LANGUAGES, CULTURES AND ENVIRONMENTS: HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS BETWEEN THE AFRICAN GREAT LAKES AND THE WESTERN INDIAN OCEAN

Martin T. Walsh

Environmental Sustainability Group Natural Resources Institute

University of Greenwich

corrected version of a paper originally published in

A. Dahlberg, H. Öberg, S. Trygger, K. Holmgren and P. Lane (eds.) Second Platina Workshop 17-19 October 2002, Usa River, Arusha, Tanzania

(Environment and Development Studies Unit Working Paper No. 46). Stockholm: Environment and Development Studies Unit (EDSU), Department of Human Geography & Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology,

Stockholm University. 53-74

December 2003

{NB: the page numbers in this version do not follow those of the published text}

current address: Department of Social Anthropology

University of Cambridge kisutu@btinternet.com

Languages, Cultures and Environments: Historical Linguistics between the African Great Lakes

and the Western Indian Ocean

Martin T. Walsh

Revised in December 2003

Introduction Since the publication of Joseph Greenberg’s (revised) classification of African languages (1963), historical linguistics has become an increasingly important part of African historians’ toolkit.1 This is especially so in Eastern Africa, which boasts the presence of branches of all four widely recognised African language phyla: Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, Afroasiatic, and Khoisan.2 This regional pattern of linguistic diversity has provided a significant stimulus to the development of historical linguistic research, from the late 1960s through to the present.3 One outcome of this research has been to highlight relationships between linguistic and environmental diversity, and their mediation by social and cultural practice. In this paper I will review progress in understanding these relationships, focusing on the area between the African Great Lakes and the East African coast and islands. This is intended both as an introduction to the subject for non-linguists, and also as a lead-in to the suggestions for further research which take up the second part of the paper. The Past and the Present Comparison and history Language is our primary means of communication. Languages change over time, and in the process encode information about these changes, the nature and sequences of which can be revealed by careful comparison between languages and/or dialects. Reconstructing these changes is the principal task of historical linguistics, which, particularly when employed in conjunction with other sources of evidence, can tell us much more about the past than the history of languages considered in the abstract. It can provide important clues to the location and identity of past speech communities, and enable us to develop strong

1 See Nurse’s (1997) review of ‘The contributions of linguistics to the study of history in Africa’. 2 For an overview of each of these language phyla and discussion of their classificatory status see the relevant chapters in Heine and Nurse (2000). The following branches of the four phyla are (or once were) present in Eastern Africa: (1) Niger-Congo: Eastern Bantu (Ehret’s Mashariki), including numerous groups and subgroups; (2) Nilo-Saharan: Kuliak (now called Rub by Ehret); Central Sudanic; and Eastern Sudanic, including Sog (extinct) and Southern, Eastern and Western Nilotic; (3) Afroasiatic: Southern Cushitic and the Omo-Tana subgroup of Lowland East Cushitic; and (4) Khoisan: the ‘East African Khoisan’ languages Hadza and Sandawe, one or both of which are otherwise treated as unaffiliated isolates. 3 Ehret (in press, a) provides an up-to-date summary of the history of ‘stratigraphic’ studies in Eastern Africa.

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hypotheses about social and political organisation and economic practices in the past, including practices relating to the use and management of natural resources. In combination with comparative ethnography, historical linguistic research can, moreover, supply unique insights into the history of cultural ideas and practices – including ritual practices – many aspects of which can only be guessed at from the archaeological record.4 Despite significant advances in Eastern Africa over the past four decades, the full potential of historical linguistics in these and other respects remains far from being realised. There are a number of reasons for this, not least of which is the small number of specialists working in what is undoubtedly a complex field, where the raw data comprise a large number of languages and cultures, most of which are inadequately described.5 In this context it is hardly surprising that historical linguistic research relating directly to past economies and environments should only be in a comparatively early stage of development, though these are by no means new themes for historical linguistics in the region, and have been a feature of Christopher Ehret’s research from the start (e.g. 1967; 1968). Historical linguists employ a number of methods to classify languages and to reconstruct their genealogies and the history of interactions between them.6 The principal technique of reconstruction is generally referred to as the ‘Comparative Method’ and is based on the analytic procedures first developed to study the Indo-European family of languages. The same procedures were used at the end of the nineteenth century to define the Bantu family of languages (later recognised as a part of the Niger-Congo phylum) and begin work in reconstructing proto-Bantu, work which has continued through to the present.7 Given the long history of Bantu studies, and the numerical dominance of Bantu languages and their speakers in Eastern Africa, it should come as no surprise that a number of efforts have been made to subclassify these Eastern Bantu languages and initiate historical reconstruction in particular groups.8 However, in the absence of adequate descriptive material on the majority of languages in the region,9 researchers have had to rely on

