Cereal Silo-pits, Agro-pastoral Practices and Social Organisation in 19th Century Algeria

Quantifiable, spatially-resolved, large-scale evidence about traditional food storage facilities is extremely rare, and yet highly insightful for researchers across subjects such as human ecology, anthropology, agronomy, archaeology and economic history. This paper takes advantage of some unusually detailed French colonial era records of cereal storage and agro-pastoral practice in 19th century central Algeria that inventory the underground food stores of different sedentary and nomadic tribes at a moment of colonial confrontation in which these stores were central to ecological and political resilience. We consider how different aspects of these food stores relate to environmental, social and economic variables across the study area. The overall results suggest important north-south trends in agro-pastoral lifestyle and storage practice.