Susan Keech McIntosh

From stone to metal: New perspectives on the later prehistory of West Africa

Earlier views saw West Africa as culturally stagnant through much of the Holocene until stimulus or intervention from north of the Sahara transformed Iron Age societies. Evidence accumulating over the past 15 years suggests that stone-using societies from 10,000 to 3000 B.P. were far more diverse than previously thought. Against an increasingly detailed record of Holocene climate change, the complexity of local adaptation and change is becoming better understood. Although a strong case currently exists for the introduction of copper and iron to West Africa from the north in the mid-first millennium B.C., the subsequent development of metallurgy was strongly innovative in different parts of the subcontinent. Soon after the advent of metals, a dramatic increase in archaeological evidence for social stratification and hierarchical political structures indicates the emergence of societies markedly more complex than anything currently documented in the Late Stone Age. The best-documented examples come from the Middle Niger region and the Nigerian forest. In these areas, earlier diffusionist models in which complexity originated outside West Africa have yielded to evidence that indigenous processes were instrumental in this transformation. Trade, ideology, climate shifts, and indirect influences from North Africa, including the introduction of the domesticated horse to the Sahelian grasslands, are identified as factors essential to an understanding of these processes.

Recent Archaeological Research and Dates From West Africa

TH is article continues the Yournals series on new research and dates from West Africa.1 In the four years since the last survey appeared, a large number of new dates have become available. Thanks to the continuing trend towards series of dates from either single sites or groups of related sites, some major blanks on the archaeological map of West Africa have been replaced by well-dated regional sequences. Other research reported here reconsiders several well-known sequences established in the I96os and 70s. In organizing the text, we have followed de Marets recent example2 of using three very broad chronological headings, with geographical subheadings. This reflects a deliberate effort to avoid couching the discussion in terms of successive industries, such as Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic (both subsumed under Late Stone Age) or arbitrarily defined segments (Early, Middle, Late) of the Iron Age. Broader headings are much more accommodating of West Africas complex and variable archaeological record.3 We have limited discussion to previously unpublished dates of primarily archaeological application. These are listed in the Appendix along with their lab numbers. New dates for palaeoenvironmental research are mentioned when relevant, but the interested reader should refer to the sources cited in the footnotes for details. Our discussion of these new dates is conducted on a timescale of radiocarbon years4 (indicated by the convention of ad and bc), not calendar years, for which A.D. and B.C. are reserved. In the interest of simplicity, this has become standard procedure in these articles, permitting authors to sidestep the sticky issue of calibration. It has been known since I958 that radiocarbon years do not correlate in a straightforward way with calendar years because of past fluctuations in atmospheric 14C. Scientists have spent years measuring the radiocarbon activity of bristlecone pine samples of known age (calculated dendrochronologically) in an effort to chart accurately the relationship between these two timescales. Unfortunately, the different laboratories engaged in this research obtained different results, even when they were measuring the same tree ring samples. Some calibration curves were relatively smooth, others wiggly, but because of the large measurement errors (up to + I20 years) produced by all the labs, it was impossible to tell which curve,

Changing perceptions of West Africa's past: Archaeological research since 1988

Archaeological research since 1988 in West Africa has focused almost exclusively on the period since 10,000 B.P. Significant advances have been made in our understanding of the Late Stone Age in the Sahara and Savanna zones, the advent of metallurgy and subsequent changes in metal technology, and the comparative trajectories of complex societies in different regions. Increasingly, data are being recovered that fail to conform to earlier Eurocentric assumptions emphasizing linear, progressive change through a series of evolutionary “ages and stages.” The search for new, more appropriate models for interpreting West Africas past has infused the discipline with great theoretical vitality. Both ethnoarchaeological studies and traditional archaeological research programs in West Africa are contributing substantially to the articulation of new theoretical frameworks for African archaeology and potentially for the discipline as a whole.