4 Ehret’s work (starting with his Southern Nilotic studies, 1969 and 1971) in unravelling the tangled history of East African age-set systems is perhaps the best-known example of this. For a more modest illustration, see my preliminary discussion (1992b) of the impact of historical Segeju ideas about birds of omen on Mijikenda augury and ornithological classification. 5 The same constraints are amplified at continental scale, as Nurse illustrates in comparing the application of the Comparative Method in Africa with the paradigmatic case of Indo-European (Nurse 1997: 362-363). 6 For introductory overviews and discussion of the methods of historical and comparative linguistics in an African context see Nurse (1997), Newman (2000), and Ehret (2000). More ‘elementary’ introductions to the applications of historical linguistics in Eastern Africa are provided by Spear (1981: xix, 22-25), Nurse and Spear (1985: 8-16), and Ehret (1998: 23-28). 7 See Ruhlen (1991: 76-85, 96-107) for an outline of the early history of Bantu classification. The work of Malcolm Guthrie (1948; 1967-72) proved particularly influential in the second half of the twentieth century. Nurse (1994/95) summarises post-Guthrie developments. See also the recent debate on Bantu expansions (various authors, 2001), introduced by Schoenbrun (2001) and stimulated by Ehret’s key paper (2001b). 8 For a discussion of the different approaches to classification, including the different definitions of Eastern Bantu, and the problems associated with these, see Nurse (1994/95). 9 The most recent bibliography of Tanzanian languages, compiled by Maho and Sands (2002), highlights the lack of good or even basic grammatical and lexical data for many of the 100-plus Bantu languages in the country. A review of linguistic research on the Corridor group of languages spoken between Lakes

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shortcuts, in particular lexicostatistical analysis, to generate a general classification of Bantu groups.10 The overall outcome of these classificatory exercises has been equivocal. While some groups and subgroups are well established (and in some cases have been since Guthrie’s classification); others are not, and the genealogical links between them remain far from clear.11

The Comparative Method has been most extensively applied to the study of Eastern Bantu languages in Eastern Africa by Derek Nurse, Thomas Hinnebusch, and other comparative linguists associated with them. This and related research has provided a series of starting points for historical reconstruction in a number of reasonably well-defined groups. These include Thagicu (= Central Kenya), Kilimanjaro-Taita (= Chaga-Dabida), Corridor (variously defined), Southern Highlands (= Njombe), and Northeast Coast.12 Its culmination to date has been Nurse and Hinnebusch’s (1993) reconstruction of proto-Sabaki, one of the primary subgroups of Northeast Coast, whose modern descendants include Ilwana, Pokomo, Mijikenda, Swahili, and Comorian. The reconstruction of vocabulary relating to flora, fauna, and other aspects of the natural environment and their exploitation, has a long pedigree in historical linguistics as a means of generating hypotheses about the location and movements of past speech communities as well as their modes of subsistence.13 Although evidence of this kind has been used to debate the location of the ‘homeland’ of the Bantu and their primary migrations,14 it has played relatively little role in the applications of the Comparative Method referred to above.15 Nurse and Hinnebusch, for example, only reconstruct a small number of proto-Sabaki terms for plant and animal species (1993: 577-672), though a full list based on existing vocabulary sources might run into hundreds of lexical items.16

Tanganyika and Nyasa (Malawi) provides a detailed example of this problem in a typical area where the status of many named languages and dialects remains uncertain (Walsh and Swilla 2000; 2001). 10 For a critical review of some of the problems inherent in lexicostatistics see Nurse (1994/95: 66-67; 1997: 363-366). Nurse has ample experience in this regard, having used lexicostatistics as the primary basis of his original classification of Tanzanian languages (Nurse and Philippson 1980), though he has increasingly tried to factor in phonological and morphological evidence (Nurse 1988a; 1999a). 11 There is no single accepted set of terms for different ranks in linguistic taxonomy. In this paper I have generally adhered to the following hierarchical series: phylum (e.g. Niger-Congo), family (e.g. Bantu), branch (e.g. Eastern Bantu), group (e.g. Northeast Coast), subgroup (e.g. Sabaki), language (e.g. Mijikenda), dialect (e.g. Digo), and variety (e.g. Northern Digo). 12 Key works include the following: Thagicu: Bennett (1967; 1969); Kilimanjaro-Taita: Nurse (1979); Philippson (1984); Corridor: Nurse (1988a); Labroussi (1999); Southern Highlands (Nurse 1988a); Northeast Coast: Hinnebusch (1973); Nurse and Hinnebusch (1993); and, for Eastern African Bantu in general: Nurse and Philippson (1980); Hinnebusch et al. (eds., 1981); and Nurse (1999a). The last of these works provides further references and discussion of the status of all of the Eastern African groups and some of their principal subgroups. 13 This is generally treated as an aspect of ‘linguistic palaeontology’, and has generated a fair amount of controversy in Indo-European studies: see, for example, the hostile reviews by de Saussure (1974: 224-227) and Renfrew (1987: 77-86). 14 See Bennett (1983). 15 A notable exception is Philippson’s work on the Taita (1984). 16 Examples of relevant sources for Swahili are listed in the second half of this paper.

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Evidence of this kind might be employed to address some of the unresolved problems in Nurse and Hinnebusch’s history: these include ongoing uncertainty over the location of the Sabaki ‘homeland’, and the puzzle of the original location on the coast of the early Comorians.17 It might also be used to tackle head on some of the questions raised by Nurse and Spear’s linguistically-informed history of the Swahili (1985). How did the Swahili adapt to the exploitation of marine resources? Did they simply modify existing Sabaki practices? Or did they adopt some of their fishing and other practices from existing populations on the coast?18

