Interrogating Identity: The Fluidity of Social Boundaries in African Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron Gokee.

Over the past century, archaeological reconnaissance and survey in the Senegambia region of West Africa has identified more than 2000 megalithic cemetery sites dating to the Iron Age (circa 500 BC – AD 1500). Although a number of research programs have explored the histories of individual sites, it remains unclear how these related to one another within a regional tradition of mortuary practice and monument construction. This paper begins to address this issue through integrated geospatial and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott MacEachern.

To this point, most analyses of Boko Haram have stressed its origins in Salafi/Wahhabi radicalism in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State in northeastern Nigeria. Equally important to the development of this organisation, however, has been its utilisation of frontier zones in the Lake Chad Basin, as refuges and areas for the development of political and military power. In this paper, I will argue that aspects of Boko Haram activities can be profitably understood through the deep-time...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Steven Goldstein.

Despite recent advances in characterizing the socio-economic mosaics associated with early pastoralism in East Africa, how this diversity affected social boundaries and manifested identities remain underexplored. Exclusive exploitation of a single obsidian source on the upper slopes of Mr. Eburru in the Central Rift Valley by communities associated with "Elmenteitan" material culture is a strong line of evidence for dimensions of shared identity linking some of these herding communities in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Abigail Stone.

In the Sahel, the Fulani are considered the archetypal cattle herders. Although their spread across West Africa is poorly understood, their arrival had profound effects on local populations. In Mali’s Inland Niger Delta, historical sources and isotopic analysis of archaeological cattle, sheep, and goat teeth from the site of Jenné-jeno and the modern town of Djenné suggest that specialized Fulani pastoralists arrived in the Delta between the 13th and 15th centuries AD. This coincided with...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dil Basanti.

Aksum was the capital of northern Ethiopian kingdom that is famous for its numerous pre-Christian funerary stelae dating to the first four centuries A.D. The six largest stelae employ a peculiar "house" symbolism carved into their surfaces. Art historians have also noted that later Christian churches in the Ethiopian highlands, also sites for burial, mimic the layouts of old Aksumite elite houses. Beyond this, there has been little serious interpretation on what the "house" symbolism indicates...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Louise Iles.

Participation in technological activity in sub-Saharan Africa is often discussed in terms of identity, whether that is framed by gender, kinship, status or ethnicity. In particular, social distinctions between iron producers and iron users are well known from the ethnohistorical and ethnographic records of numerous African regions, providing important information as to the social organisation and values of a particular society. However, recognising these identities in the archaeological remains...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daphne Gallagher.

In several regions of the West African savanna, the pre-colonial complex polities described in oral and written histories have left a minimal archaeological signature on the landscape. One such region is the Gobnangou escarpment of southeastern Burkina Faso, where from the early second millennium CE, the archaeological record consists almost entirely of small, ephemeral sites, likely resulting from short term occupations of household compounds. Broadly dispersed on the landscape, and almost...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Dueppen.

Located at the intersection between Voltaic and Mande historical traditions, contemporary western Burkina Faso (West Africa) is a complex cultural mosaic in which local identities transcend linguistic boundaries and cultural practices, exemplifying the difficulties of employing bounded social categorizations in anthropological archaeology. The site of Kirikongo, located in this region and occupied continuously between 100 and 1700 CE provides an important case study to explore the changing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefano Biagetti.

In the Tadrart Acacus (SW Libya), ethnoarchaeological research carried out between 2003-2011 has shown that its current inhabitants, the Kel Tadrart Tuareg, are a successful example of adaptation to extreme climatic and environmental conditions. Their exceptional resilience, characterized by high degree of variability and opportunism, escapes some of the traditional assumptions often done in ethnography and archaeology regarding the classification and identification of societies, such as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Huffman.

The relationship between Leokwe and Leopard’s Kopje people represents the first known ethnic interaction in pre-colonial southern Africa. As the subordinate partner, Leokwe had roles befitting their ‘first people’ status. Salvage excavations at the Leokwe Main Rest Camp uncovered ‘extra’ cattle kraals, while Leokwe faunal assemblages there and elsewhere contain high percentages of low-status cattle bones. Thus, Leokwe herdsmen were probably tending the cattle of K2 elite. Two sites on Schroda...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Stahl.

The Banda area of west central Ghana is a quintessential example of what Igor Kopytoff (1987) long-ago dubbed the Internal African Frontier—an ‘interstitial’ region between ‘established societies’ that is home to a dynamic composition of people, languages and practice forged by newcomers and autochthones alike. In presumed contrast with their ‘established’ neighbors, frontier societies are ones in which processes of improvisation and the negotiation of social boundaries seem more apparent. While...