Africa: Central - Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic,  Democratic Republic of the Congo /

                               Zaire,  Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia.

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Africa: East -      Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Somalia & Tanzania.

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Africa: North -  Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Western Sahara

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Africa: Saharan - Mauritana, Mali, Niger, Chad, Sudan.

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Africa: Southern - Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe.

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Africa: Western -  Benin, Burkina, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire / Ivory Coast, Faso,

                                  Cape Verde,  Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia,

                                  Nigeria, Saint Helena, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sao Tome and Principe

                                  and Togo. 

932.06 MERTZ 2009

An erudite and witty glimpse of the human side of ancient Egypt, this classic work is revised and updated for a new generation. Displaying the descriptive power, eye for detail, keen insight, and wit that have made her novels bestsellers, renowned Egyptologist Mertz transports us back thousands of years and immerses us in the sights, aromas, and sounds of day-to-day living in the legendary desert realm that was ancient Egypt. What did average Egyptians eat, drink, wear, gossip about, and aspire to? What were their amusements, their beliefs, their attitudes? Mertz ushers us into their homes, workplaces, temples, and palaces to show us the everyday worlds of the royal and commoner alike. We observe priests and painters, scribes and pyramid builders, slaves, housewives, and queens--and receive tips on how to perform tasks essential to ancient Egyptian living, from mummification to making papyrus.

Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic,  Democratic Republic of the Congo / Zaire,  Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia.

301.296761 THOMAS 1972

The Dodoth, a tall, handsome people of the northern tip of Uganda, are a tribe in transition. They are proud, often cruel, warrior herdsmen whose oldest members live just as they did hundreds of years ago, but whose younger members sometimes learn to read and write and have brushed against the modern world. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas accompanied three anthropological expeditions to Africa and lived among the Dodoth. She displays a remarkable ability to communicate with the tribespeople and describe their lives and customs. 

301.2968 KATZ 1982

The ǃKung, also spelled ǃXun, are a San people living in the Kalahari Desert in Namibia, Botswana and in Angola.  This account of the ancient healing dances practiced by the Kung people of southern Africa's Kalahari Desert includes vivid eyewitness descriptions of night-long healing dances and interviews with Kung healers. 1. Starting Points. 2. Kung Hunter-Gatherers. 3. The Kung Approach to Healing. 4. At a Healing Dance. 5. Kinachau, a Traditional Healer. 6. "The Death that Kills Us All". 7. Education for Healing. 8. Career of the Healer. 9. Female Perspectives. 10. Toma Zho, a Healer in Transition. 11. The Tradition of Sharing. 12. Kau Dwa, a Strong Healer. 13. Wa Na, a Healer among Healers. 14. Psychological and Spiritual Growth. 15. The Challenge of Change. 16. A Final Meeting with Kinachau. 17. "Tell Our Story to Your People". 

301.296761 MIDDLET 1965

Written by one of the most distinguished ethnographers of African cultures, this edition updates 30 years of research and writing. Middleton's sensitive account dramatizes how this complex sociopolitical society, once reliant on feud or warfare to control competition, became refugees of harassment and victims of famine.. 1. The People and Their Country. 2. The Form of Lugbara Society. 3. Family, Clan, and Lineage. 4. The Wider Community. 5. Marriage and Maternal Kinship. 6. Spirit and the Ancestors. 7. The Cult of the Dead. 8. Conclusion: The Changing Society. 

301.295 DUFFY 1996

This intimate study portrays the hunter-gatherer Mbuti pygmies of Zaire. Kevin Duffy describes how these forest nomads, who are as adapted to the forest as its wildlife, gratefully acknowledge their beloved home as the source of everything they need: food, clothing, shelter, and affection. Looking on the forest in deified terms, they sing and pray to it and call themselves its children. With his patience and knowledge of their ways, Duffy was accepted by these, the world's smallest people, and invited to participate in the cycle of their lives from birth to death. This book is an excellent companion piece to Duffy's 50-minute film, Pygmies of the Rainforest, which was shown on PBS's science series, NOVA, as "BaMiki BaNdula".