These published histories of the Sabaki and their Swahili descendants engage more directly with narratives derived from oral traditions – including various interpretations of the Shungwaya myth – and archaeological interpretations influenced by these.19 Historical linguistic hypotheses often challenge rather than confirm oral traditions;20 and in the Sabaki and Swahili cases there should be many opportunities for an environmentally-informed linguistic palaeontology to achieve more in this respect. There is also ample scope for this kind of research strategy to be applied to other Eastern Bantu groups and subgroups which have either not been examined in any detail or have been studied with minimal reference to their economic and environmental contexts. Words and things and people and places It is generally recognised that it is difficult to apply the Comparative Method effectively when language and dialect descriptions are in short supply. In the absence of good dictionaries and grammars the most obvious source of information is lexical material in the form of easily collected wordlists. The use of lexicostatistics as a first step in classification has already been mentioned, and to this might be added glottochronology, which can provide rough approximations of time depth in a language family tree.21 The best use of lexical data, however, is in the qualitative analysis of patterns of word retention, borrowing, and innovation, and it is this methodological strategy which has provided Eastern African historical linguistics with some of its most impressive results over the past 35 years.22

Throughout this period, Ehret’s work on both Bantu and non-Bantu languages has provided the model for research of this kind. His early studies of the cultural history and interactions between different non-Bantu groups opened up a range of new perspectives on

17 For the first of these problems see Walsh (1992a: 13-15) and Spear (2000b: 260, 286-288); and for the second, Nurse and Hinnebusch (1993: 531-533). 18 Cf. Walsh (1993: 145; 1995). 19 For a recent update and re-evaluation see Spear (2000a; 2000b). 20 Nurse’s (1982) study of Daisu/Segeju does just this. A better-known example is Ehret’s Southern Nilotic history (1969; 1971), which was originally framed as an attack on the Nilo-Hamitic hypothesis, derived in part from oral traditions. 21 For contrasting views of the pros and cons of using glottochronology in an African historical linguistics see Nurse (1997: 366) and Ehret (2000: 2897-289). 22 For an introduction to and discussion of these methods and their potential, see Ehret (1978).

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regional prehistory, and have continued to influence archaeological interpretations.23 These have included studies focusing on Central Sudanic (Ehret 1968; 1973), Southern Nilotic (1971), and Southern Cushitic (1967; 1974) in addition to other groups. The reconstruction of past modes of subsistence formed an important component of this research, and is one reason why it has proved so attractive to archaeologists and prehistorians (cf. the essays in Ehret and Posnansky eds., 1982). Meanwhile, Ehret has not restricted himself to qualitative lexical analysis, but has also ventured into historical linguistic reconstruction on a grander scale using the Comparative Method. This has included work on Southern Cushitic (1980), Kuliak (1981), Nilotic and Eastern Sudanic (1983), proto-Cushitic (1987), Eastern Cushitic (1991), proto-Afroasiatic (1995) and proto-Nilo-Saharan (2001). This has complemented the descriptive and analytic work of other comparative linguists researching non-Bantu languages in Eastern Africa, including Bernd Heine on the Eastern Cushitic languages of northern Kenya (e.g. 1978; 1980; 1981) and Kuliak in Uganda (1976; 1985); and Rainer Vossen and colleagues on Maa and wider Eastern Nilotic (Vossen 1982; 1988; Vossen and Heine 1989; Sommer and Vossen 1993). Some aspects of Ehret’s reconstructive work on non-Bantu languages have been controversial and have generated a fair amount of debate. This has included arguments about the status of Dahalo and (separately) Ma’a, whose Southern Cushitic classification has been questioned. Dahalo, spoken in and around the Tana River Delta, is classified as an Eastern Cushitic language by some specialists (e.g. Tosco 1992); while Ma’a (= Mbugu), a controversial ‘mixed’ language in the Usambara Mountains, has been analysed as having already undergone language shift from Cushitic into Bantu (Mous 1994; Wolff 2000: 332). Ehret (1981) and Heine (1976) have differed on the reconstruction of Kuliak (= Rub);24 and, at the higher level, Ehret (2001) and Bender (ed., 1997) on the classification and reconstruction of Nilo-Saharan. Ehret and his students have also made significant contributions to the study of Eastern Africa’s Bantu languages. Ehret’s genealogical classification of Eastern (Mashariki) Bantu, based largely on qualitative (not quantitative) lexical analysis, is arguably the most persuasive of those currently on offer. One version of this forms the backbone of his recent overview of eastern and southern African history (1998).25 This classification and the lexical evidence deployed in its favour refers explicitly to variations in the natural environment and the evolving responses of different early Bantu speech communities to these as they moved south and east of the African Great Lakes region. 23 Including ongoing speculation about the identity of the residents of Engaruka and related sites (e.g. Sutton 1978: 67-68; 1986: 45-48; 1993: 54-57; 1998: 33-34). 24 Heine’s work also stimulated renewed debate about the past and present of the Ik, speakers of a Kuliak language in north-eastern Uganda, and the subject of a notorious and allegedly ‘politically incorrect’ portrayal by Colin Turnbull (1972). In a critique informed by his own linguistic research, Heine (1985; cf. also his 1999) questioned Turnbull’s characterisation of historical Ik subsistence practices, as well as revisiting the ethical issues which Turnbull’s book raises (for an overview of these and the ethnographic debate see Knight 1994). See also Carlin (1993) on the other surviving Kuliak language, So. 25 Ehret (1973) sketches out an embryonic version of this classification, developed using the same basic principles. Otherwise it might be noted that Ehret’s (1998) history shares much in common Vansina’s (1990) overview of Western Bantu history. The histories are very different – as they should be – but the two historians’ approaches are broadly complementary (cf. Ehret 2000: 295-296).

