Complexity in Sub-Saharan Africa: Archaeological and Ethnoarchaeological Approaches to Landscape, Craft, and Trade in the Past 3,000 Years

This session explores archaeological and ethnoarchaeological approaches to the study of the foundations and unfolding of social complexity in sub-Saharan Africa through the interconnections of landscape, craft and trade in the past 3,000 years. In this period, iron technology was established across the continent, agriculture spread, complex polities rose and fell, and African participation in global trading networks intensified. Landscape is used here broadly to contextualize these developments. Papers address the co-evolution of early farming landscapes in the early Iron Age; how social identities were produced in village, community and regional spaces over time; and monumental construction. Local, regional and global trading networks moved and connected people and products across vast distances. Global trade extended into Africa's interior impacting local economies and the structure, nature and scale of authority and power. Social inequities based in the production and consumption of prestigious and mundane craft products emerged and many contemporary artisans continue to work within social structures of inequity while contending with market globalization.