Conservation of Indigenous Livestock : Sustaining Biodiversity for Current and Future Generations

This report, presented by Roger Blench, Managing Director of Mallam Dendo Ltd, UK, considers some of the current challenges involved in the conservation of indigenous livestock. The importance of livestock biodiversity in reducing the risks faced by manyu poor rural households is described in the context of accelerating erosion of livestock diversity. The role of science in identifying genetic resources and the implications of emerging techniques for science based policy are also discussed. The need for coherent policies on livestock is highlighted focusing on a framework that allows input from evolving science, the implementation of the Convention of Biodiversity, regional policies, and a re-orientation of research and extension towards species and uses relevant to poor people. This report was discussed during the Stakeholder meeting at AGM2005

Final Records of the Sambe Language of Central Nigeria: Phonology, noun morphology, and wordlist

This paper presents all the available data on the Sambe language [xab], formerly spoken in a remote area of Central Nigeria. Two field trips were made, in 2001 and 2005, and a substantial wordlist was collected. By 2005, the two remaining informants were very old and it is presumed Sambe is no longer spoken. The speakers still retain their ethnic identity but today speak a dialect of Ninzo. Sambe is part of the little-known Alumic group of languages and its closest relative is Hasha. Alumic in turn is one subgroup of Plateau, itself a branch of Benue-Congo and thus part of Niger-Congo. Sambe has an extremely rich phonological inventory. Fossil prefixes show that it had a system of nominal affixing until recently, but this had become unproductive by the time the language was recorded.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

FROM VIETNAMESE LITHOPHONES TO BALINESE GAMELANS: A HISTORY OF TUNED PERCUSSION IN THE INDO-PACIFIC REGION

Southeast Asia and adjacent regions are part of a general area defined musically by ensembles of tuned percussion instruments played in a heterophonic style. It has been argued that there is some link between African and Southeast Asian xylophones, but this is almost certainly erroneous. Tuned percussion instruments are bounded by India in the west, Laos in the North and China in the east, spreading down into island Indonesia but stopping short of Melanesia. The instruments used in these ensembles vary greatly, although wooden and metal xylophones are the most common. However, tuned stones, bronze vessels (bell, gongs etc.), struck hanging bamboo tubes and others have all been adapted to the same principle. Some of these instruments leave more archaeological traces than others; tuned stones (notably Chinese lithophones) have a high profile archaeologically, along with bronze bells, which may over-emphasise their importance in relation to wooden and bamboo instruments. This type of music is now of vanishingly low importance in China, Japan, Vietnam and Korea but dominant in Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia and Indonesia, suggesting that over time, the centre of gravity of the style has shifted and become elaborated, as well as spreading to new instrument types. The paper presents evidence for the current distribution together with the limited evidence from excavation and historical documents and discusses the type of archaeological finds that might be relevant to enriching current models

Away with the fairies: how old is human oral culture?

This essay is intended to suggest that oral cultures show deep connections so specific that it is hard imagine they are coincidence or convergence. If so, then they can provide us with important insights into the out- look of these early modern humans. Folklore is a much-despised genre in modern academia. It is considered antiquarian, sentimental and only suitable for mining by Disney films, thus hardly a serious academic discipline. Folklore narratives tend to be local, low-circulation publications often unaccompanied by analysis and often aimed at younger readers. However, considered more carefully in comparison with synchronic ethnographic data, they points to connections hard to explain without appealing to deep time hypotheses

Was there an Austroasiatic Presence in Island Southeast Asia prior to the Austronesian Expansion?

No Austroasiatic languages are spoken in island SE Asia today, although we know from the Chamic languages of Vietnam and the SA Huynh culture that contact was extensive between the mainland and the islands. However, the diversity of Neolithic materials in various island sites has led some archaeologists to question the Austronesian ‘Neolithic package’ model, without advancing a positive alternative. This paper suggests that Austroasiatic speakers had reached the islands of SE Asia (Borneo?) prior to the AB expansion and that this can be detected in both the archaeology, the languages and the synchronic material culture. The paper will focus in part on the transfer of taro cultivation as part of this process

Cultural Bureaucracy and the Manufacture of Ifugao Oral Literature

World Oral Literature Project Workshop 2010The Philippines is extremely rich in oral literature genres, in particular elaborate epic recitations. When UNESCO was seeking ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’ in Southeast Asia, it chose the hudhud epics of the Ifugao people of Northern Luzon based on a recording by a professional performance group rather than by actual hudhud performers. Consequently, there are now substantial offices manned by civil servants intent on ensuring that the only versions of hudhud that are disseminated correspond to the requirements of the urban elites. The choice of hudhud is unfortunate in many ways, since non-hudhud genres—and there is a wide variety of oral literature among the Ifugao and all neighbouring communities—have been almost entirely ignored. Also virtually unreported is the use of musical instruments to ‘talk’, a once widespread practice that is now almost extinct. This paper will discuss fieldwork to record, transcribe, translate and archive these remarkable genres

From Tibet to Nigeria via Hollywood: travels of Chaucer’s ‘Pardoner’s Tale’

The paper reports a new Nigerian version of the ‘Tale of the three robbers’ similar to that narrated by the Pardoner in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. It describes the diffusion of the story, originating as a birth narrative of the Buddha in the Himalayas, spreading westward to India, Persia and thence to Western Europe, where it was recorded as a folktale in Portugal in the last century. West African versions of the story are recorded among the Fulɓe pastoralists of the Fouta Jallon, and among the Nupe and now the Kamuku of Nigeria. More surprisingly, it has also been recorded among the Sakata of the southwest DRC. Its most plausible source is the Swahili inland trade, since there is a Swahili version which resembles the Persian versions. Its most recent re-incarnation has been the film, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1948, starring Humphrey Bogart. The constant re-invention and reframing of the core narrative suggests an attractive meme which has been transmitted across many centuries

An overview of the Bantoid languages

The Bantoid languages are a body of some 150-200 languages positioned geographically between Nigeria and Cameroun. They do not form a genetic group, but all are in some way related to Bantu more closely than other branches of Benue-Congo. The most well-known branches are Dakoid, Mambiloid, Tivoid, Beboid, Grassfields, and Ekoid. Bendi, formerly Cross River, may be Bantoid, while Jarawan is probably Narrow Bantu. Their classification is controversial. Due to their inaccessibility, many are poorly described. The article summarises the literature on their classification and main linguistic features, and in particular how these relate to Bantu. It also includes a brief survey of endangerment of smaller languages and the state of literacy development.Their main typological characteristics include S (AUX) OV word order, functioning or fossilised nominal affixing and concord (sometimes alliterative), suffixed verbal extensions, ATR vowel harmony and labial-velars in the phonology. Some languages have developed highly complex tone-systems as a result of extreme erosion of segmental material

Research on the Plateau languages of Central Nigeria

The paper is an overview of scholarship on the Plateau language group of Central Nigeria to November 2020. It reviews the existing published and manuscript sources and describes modern scholarship. It provides an overview of the literature on the internal and external classification of these languages and the issue of endangerment, which is severe for some languages. It summarises the use of Plateau languages in education and the media, which has undergone a major revival after 2010. There is now a concerted push for the use of Plateau languages in education. The paper then reviews each subgroup, presenting an internal classification and references to publications. Based on the existing evidence, a fresh classification of Plateau is presented