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The general significance of such correlations is evident when language family and vegetation maps of Eastern Africa are compared. The Eastern Bantu moved out of the Great Lakes region in the direction of other areas of moist savanna: in Eastern Africa one branch moved eastward from Lake Victoria towards the Central Kenya highlands; another moved southwards towards the Southern Highlands before some of them turned back northwards towards the coast (the Northeast Coast Bantu), with a subsequent splinter (the Sabaki) continuing north along the coastal mosaic into what is now Kenya and (eventually) Southern Somalia. Ehret’s classification and reconstruction both captures this general sequence of movements – plus others into Southern Africa - as well as attempting to provide further detail at group and subgroup level.26 The Tanzanian end of what John Sutton (1990: 32) evocatively refers to as “the non-Bantu bulge”27 was clearly neither originally an intrusion into Bantu territory (as it was in some parts of western Kenya), nor a hostile cultural block which the Bantu were forced to avoid. Bantu-speaking farmers appear to have had no long-term difficulty in moving into the territory of non-Bantu groups already growing crops and keeping livestock in the Great Lakes region and other favourable environments. Rather, the Eastern Bantu appear to have simply preferred to settle in the kind of environments which they had already adapted to – in some cases with the help of subsistence practices and techniques learned from their non-Bantu neighbours - and which they were therefore most familiar with. Initially these were the moist savannas south and east of Lake Victoria, not the dry savanna lands which lay in between.28 Work on the history of the different Bantu subgroups involved is being taken forward by a number of Ehret’s past and present students. David Schoenbrun’s studies (1993; 1994/95; 1997; 1998) of the Great Lakes region have combined lexical evidence with data from other disciplines to produce a sweeping history of agrarian and social change, seen from the perspective of the Great Lakes Bantu whose descendants dominate the region today. Cymone Fourshey’s thesis (2002) marks a first attempt to do the same in the Nyasa-Tanganyika Corridor.29 Rhonda Gonzales’ recently completed dissertation (2002) deals with the development of the Ruvu subgroup of Northeast Coast Bantu, and includes new material and interpretations relating to the history of beliefs and medical and ritual practice.30 Gonzales is also the lead author of a (draft) paper outlining the history of the Rufiji-Ruvuma group of languages in southern Tanzania (Gonzales et al. n.d.). This paper

26 One of Ehret’s more controversial proposals is that ‘Upland’ Bantu speakers from central Kenya / northern Tanzania settled on the Kenya coast before the Sabaki (for criticism of this see Spear 2000b: 274). Interestingly, such a move across the semi-arid nyika of eastern Kenya would defy the broad environmental correlation that I have outlined. Much later, though, at least one community of Thagicu (Central Kenya) speakers – the ancestors of the modern Daisu (= Dhaiso) and Segeju – did move down the Tana River to the coast, and it is their language which is arguably the source of the loans which Ehret has taken to be evidence of an earlier migration (cf. Nurse 1982; 1983). 27 Originally referred to by Roland Oliver as “the Nilo-Hamitic bulge” (1963: 199). I am grateful to John Sutton for pointing out to me the source of this expression. 28 Cf. Schoenbrun (1998); Ehret (1998). 29 It remains to be seen how this study will relate to Catherine Labroussi’s work on the same group of languages (Labroussi 1998; 1999; and see Walsh and Swilla 2000). 30 Christopher Ehret (personal communication, 2002).

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revises the boundaries and internal classification of Rufiji-Ruvuma, provides lexical evidence for notable features of economy and culture in the earliest period of settlement, and discusses possible archaeological correlations (largely lacking at present). Although they have collaborated in the past (e.g. Ehret and Nurse 1981; Ehret et al. 1989), Nurse has voiced some criticism of the methods employed by Ehret and his (former) students. In particular he has questioned the over-reliance on lexical criteria in Ehret’s classification of Eastern Bantu and in Schoenbrun’s classification of the Great Lakes Bantu languages (Nurse 1994/95: 69; 1999a: 8). He also comments that Ehret’s “focus on exciting, challenging, new hypotheses and broad horizons has in the past sometimes led to an underemphasis of local detail” (1994/95: 69). When writing this, Nurse perhaps had in mind some of his own studies of particular situations of language contact and change (e.g. Nurse 1982; 1983; 1986; 1991; 1994; 1999b; Nurse and Walsh 1992). These studies are also models of their kind, and show how a range of methods can be combined to outline the linguistic background to detailed historical case studies. This example may serve to remind us that historical linguistics in Eastern Africa has developed with a mixture of methodologies. Despite differences of emphasis, Ehret and Nurse have both used the Comparative Method and various strategies of quantitative and qualitative lexical analysis in their research over the years. Perhaps we should hope to see both bold hypotheses and detailed case studies from them and their colleagues, especially when these are informed by or pay close attention to questions of resource management and use, and the wider environmental context. In the second half of this paper, I will suggest some of ways in which these broad recommendations might be put into practice. The Future? Description, classification and historical reconstruction My first prescription for the future is ‘More of the Same!’. By this I mean continued research along the lines already being taken by comparative and historical linguists to describe and classify the languages of Eastern Africa and to reconstruct their histories and those of the people who speak and/or once spoke them. In reconstructing these histories particular attention should be paid to past economies and environments, more so, certainly, than has been hitherto. I take it for granted that this work will be interdisciplinary, at the very least by drawing on sources of evidence from different disciplines, including archaeology and geography and various specialisations within these sciences. As well as generating hypotheses about natural resource use and management in the past, historical linguistics must also treat information about the environment and its human exploitation as a resource to help them do so. The map correlations and, separately, the flora/fauna reconstructions that I have already mentioned, are examples of this. The full potential of historical linguistics in Eastern Africa is far from being realised. Three and a half decades is a relatively short period of time in an underpopulated and underfunded academic specialisation.31 Research to date has only scratched the metaphorical surface of Eastern Africa’s historical landscapes. This is not surprising given that many Eastern African languages and dialects remain poorly described, so that basic comparative materials are often lacking. This situation is, however, gradually improving.