301.296724 TURNBUL 1961

Colin Turnbull, a British cultural anthropologist, details the incredible Mbuti pygmy people and their love of the forest, and each other. Turnbull lived among the Mbuti people for three years as an observer, not a researcher, so he offers a charming and intimate firsthand account of the people and their culture, and especially the individuals and their personalities. The Forest People is a timeless work of academic and humanitarian significance, sure to delight readers as they take a trip into a foreign culture and learn to appreciate the joys of life through the eyes of the Mbuti people.

301.2967 TURNBUL 1965

Part I. Introduction. 1. Objectives. 2. Orientation. Part II. The Village World. 3. The Mbuti/Villager Relationship. 4. The Notion of Hereditary Ownership. 5. The Notion of Supernatural Control. 6. Village Religion. 7. Flux and Instability. Part III. The Forest World. 8. The Band. 9. The Life Cycle. 10. The Economy. 11. Covernment: Internal. 12. Government: External. 13. Magic, Witchcraft and Sorcery. 14. Religion. 15. Principles of Organization (1). 16. Principles of Organization  

301.296761 GOLDSCH 1976

1. History: The Broader Context of Sebei Culture. 2. The Environmental Context. 3. The Sebei Polity. 4. Clan, Kin, and Age-Set. 5. The Role of Livestock Among the Sebei. 6. The Role of Agriculture. 7. Compensation, Craftsmanship, and the Cash Economy. 8. Women and Men. 9. Infancy and Childhood. 10. The Ritual Transformation from Child to Adult. 11. Sebei Metaphysics. 12. Continuities and Adaptations. 

Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Somalia & Tanzania.

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301.2963 GETACHE 2001

Ch. 1. Introduction -- Ch. 2. Introduction to the History and Economy of the Afar -- Ch. 3. Social Organisation: Afar Definition of Descent and Kinship -- Ch. 4. Change and Continuity: The Introduction of Irrigation Agriculture and its Implications for the Pastoral Afar -- Ch. 5. Change and Continuity: The Development of Urban Centres in the Middle Awash -- Ch. 6. Socio-Economic Change and Inequality among Pastoral Households -- Ch. 7. Conclusion. 

301.296762 KENYATT 1965

Facing Mount Kenya, first published in 1938, is a monograph on the life and customs of the Gikuyu people of central Kenya prior to their contact with Europeans. It is unique in anthropological literature for it gives an account of the social institutions and religious rites of an African people, permeated by the emotions that give to customs and observances their meaning. It is characterized by both insight and a tinge of romanticism. The author, proud of his African blood and ways of thought, takes the reader through a thorough and clear picture of Gikuyu life and customs, painting an almost utopian picture of their social norms and the sophisticated codes by which all aspects of the society were governed. This book is one of a kind, capturing and documenting traditions fast disappearing. It is therefore a must-read for all who want to learn about African culture. (WVC's copy is older than the one shown here; dark green, hardback)

301.29678 MALKKI 1995

In this study of Hutu refugees from Burundi, driven into exile in Tanzania after their 1972 insurrection against the dominant Tutsi was brutally quashed, Liisa Malkki shows how experiences of dispossession and violence are remembered and turned into narratives, and how this process helps to construct identities such as "Hutu" and "Tutsi." 1. Historical Contexts, Social Locations: A Road Map -- 2. The Mythico-History -- 3. The Uses of History in the Refugee Camp: Living the Present in Historical Terms -- 4. Town Refugees: A Pragmatics of Identity -- 5. The Danger of Assimilation and the Purity of Exile -- 6. Consciousness and Liminality in the Cosmological Order of Nations -- Postscript: Return to Genocide. 

301.29678 BEIDELM 1971

The author describes the Kaguru of east central Tanzania, East Africa, as a totality, but the description itself is highly particularistic. As the author points out, the observation and analysis of the particular within the framework of the whole is the special strength of anthropology. Within this basic orientation land, livelihood, cosmology, clans, marriage, neighborhoods, life cycle and the impact of the Christian mission are described and interpreted. A complex totality emerges as the details unfold.

301.296761 TURNBUL 1972

The Ik are a small group of hunters, isolated in the mountains sparating Uganda, the Sudan and Kenya, who have been driven from their natural hunting grounds into these barren wastes by the creation of a National Game Reserve - forbidden to chase the animals that once fed them, asked, though bereft of the experience, the technology and the social organization that would make farming possible, to become farmeers in a land without rain. In less than three generations, they have deteriorated from a group of prosperous and daring hunters to scattered bands of hostile people whose only goal is individual survival, and who have learned that the price of survival is to give up compassion, love, affection, kindness and concern - even for their own children. 

