

Evolution of Political Economy of the Houlouf Polity in Ancient Lake Chad Region

在本文语境中,涌现复杂性是指社会形态的组织转变,即从移动的小型游牧部落和定居农业村落,最终形成政治集中的等级社会的过程。这是全新世中期乍得湖逐渐消退后,在非洲中北部乍得平原定居的乍得语族使用者的演变轨迹。本文分析了公元前1900年至公元1800年这一期间的定居点动态、政治经济、物质文化、交换模式等要素,概述了这一演变过程的主要阶段。通过简要回顾西非考古学中关于贸易的研究可以看出,对长途交换的研究往往集中在特征分析和来源分析上。这两个变量虽然对重构交换网络非常重要,但却无法令我们了解接受社会的内部动态。因此,本文研究了长途贸易物品的地点、流向、分布和消费的变化,以及手工艺品专业化和集约化生产模式,说明了它们是连锁的反馈循环的一部分。这些偏离或放大的反馈循环触发了一种动态,导致胡鲁夫(Houlouf)在约四千年间出现了四个连续的社会形态。

Emergent complexity in the context of this paper refers to an organizational shift in social formations,from small mobile pastoral groups,and sedentary agricultural villages,that finally resulted in the formation of politically centralized and ranked society.It is the evolutionary trajectory followed by speakers of Chadic languages who settled progressively in the Chadian plain in North Central Africa,after the gradual receding of Mid-Holocene Lake Chad.This paper outlines the main steps of that evolutionary process through the lens of settlement dynamics,political economy,the production and use of material culture and their connected patterns of exchange from 1900 BCE to 1800 CE.A short review of research on trade in West African archaeology shows that the study of long-distance exchange tends to focus on characterization and provenience analyses.As important as these two variables are for the reconstruction of exchange network,they do not provide access to the internal dynamics of the receiving societies.Accordingly,this paper examines the concomitant changes in site-location,flows,distribution,and consumption of long-distance traded items,patterns of craft specialization and production intensification,showing that they were part of interlocked feed-back loops.These deviating or amplifying feed back loops triggered a dynamic that resulted in the emergence of four successive social formations in the Houlouf region ca.4000 years occupation sequence.