31 Cf. Nurse’s related comments (1997: 362).

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In Tanzania, for example, researchers working for SIL32 are producing a steady stream of sociolinguistic baseline studies, together with descriptive and literacy materials on selected languages. Meanwhile, the LoT (Languages of Tanzania) Project, a collaboration between the Department of Oriental and African Languages in Göteborg University and the Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics in the University of Dar es Salaam, has begun to bear fruit in the form of sponsored language studies (for an overview and references see Legère 2002).33

We are undoubtedly becoming less ignorant, though at a rather slow rate; and basic descriptive work of this kind should be encouraged, whatever purposes, linguistic or otherwise, that it may be for. Historical linguistics in Eastern Africa certainly needs the data that such work can provide. And experience shows that two or more descriptions (phonological, lexical, morphological etc.) of a single language are better than one; likewise descriptions based on work with multiple informants, especially when significant differences in data are noted and if possible explained. The Comparative Method and its methodological offshoots will only really flourish in Eastern Africa when our linguistic databases are much more extensive than at present. Linguistic ‘excavation’: stratigraphy and substrata My second exhortation is to ‘Dig Deeper!’, as well as more widely and carefully. This is my shorthand for the further development of stratigraphic studies, including efforts to expose linguistic substrata though lexical and other kinds of analysis. My use of archaeological metaphor here is quite deliberate. Not only are there obvious analogies between linguistic and archaeological stratigraphy, but in particular cases they may be different aspects of the same history. Sequences of linguistic contact and change may reflect and be reflected in the archaeological record, and each may help in the interpretation of the other, though this need not necessarily be the case. One example of the way in which archaeology can (or rather should) stimulate parallel linguistic research is provided by the results of recent archaeological research on Unguja, the main island of the Zanzibar archipelago. Excavations of Machaga cave in Pete by Felix Chami and his colleagues in 1998 and 1999 have produced evidence of a Late Stone Age (LSA) horizon, with bone harpoons and other implements, lying below strata associated with various Iron Working traditions (Chami and Wafula 1999; Chami 2001). The LSA horizon has produced (somewhat contradictory) dates falling in the last three millennia B.C.; above it are materials from the Early Iron Working (EIW) and, in much greater abundance, Triangular Incised Ware (TIW) traditions, possibly dating from as early

32 SIL International (formerly the Summer Institute of Linguistics) is a church-funded organisation whose stated purpose is ‘to work with language communities worldwide to facilitate language-based development through research, translation, and literacy’. In addition to linguistic reports and translations of biblical texts, SIL also produces a regularly updated compendium of information on all of the world’s known languages, the Ethnologue, now in its 14th edition (Grimes ed., 2001). The Uganda-Tanzania Branch of SIL International is based in Dodoma, and the Kenyan branch – Bible Translation and Literacy (BTL) – in Nairobi. 33 Comparable work has already been undertaken in Kenya to produce the different volumes of the Language and Dialect Atlas of Kenya (introduced by Heine and Möhlig eds., 1980; and Heine 1980).

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as 100 B.C. Whatever the case,34 this site appears to provide evidence of different phases of human occupation both before and during the first half of the first millennium A.D. This new stratigraphy parallels that already found on a number of coastal sites on the Tanzanian mainland (cf. Chami 1994). Before this recent work, archaeological and linguistic research had only provided evidence for the settlement of Unguja by Swahili speakers, who were thought to have begun to move south from a presumed homeland in or around the Lamu archipelago some time in the second half of the first millennium A.D. (e.g. Nurse and Spear 1985: 61-65). The new evidence for Unguja, as well as that for other locations, suggests that both the islands and coast were inhabited successively by foragers (fishers, hunters)35 and food producers, the latter with pottery and iron-working traditions, before the Swahili arrived. The immediate pre-Swahili communities on Unguja are most likely to have been speakers of an early Northeast Coast Bantu language or languages; languages which were almost certainly spoken on the opposite mainland at this early date. The language or languages of earlier LSA populations are more difficult to guess at; though we might expect them either to be related to (so-called) ‘East African Khoisan’ or to have been isolates of (at least presently) unknown affiliation. The archaeological sequence at least poses questions for local linguistic stratigraphy. Can any evidence of pre-Swahili substrata be found in the different Swahili dialects and speech varieties of Unguja? Answering this question will not be easy: the Southern Swahili dialects already contain traces of non-Bantu languages, including early Dahalo and Aweera (= Boni), which derive from contacts in their northern homeland. The Unguja dialects might also display evidence of borrowings from Northeast Coast Bantu languages which derive from early contacts on the mainland coast or later contacts and movements from the mainland to the island. Separating out these different possible influences and establishing a reasonably certain stratigraphy and relative chronology of contacts will require painstaking research. In principle, however, it is possible, and it is this kind of linguistic ‘excavation’ that we should aim for in this and other contexts in Eastern Africa where different languages, both related and unrelated, have interacted in the past. Perhaps the most tantalising topic is the linguistic excavation of Eastern Africa’s ‘Khoisan’ (‘pseudo-Khoisan’, or perhaps unknown ‘other’?) substrata. North-central Tanzania hosts two languages, Hadza and Sandawe, which possess a number of click phonemes, and these have long been presumed to be distant relatives of the Southern African Khoisan family. Not only are these links proving difficult to prove, but some linguists continue to doubt the unity of Southern African Khoisan.36 Whatever the case, the precursors of these two 34 Some archaeologists working in the region are sceptical of Chami’s published conclusions, and argue that more careful excavation is required to establish the stratigraphy of the cave site and provide more reliable dating. This does not, however, affect the purpose of my example. 35 The unexpected presence of chicken bones in the LSA horizon suggests a transitional or mixed mode of subsistence, or at least contacts with chicken-keeping immigrants (from south-east Asia?), at one stage in the past. It should be noted, however, that some of the species identified from bones found at the site are not now known on Unguja (e.g. dik-dik, Madoqua sp.; Dwarf Mongoose, Helogale parvula; Cape Rock Hyrax, Procavia capensis; Steinbok, Rhapicerus campestris), casting some doubt on these identifications (Chami 2001: 88, Table 8.1; cf. Pakenham 1984: 14-16). 36 Bonny Sands, personal communication, 2002. Hadza in particular has continued to resist definite genetic connection with other languages: see Elderkin (1982) and Sands (1998; in press). The unity of Southern African Khoisan was early questioned by Westphal (1962; 1963).