301.29669 COHEN 1967

Author Richard Cohen shos how the various sectors of Kanuri social life build upon and interrelate to the basic unit of Kanuri society, the household organizations. It is the basis of all organization of famiy, groups, villages, districts and government. 

301.29678 RIGBY 1992

Focusing on the Ilparakuyo Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania, this book discusses why third world development policies with regard to pastoral societies are inappropriate and likely to fail. It looks at the culture and explores the prospects for a distinct section of pastoral Maasai, the Ilparakuyo.

301.29678 HODGSON 2001

Once Intrepid Warriors explores the ways identity, development, and gender have interacted to shape the Maasai into who and what they are today. By situating the Maasai in the political, economic, and social context of Tanzania and the world events, Hodgson shows how outside forces, and view of development in particular, have includenced Maasai lifeways, expecially gender relationships. 

301.29684 BERGLUN 1989

This ethnographic classic describes and analyzes the ritual cycle celebrated by Zulu kinship groups as understood and interpreted by the Zulu themselves.  Divinities. III. The Shades. Introduction. Death. Man. Shade Names. Shade Manifestations. The Shades and Kinship.  The Shades Brood over Men. V. Diviners--Servants of the Shades. Accepting the Call. Training. Coming Out. A Diviner's Equipment--Symbolic Associations. Classification and Numbers of Diviners. Communiion with the Shades. Introduction. Ihubo, the Clan Song. Cattle. Ritual Beer-Drinking. Ritual Killing. Notes. VII. Anger and Fertility as Expressions of Power. Introduction. The Channels and Character of Power. Legitimate Use of Anger. Illegitimate Use of Anger. Medicines. Medicines and Manipulators. Medicine and Morality. Medical Treatment and Symbolism.  Inversions and Funerary Reversals. Inversions and the Underworld. Shades, Diviners and Inversions. Reversals and Rites of Passage.

Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Western Sahara

961.0049 BRETT 1997

 The Berbers is the first attempt by English scholars to provide a comprehensive overview of the history of the Berber-speaking peoples. From the first appearance of humans in the Maghreb, through the rise of the formidable Berber kingdoms of Numidia and Mauretania, the book traces the origins of the distinct characteristics of these disparate peoples, regarded as the indigenous inhabitants of North Africa. In examining, too, the responses to external overlords, whether Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks, or, most recently, European imperial powers, the authors indicate the importance for the various Berber communities of such factors as language, tradition, social organization and geographical location. The book also covers the role of religion and trade as forces of social change in North Africa.

391.2965 KEENAN 1977

1. The Early History of the Tuareg and Origins of the Class Division. 2. The Division of the Kel Ahaggar into Three Drum Groups. 3. Noble-Vassal Relations. 4. The Distribution and Changing Balance of Power. 5. Internal Wars and Conquest by France. 6. Nomadism and Sedentarism. 7. Descent, Class and Marital Strategies. 8. The Symbolic Meaning of the Veil. 9. The Colonial Presence. 10. Resistance to Change and the Preservation of the Status Quo. 11. The Development of the Sahara: Wage Labour and the Seeds of Discontent. 12. Algerian Independence. 13. Drought and Economic Depression in Ahaggar. 14. The Preconditions for Socialsim: Agricultural Co-operatives and the "Ruination" of the Nomadic Economy. 15. The "Agerianization" of the Kel Ahaggar. 16. Differential Responses of the Kel Ahaggar to Modernization. 17. Problems of Integration. 

Mauritana, Mali, Niger, Chad, Sudan.

