18 agriculture: Africa nate for 10 or even 20 years Thus, by the second half of the first millennium c.e., at the close of the Early Iron Age, the small population movements characteristic of shifting agriculture, experimentation with new crops, and the adoption of these technologies by indigenous peoples had resulted in the gradual spread of agriculture across eastern and southern Africa In the last centuries of the first millennium c.e farming societies in eastern and southern Africa experienced a series of economic, social, and cultural transformations that characterize the transition to the Late Iron Age Transformations associated with the Late Iron Age usually were local developments and elaborations on existing knowledge rather than the result of the spread of peoples, languages, and knowledge, as was the case in the Early Iron Age The Late Iron Age in eastern and southern Africa was characterized by the development of new Bantu languages and the creation of new pottery styles and local variants on regional styles However, the most important agricultural transformation was the extension of farming economies into drier environments with the widespread adoption of cattle keeping and new cultural ideas about the economic and social value of cattle As a form of wealth that could reproduce itself, cattle provided various opportunities to control other social processes, such as the attraction of dependents through the distribution of cattle or the transition into adulthood through the convention of marriage The institution of bride-wealth, whereby the groom’s family compensated the bride’s lineage for her reproductive powers with cattle and other gifts, probably dates in some areas to the Late Iron Age Bride-wealth became an important means by which adult men in the lineage controlled the timing and partners of their sons’, nephews’, and grandsons’ marriages Older men who had accumulated great herds could demonstrate and augment their wealth and status by using cattle from the herds to marry second and third wives and beget more children rather than using the cattle to fund the marriages of their younger male relatives Children of a man who had multiple wives provided additional sources of agricultural labor to increase household productivity; when they eventually married, daughters brought in more cattle in the form of bride-wealth Archaeological and linguistic evidence for the emergence of cattle keeping provides numerous examples of how this agricultural transformation affected other aspects of life in eastern and southern Africa A particularly stunning example of the productive powers of cattle and associated social and political developments began on the hard velds of Botswana east of the Kalahari Desert around 900 c.e Farmers living on the grassy plains had begun to experiment with cattle several centuries earlier, but the turn of the first millennium marked the establishment of a new demographic and social pattern in which densely settled towns with large cattle kraals were surrounded by midsized cattle-herding villages and smaller outposts inhabited by stone-tool-using hunter-gatherer communities with very limited access to cattle The largest of these capitals gave its name to this emergent culture, Toutswe In the Toutswe state elites in the towns controlled large herds and could demand valuable bulls in the prime of their reproductive years for consumption from the smaller herding villages The Toutswe culture illustrates how savvy leaders forged a new, stratified social system based on control of cattle and the appreciation of agricultural activities over those of indigenous, stone-tool-using hunter-gatherers Command of cattle was not a foolproof path to power, however By about 1300 c.e overgrazing, a series of dry years, and the increasing demand for gold in Indian Ocean trade all contributed to the fall of the Toutswe state and the emergence of Zimbabwean states to the east Even as Indian Ocean trade allowed leaders of the Zimbabwean states to develop new configurations of power based on control of trade in gold to the coast and beads, cloth, and other prestige items from the coast, cattle herding remained an integral aspect of the elite economy and cattle consumption an important demonstration of status In the Great Lakes region of eastern Africa similar processes characterized the Late Iron Age Farmers focused on cattle keeping and established settlements in drier, savanna environments Specialized modes of farming in the different environmental zones of the Great Lakes region—intensive banana farming near the lakeshore and river valleys, grain farming in the savannas, and cattle keeping in the driest areas—promoted both internal trade and, eventually, the development of kingdoms In addition to specialized agricultural surpluses, control of the production of salt and iron and ritual powers ensuring the health of communities, their fields, and their animals, were other important building blocks of authority On the East African coast the emerging Swahili culture participated extensively in Indian Ocean trade, eventually developing complex plantation systems in the last centuries of the second millennium c.e to supply demands for sisal (a fibrous plant used in rope making), cloves, and other cash crops Even earlier agriculture was an important part of the coastal economy, not only for producing food for the inhabitants of coastal cities but also as a means of demonstrating status Asian rice, Oryza sativa, had become an important prestige food as early as 1000 c.e in cosmopolitan coastal Swahili communities