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languages are likely to have been among the languages spoken by earlier populations of hunters, foragers and fishers in Eastern Africa. Clues to the identity of these old languages are surely to be found in the present, if only we look hard enough for them. In addition to the tentative identification of scattered loanwords from ‘Khoisan’ (‘Sandawean’ in particular), some significant evidence has already been found. Dahalo, the dying Southern Cushitic language of former hunter-gatherers in the Tana Delta, has a remarkable substratum of vocabulary containing click phonemes. Many of these are terms referring to flora and fauna, none of which can be traced to Southern Cushitic or other neighbouring languages. It is generally assumed that the Dahalo originally spoke a ‘click language’ (possibly related to Sandawe), before shifting to speak the language of a now lost group of Southern Cushitic patrons. However, this language shift did not affect a select set of lexical items referring to objects and features unknown or unimportant in the new language; hence the survival of a lexical substrate with its unique phonological characteristics (not all of the terms in the substratum display these particular characteristics).37

There is a very real possibility that similar substrata, not necessarily with such distinctive phonological features, will be found in other Eastern African languages. There are also other places that we might look for relic click phonemes. Different varieties of Digo, a Mijikenda dialect spoken along the East African coast between Mombasa and Tanga, possess at least two ideophones with click phonemes.38 This may be no more than a coincidence, but the possibility that these are relic phonemes should also be investigated. Indeed the potential for using ideophones and other relatively unstudied elements of vocal communication in historical linguistics has hardly been explored,39 and might usefully comprise another component in ‘digging deeper’. Another approach to intensifying stratigraphic studies can be illustrated with reference to Harry Johnston’s early work. In the second volume of his classic A Comparative Study of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu Languages (1922: 14-214), Johnston listed unusual word stems (variously described as “noteworthy”, “peculiar” etc.) which could not be reconstructed to a higher node (e.g. were only found in one or two neighbouring languages) or had odd and inexplicable distributions (e.g. only appeared in widely separated languages). Despite being based on outdated sources, the results of this exercise remain highly suggestive, and it is still possible to find words and distributions in his lists that cannot be readily explained, as well identify languages with substantial sets of these.40

37 For details on Dahalo see Nurse 1986; Ehret et al. 1989; and Tosco 1991. 38 These are not the unaccompanied click sounds that are commonly used in languages as interjections and other expressive vocalisations, but word-initial nasalised dental clicks. One of the recorded ideophones is monosyllabic, the other trisyllabic (Walsh n.d.). 39 Cf. Samarin on ideophones (1971: 135, 146-149, 161-162). 40 See, for example, Johnston’s own comments on Nyakyusa-Ngonde: “In considering [Nyakyusa-Ngonde], we are in the presence of one of the most peculiar and interesting of the Bantu languages, one which contains a considerable number of unrelated word-roots or roots which have far-away connexions: a speech, in fact, which has evidently long been isolated in its present head-quarters, the mountain region immediately north of the north end of Lake Nyasa” (1922: 61). More recently, Nurse (1988a: 72-73) has also commented on the presence of unique words for common items in Nyakyusa(-Ngonde) and its closest relative, Ndali.