301.29624 DENG 1972

 Case study written by Mading Deng, born 1938 at Moong, near Abyei, the administrative center of Ngok Dinka of which his father was Paramount Chief. It begins with the life goals of the Dinka, then lays out the major points in the life cycle of individuals in Dinka society, pursuing the meaning of events in these periods out into the whole of the cultural system. From this strategy we acquire a rich and well-balanced view of Dinka life, but at the same time find personal experience with it. The reader learns of the structure of society, sex roles, courtship, kinship, age-sets, and rivalries, the family, property, mores, law, religion, philosophy, poetry and dance. -- 

301.296761 TURNBUL 1972

The Ik are a small group of hunters, isolated in the mountains sparating Uganda, the Sudan and Kenya, who have been driven from their natural hunting grounds into these barren wastes by the creation of a National Game Reserve - forbidden to chase the animals that once fed them, asked, though bereft of the experience, the technology and the social organization that would make farming possible, to become farmeers in a land without rain. In less than three generations, they have deteriorated from a group of prosperous and daring hunters to scattered bands of hostile people whose only goal is individual survival, and who have learned that the price of survival is to give up compassion, love, affection, kindness and concern - even for their own children. 

Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe.

301.2968 KATZ 1982

The ǃKung, also spelled ǃXun, are a San people living in the Kalahari Desert in Namibia, Botswana and in Angola.  This account of the ancient healing dances practiced by the Kung people of southern Africa's Kalahari Desert includes vivid eyewitness descriptions of night-long healing dances and interviews with Kung healers. 1. Starting Points. 2. Kung Hunter-Gatherers. 3. The Kung Approach to Healing. 4. At a Healing Dance. 5. Kinachau, a Traditional Healer. 6. "The Death that Kills Us All". 7. Education for Healing. 8. Career of the Healer. 9. Female Perspectives. 10. Toma Zho, a Healer in Transition. 11. The Tradition of Sharing. 12. Kau Dwa, a Strong Healer. 13. Wa Na, a Healer among Healers. 14. Psychological and Spiritual Growth. 15. The Challenge of Change. 16. A Final Meeting with Kinachau. 17. "Tell Our Story to Your People". 

301.296891 WATSON 1958

Written in the late 1950s this ethnography follows African tribesmen from what was then Northern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as they put aside their farming tools to migrate to the coppermining towns in search of work and wages.  After a year or tow they return home to their farms again but the process of constant migration shows a profound effect on the Mambwe people who are the subject of this book.

301.2968 BUSHMEN 2000

1. An introduction to the hunting people. 2. The Stone Age archaeology of southern Africa. 3. The Later Stone Age archaeology of southern Africa. 4. Finding the Bushmen in what Europeans wrote. 5. The Bushman way of life- throught European eyes. 6. When cultures clash: Bushmen resist-and adapt. 7. Surviving against the odds. 8. An ethnography of modern Bushmen. 9. Hunter-gatherers in transition. 10. The present and future of post-foraging Bushmen. 

301.29688 LEE 1993

This classic, bestselling study of the !Kung San, foragers of the Dobe area of the Kalahari Desert describes a people's reactions to the forces of modernization, detailing relatively recent changes to !Kung rituals, beliefs, social structure, marriage and kinship system. It documents their determination to take hold of their own destiny, despite exploitation of their habitat and relentless development to assert their political rights and revitalize their communities. Use of the name Ju/'hoansi (meaning "real people") acknowledges their new sense of empowerment.

301.29688 THOMAS 1989

In the 1950s Elizabeth Marshall Thomas became one of the first Westerners to live with the Bushmen of the Kalahari desert in Botswana and South-West Africa. Her account of these nomadic hunter-gatherers, whose way of life had remained unchanged for thousands of years, is a ground-breaking work of anthropology, remarkable not only for its scholarship but for its novelistic grasp of character. On the basis of field trips in the 1980s, Thomas has now updated her book to show what happened to the Bushmen as the tide of industrial civilization -- with its flotsam of property rights, wage labor, and alcohol -- swept over them. The result is a powerful, elegiac look at an endangered culture as well as a provocative critique of our own.

301.2968 LEWIS 2004

At the intersection between western culture and Africa, we find the San people of the Kalahari desert. Once called Bushmen, the San have survived many characterizations-from pre-human animals by the early European colonials, to aboriginal conservationists in perfect harmony with nature by recent New Age adherents. Neither caricature does justice to the complex world view of the San. Eminent anthropologists David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce present instead a balanced view of the spiritual life of this much-studied people, examining the interplay of their cosmology, myth, ritual, and art. 

