Remodel, Rebuild, or Abandon?: Changing uses of space in an early West African Village

Summary

Ancient villages in western Burkina Faso were long-lived communities, temporally rooted in deep social histories experienced in the built environment and local geography. The site of Kirikongo, continuously inhabited from ca. 100 CE to 1700 CE, and composed of 13 separate tells (mounds), exemplifies these spatio-temporal dynamics, as over time the economic and social characters of tells, and their spatial positioning and characteristics changed dramatically despite maintenance of certain spatial and temporal referents. In this paper, we discuss how historical dialogues with space, place and materials shaped different phases in the site’s occupation. These relations and referents are at the core of changing identities from individuals to house and community. We explore how events and processes were significantly shaped by prior spatial and material choices as certain spaces maintained significant continuity for social roles, while others reflect the rejection of certain histories, through either abandonment and decay or through an active construction atop and physical alteration of the former space.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Complexity in Sub-Saharan Africa: Archaeological and Ethnoarchaeological Approaches to Landscape, Craft, and Trade in the Past 3,000 Years

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15600