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Johnston’s lists suggest the possibility of developing etymological dictionaries which identify, as far as possible, the sources of lexemes and provide increasingly sophisticated information on the stratigraphy of the languages they have been created for. This could not be done all at once for a single language. A good etymological dictionary would depend on the existence of fairly comprehensive reconstructions of proto-forms and the possession of reasonably good dictionaries of source and potential source languages. Although we are yet to reach this stage in Eastern African linguistics, I think it is a goal well worth working towards. The intensive study of lexical domains My third recommendation is that we should forage more intensively for words and cultivate the analysis of particular lexical fields and/or potentially fertile portions of them. This might have been considered under either of my previous headings, but I think that there is such potential in this area that it is worth highlighting. Of special interest here are the collection and study of lexical data relating to the natural environment and different aspects of its management and use, whether by gatherers and hunters or herders and cultivators or others. Despite the importance of farming to livelihoods in Eastern Africa; the study of local agricultural and livestock-keeping practices is not well developed in many areas. Our knowledge, for example, of the crops and varieties grown in particular locations, or of indigenous knowledge of livestock diseases and their treatments, is often limited. As a result historical linguistic research on these and related subjects is usually confined to generalities (referring, for example, only to commonly grown crops and/or principal species of livestock).41 This is the background to Nurse and Rottland’s recommendation (1993: 3, fn.5) that regional terminologies relating to irrigation practices be collected and analysed as part of ongoing attempts to identify the former inhabitants of Engaruka. Other examples of subsistence practices that deserve closer linguistic study are honey-gathering and bee-keeping,42 and various aspects of the exploitation of littoral and marine environments, including fishing.43 Examples like these, relating to different problems in our understanding of Eastern African history, could be multiplied over and over. While some work in some lexical fields in some languages has already been undertaken, this has evidently only just touched the surface of what is possible. This is especially obvious when basic ethnobiological data are considered. Names for plants and animals form a large part of the lexical inventories of 41 Cf. the work of Ehret, Schoenbrun, and others already referred to above. Reference might also be made to the relevant contributions in the special issue of Azania (Volume XXIX-XXX) on The Growth of Farming Communities in Africa from the Equator Southwards, especially papers by Blench (1994/95), and Phillipson and Bahuchet (1994/95). 42 There is already a specialised literature on honey-gathering and bee-keeping, including basic lexical information for particular Eastern African languages. See, for example, Thorp (1943); Mwaniki (1970); Brokensha and Riley (1971); Brokensha et al. (1972); Townsend (1972); Brenzinger (1987); Geider (1989); and Kihwele et al. (1999; 2001). 43 In the first section of this paper I have already referred to one of the historical problems (how did the Swahili adapt to the exploitation of marine resources?) that further work on this subject might address. A useful starting-point in tackling this problem is Horton and Mudida’s (1993) work, plus available technical and other vocabularies (e.g. Prins 1970), including those relating to fish and fishing (e.g. the fish names and identifications recorded in Richmond ed., 1997).

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most languages, including those of Eastern Africa. These are aspects of the lexicon which may vary considerably from one location (and dialect or local idiom) to another, and can encode significant information about the history of population movements and resource exploitation. Yet there have been relatively few systematic studies of floral and faunal vocabularies, and most published dictionaries of Eastern African languages incorporate little more than a fraction of the data that they might. The most important recent work in this field has perhaps been that by Bernd Heine and his colleagues on the ethnobotanical knowledge of a series of non-Bantu languages in Kenya and Uganda, plus Swahili in Tanzania.44 However, most of the data generated by these studies remains to be integrated with related collections, and has yet to be used in historical linguistic analysis.45 One difficulty in gathering such data is that while it is quite easy to elicit names and general descriptions of ‘folk’ genera and species,46 it is much harder to provide botanical and zoological identifications for them without specialist help.47

On the positive side, for some languages large amounts of information are already available in the specialist and often ‘grey’ literature produced by botanists and zoologists. Some parts of Eastern Africa (e.g. biodiversity ‘hotspots’ like the Eastern Arc Mountains) are particularly favoured in this regard, and significant collections of (especially) ethnobotanical data have and are being made – though these are sometimes only accessible in herbarium databases.48 In such cases the first task for linguists is to compile existing information and to check on and improve the transcription of names where possible. Finally, and under the same heading (intensive study of lexical domains), we should add the study of place-names.49 In the preface to his history of Southern Nilotic (1971: xii),

44 See Heine and Brenzinger 1988; Heine and Heine 1988a; 1988b; Heine et al. 1988; Heine and König 1988; and Heine and Legère 1995. 45 This also applies to the various collections of lexical material which might be used to reconstruct a more extensive list of proto-Sabaki terms for flora and fauna (more extensive than that already provided by Nurse and Hinnebusch 1993: 577-672). In addition to Heine and Legère (1995), sources for Swahili ethnobotany alone include Greenway (1940); Williams (1949); Koenders (1992); and Schroebler and Berchem (1992); as well as a large number of government and project reports produced in Zanzibar over the past decade. 46 See Berlin (1992) for an overview of the ‘principles’ of ethnobiological classification and their relation to scientific taxonomy. 47 Field guides are one source of aid to linguists and other researchers seeking to identify the scientific equivalents of vernacular names, and it should be noted that an increasing number of high quality guides are now being published (in the past decade these have included Beentje 1994; Härkönen et al. 1995; Kingdon 1997; Richmond ed., 1997; Spawls et al. 2002; Stevenson and Fanshawe 2002; and Zimmerman et al. 1996). 48 See, for example, Walsh and Moyer (n.d.), based on the compilation of a wide range of published and unpublished sources which list Hehe plant names and their identifications. Hehe-speaking communities are spread over a wide area which includes part of the Udzungwa Mountains (at the southern end of the Eastern Arc) and part of the Eastern Rift bordering Ruaha National Park, locations which have attracted a lot of botanical and related research. 49 These may also incorporate environmental information, transparent or opaque to contemporary residents. An example of the latter is the name of the Udzungwa Mountains, Wusungwa in the local dialect of Hehe (Kisungwa, spoken by the Vasungwa). The likely derivation of this name is from a reconstructed proto-Southern Highlands (= Njombe) root *-jungwa, meaning ‘elephant’ (reflexes of which no longer occur in Hehe with this meaning, but have been replaced by the loanwords ndembwe and ndembo). The original