301.2968 VANDER 1985

Testament to the Bushmen is Jane Taylor's moving tribute to an ancient and gentle race in danger of extinction. Deeply influenced, as were many, by Sir Laurens Van der Post's famous documentary, she shows in stark detail how life has changed irrevocably for the Bushmen in their last refuge of the Kalahari desert. 

301.296761 GOLDSCH 1976

1. History: The Broader Context of Sebei Culture. 2. The Environmental Context. 3. The Sebei Polity. 4. Clan, Kin, and Age-Set. 5. The Role of Livestock Among the Sebei. 6. The Role of Agriculture. 7. Compensation, Craftsmanship, and the Cash Economy. 8. Women and Men. 9. Infancy and Childhood. 10. The Ritual Transformation from Child to Adult. 11. Sebei Metaphysics. 12. Continuities and Adaptations. 

Benin, Burkina, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire / Ivory Coast, Faso, Cape Verde,  Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Nigeria, Saint Helena, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sao Tome and Principe and Togo. 

                                                                                                                                            ebooks

301.29669 LEITH 1965

The Ibo are "the most numerous, the most adaptable, the most go-ahead, the most virile" people of Nigeria. Their women are "economically and politically at least the equal of the man..." Though the study was written in 1938 much about Ibo life remains the same, making it a classic work still valuable today.

301.29669 OTTENBE 1968

Double descent, as opposed to the prevailing unilineal descent systems of Africa has attracted considerable interest among anthropologists. In this study Ottenberg focuses his attention upon this unusual kinship form, which exists when both patrilineal and matrilineal lines play an important part in determining the activities of an individual.

301.29669 COHEN 1967

Author Richard Cohen shos how the various sectors of Kanuri social life build upon and interrelate to the basic unit of Kanuri society, the household organizations. It is the basis of all organization of famiy, groups, villages, districts and government. 

301.29669 NETTING 1968

What significant relationships can exist among the environment of a people, their means of getting a living, and certain features of their social and cultural organization. The book centers around Kofyar farming, a unique and highly productive system based on intensive cultivation of "homestead fields," clearly defined land areas adjoining  or encircling the residences of individual famers. Netting describes crops, farming tools and techniques customs and land use.

299.67 MURPHY 1993

Santería represents the first in-depth, scholarly account of a profound way of wisdom that is growing in importance in America today. A professional academic and himself a participant in the Santería community of the Bronx for several years, Joseph Murphy offers a powerful description and insightful analysis of this African/Cuban religion. He traces the survival of an ancient spiritual path from its West African Yoruba origins, through nearly two centuries of slavery in the New World, to its presence in the urban centers of the United States, where it continues to inspire seekers with its compelling vision. 

301.29669 BASCOM 1984

In this case study Professor Bascom presents a picture of the culture of one of the most interesting and important peoples of Africa. The Yoruba constitute one of the largest ethnic groups south of the Sahara. Their tradition of urban life makes them unique not only among African societies but among traditional nonliterate peoples the world over. The Yoruba were also for more than a century the dominant group among Nigeria's educated elite, providing school tachers, clerks, and other white collar workers both in Nigeria and in neighboring territories. In addition the Yoruba are of interest because of the contribution which the Yoruba slaves and their descendants have made to the culture of the Caribbean and South America (Brazil and Cuba). 

301.29669 DREWAL 1992

Yoruba peoples of southwestern Nigeria conceive of rituals as journeys - sometimes actual, sometimes virtual. Performed as a parade or a procession, a pilgrimage, a masking display, or possession trance, the journey evokes the reflexive, progressive, transformative experience of ritual participation. Yoruba Ritual is an original and provocative study of these practices.  Challenging traditional notions of ritual as rigid, stereotypic, and invariant, Drewal reveals ritual to be progressive, transformative, generative, and reflexive. Rich descriptions of rituals relating to birth, death, reincarnation, divination, and constructions of gender are rendered all the more vivid by a generous selection of field photos of actual performances. 

301.29669 PEMBERT 1996

Yoruba Sacred Kingship  explores the creation and transmission of political memory and authority, focusing on the tradition of kinship in the Igbomina Yoruba town of Ha Orangun in southwestern Nigeria - a "crowned town" that traces its lineage to the ancient city of He Ife.