Paper long abstract:

The past, or the perception of the past, plays a pivotal role in the formation of modern policies on land-use, since the rhetoric of conservation favours the preservation of ‘ancient’ or ‘pristine’ landscapes, whilst the focus on economic or environmental sustainability has led to the endorsement of apparently long-lived ‘indigenous’ practices or, at least, to the condemnation of modes of exploitation that are seen as causes of resource degradation. With relatively high population densities supported by what seem to be enduring techniques of cultivation, the irrigation and terracing using communities of eastern Africa have thus been the focus of conservationist and developmental narratives in which they are viewed as potential paradigms of non-bureaucratic, low external input, sustainable resource-use; a position that is apparently strengthened by their employment of soil and water conservation techniques, methods of low-tillage farming, and by the presence of high levels of bio-diversity in uncultivated areas. However, recent historical work has questioned the assumption that extant forested areas represent carefully conserved remnants of ‘precolonial’ woodlands, whilst the conjectured antiquity of intensive farming techniques in these areas remains poorly understood historically and has yet to be tested archaeologically. Focussing on examples from northern Tanzania and drawing on current work at North Pare, this paper aims to highlight the historical assumptions within these narratives and will outline how a combination of archaeological, historical and palaeo-environmental research might be employed to produce a more complete understanding of the development of these agronomies.