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Ehret referred to the need to correlate historical linguistic evidence with both archaeology and place-name study. However, although archaeological correlations have been drawn all along,50 the study of toponyms remains lamentably undeveloped.51 This kind of research is difficult to undertake in the absence of good dictionary materials, and the general lack of studies over the past 30 years is understandable from this point of view. The potential, however, remains, and place-name research should also be placed on the lexical studies agenda. This might also include research on ethnonyms, noting that these often incorporate toponyms. Detailed investigation and interdisciplinary case studies My final suggestion is that more local and regional case studies should be undertaken, and that these should be as carefully investigated as possible, with close attention to detail. This recalls Nurse’s comments on Ehret’s work, as well as his own practice in producing a series of case studies of particular language contact situations. Ideally such studies should employ, as appropriate, the different linguistic research strategies outlined above, and, as far as possible, they should be interdisciplinary, at the very least combining evidence from different available sources. This, indeed, has been Nurse’s practice over the years, though often he has had to rely most heavily on comparisons with oral traditions and written history. There are many possible contexts for undertaking detailed case studies in Eastern Africa. A prime candidate is the history of the Sonjo (properly called the Temi) and the possible role of their ancestors in the development of irrigated agriculture at Engaruka and other sites at the foot of the Rift escarpment and southwards to Lake Eyasi.52 Sonjo has already been the subject of preliminary description and stratigraphic study by Derek Nurse and Franz Rottland (1991/92; 1993). They suggest that the Sonjo, speakers of a Thagicu language, may well have been the original inhabitants of Engaruka and other abandoned irrigation sites. Their provisional conclusion, based in part on historical linguistic considerations and sketchy evidence from oral traditions and songs, contradicts Sutton’s long-held view that “the people of the Engaruka complex, including early Sonjo, probably spoke a language of the Southern Cushitic group” (Sutton 1993: 56).53 Although Sutton has characterised this question as “for the time being intractable” (1998: 33), it should be possible to address effectively in the long run, in part through the collection of more detailed linguistic and ethnographic material on the Sonjo and other peoples in the region.54

meaning of Udzungwa might therefore have been something like ‘place of elephants’, animals which now have a quite restricted distribution in the high forests and valleys of the area. 50 See, for example, Sutton’s detailed review (1972) of Ehret’s Southern Nilotic History (1971). 51 For a good early example see Cory and Masalu’s (1950) study of place-names in the southern hinterland of Lake Victoria. 52 This case is mentioned here because of the Second Platina Workshop’s focus on Engaruka and its environs and related problems. 53 Southern Cushites are Sutton’s ‘strong candidates’: he has also left often the possibility that the inhabitants of old Engaruka may have been Southern Nilotes or others (see Sutton 1978: 67-68; 1986: 45-48; 1990: 54-55; 1998: 33-34).

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The Sonjo (= Temi) case also raises another interesting question. The presence of these Bantu speakers in the middle of Sutton’s ‘non-Bantu bulge’, surrounded by relatively dry savanna country, and far from their nearest linguistic relatives and presumed homeland, calls for an explanation (cf. Nurse and Rottland 1991/92: 227). Given the apparent time-depth of Sonjo’s separation from other Thagicu (Central Kenya) languages (Nurse and Rottland 1991/92: 228-229; 1993: 2), this explanation need have nothing to do with the later development of irrigation systems – whether or not we follow Nurse and Rottland in tentatively ascribing this development to the Sonjo. Their settlement at the foot of the Rift escarpment, whenever this first occurred, would have made eminent sense in terms of access to water for both domestic and agricultural uses. However, the Sonjo may well have first moved into this general area for entirely different reasons, for example related to trade. Only more detailed interdisciplinary research may settle this question, including further work on the linguistic history of Sonjo and its past and present neighbours. Conclusion Many more examples of subjects for detailed local and regional study could be suggested, and I have referred and alluded to some of these in the text and footnotes above. The production of detailed case studies of this kind, interdisciplinary in scope and targeting specific historical problems, is only one of the ways in which historical linguistics in Eastern Africa should move forward. It promises, however, some of the most exciting results, and might be regarded as the ultimate application of all of the approaches which I have discussed in this paper. Although significant progress has been made in historical linguistic research in Eastern Africa since the 1960s, it should be clear that that this has only been a beginning, and that the prospects for the future are even brighter. This, at least, is my personal view; and it is my modest hope that this review and its recommendations will contribute, if only in a small way, to the work of bringing this future nearer. Acknowledgements This a corrected version of the paper that was circulated to participants and others in the immediate aftermath of the Second Platina Workshop. I would like to thank Ray Abrahams, Roger Blench, Felix Chami, Chris Ehret, Cymone Fourshey, Bernd Heine, Paul Lane, Karsten Legère, Jouni Maho, David Moyer, Louise Nagler, Derek Nurse, Gérard Philippson, Bonny Sands, Tom Spear, John Sutton, and Imani Swilla for kindly providing me with information and materials, and in some cases unpublished work, which helped me in writing this paper. I am especially grateful to Chris Ehret for his assistance and encouragement. Neither he nor any of the other colleagues mentioned should be blamed for my mistakes and omissions. References Beentje, Henk J. (1994) Kenya Trees, Shrubs and Lianas. Nairobi: National Museums of Kenya. Bender, M. Lionel (ed.) (1997) The Nilo-Saharan Languages: A Comparative Essay. Munich:

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