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

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

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

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

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

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

The East Kainji languages of Central Nigeria

The paper is an overview of current scholarship on the East Kainji language group of Central Nigeria. It reviews the existing published and manuscript sources and describes recent research, as well as the development of orthographies for some languages. Many East Kainji languages are severely threatened and some have gone extinct within the period under review. The paper presents an internal classification of the group and briefly discusses the external relationships of these languages. On the basis of existing data, a review of the basic phonology and noun class prefix systems is given

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

Idoma musical instruments

The Idoma are a cluster of peoples inhabiting a vertical strip of southern Central Nigeria, to the north and south of Oturkpo town (Armstrong, 1955a and Hansford et al. 1976). Their population was estimated at a quarter of a million in 1955, but has probably increased substantially since that time. ‘Idomoid’ is one of the principal branches of South Central Niger Congo and forms a co-ordinate branch with the Nupe languages. Abraham (1967) was the first author to study the Idoma language in detail, and the orthography of Idoma today reflects his original analysis, although it has undergone a certain amount of updating since then