The Inland Niger Delta before the Empire of Mali: Evidence from Jenne-Jeno *

The dates and circumstances of early references to Jenne have led historians to conclude that the city originated relatively late in time. It is widely believed that the city developed simultaneously with Timbuktu in the mid-thirteenth century as an artifact of trans-Saharan trade. Persistent oral traditions of the foundation of Jenne in the eighth century are generally discounted. Recent archaeological excavations at the ancestral site of Jenne-jeno have established that iron-using and manufacturing peoples were occupying the site in the third century B.C. The settlement proceeded to grow rapidly during the first millennium a.d. , reaching its apogee between a.d. 750 and 1100, at which time the settlement exceeded 33 hectares (82 acres) in size. The archaeological data are supported by the results of site survey within a 1,100-square-kilometre region of Jennes traditional hinterland. During the late first millennium a.d. , several nearby settlements comparable in size to Jenne-jeno existed, and the density of rural settlements may have been as great as ten times the density of villages in the hinterland today. Evidence from excavation and survey indicates that Jenne participated in inter-regional exchange relations far earlier than previously admitted. The stone and iron in the initial levels at Jenne-jeno were imported from outside the Inland Delta; levels dated to c. a.d. 400 yield copper, presumably from distant Saharan sources. The importance of the abundant staple products of Jennes rural hinterland, including rice, fish and fish oil, is examined in a reassessment of the extent of inter-regional commerce and the emergence of urbanism during the first millennium a.d. Jenne-jeno may have been a principal participant in the founding of commercial centres on the Saharan contact zone of the Bend of the Niger, rather than a product of the luxury trade serviced by those centres.

From Siècles Obscurs to revolutionary centuries on the Middle Niger

Abstract In a period of little over a decade, excavations have transformed our characterization of Middle Niger prehistory from hidden and humble to one of the worlds most original theatres of change. After situating the Middle Niger evidence for geomorphology, domestication, organization of society and production, and belief systems against a backdrop of current concerns in West African prehistory, we suggest future research directions of particular potential. The Middle Niger lends a new perspective on current thinking about the prehistorians enterprise, most notably about the symbolic component of the world as socially constructed, cross‐cultural studies, and the integrity of our traditional analytical categories.

EXCAVATIONS AT WALALDÉ: NEW LIGHT ON THE SETTLEMENT OF THE MIDDLE SENEGAL VALLEY BY IRON-USING PEOPLES

Excavation of the five hectare site of Walalde revealed an occupation by iron-using agropastoralists that began [800–550] cal BC, and continued until [400–200] cal BC. The earliest occupation phase appears to document a period of transitional iron use, with some worked stone in evidence. Smelting and forging slags and tuyeres are present in considerable quantities in the later phase. Copper with the distinctive chemical signature of the Akjoujt mines in Mauritania was also present after 550 cal BC, attesting to trade and interaction over long distances. Other important aspects of the Walalde sequence include ceramic materials and a series of red ochre burials. Possible cultural affinities with shell midden sites in the Senegal Delta, surface material from the Lac Rkiz region, and pastoralist sites of the ‘Boudhida Culture’ around Nouakchott are discussed. The article concludes with a consideration of Walalde’s significance to the debate over the origins of iron metallurgy in West Africa.

Ile-Ife and Igbo Olokun in the history of glass in West Africa

Abstract Recent excavations at the site of Igbo Olokun in the Yoruba city of Ile-Ife, in south-western Nigeria, have shed light on early glass manufacturing techniques in West Africa. The recovery of glass beads and associated production materials has enabled compositional analysis of the artefacts and preliminary dating of the site, which puts the main timing of glass-working between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries AD. The results of these studies suggest that glass bead manufacture at this site was largely independent of glass-making traditions documented farther afield, and that Igbo Olokun may represent one of the earliest known glass-production workshops in West Africa.

Reconceptualizing Early Ghana

Abstract At the time of his death, Nehemia Levtzion had initiated a project to revise Ancient Ghana and Mali in the light of new scholarship since its original publication in 1973. He proposed that the question of origins and early development of Sudanic polities such as Ghana should be thoroughly reconsidered with regard to findings from research in archaeology and related disciplines. In this article, I discuss four topics (climate variability, sedentary-mobile interactions; external / internal dynamics; and organizational variability) central to Levtzion’s 1973 account of Ghana’s origins and the implications of research results to date for our understanding of early political consolidation in the Sahel.

Re-dating the Ingombe Ilede burials

Several burials excavated during 1960 at Ingombe Ilede in southern Africa were accompanied by exceptional quantities of gold and glass beads, bronze trade wire and bangles. The burials were indirectly dated to the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries AD, prior to the arrival of the Portuguese on the East Coast of Africa. New AMS dates on cotton fabric from two of the burials now relocate them in the sixteenth century. This was a dynamic period when the Portuguese were establishing market settlements along the Zambezi, generating new demands for trade products from the interior, and establishing trade networks with the Mwene Mutapa confederacy. These new dates invite a reconsideration of Ingombe Iledes relationship to Swahili and Portuguese trade in the middle Zambezi. This article is followed by four responses and a final comment by the authors.

West African Neolithic

ABSOLUTE TIME PERIOD: Varies by region. In the Sahel and northern savanna: 4000–2000 B.P. Chronology for beginning of food production involving yams in the savanna-forest zone is unknown. Neolithic may continue until 1000 B.P. in some areas, particularly the southwest.