Archaeobotany of Food & Craft near Bono Manso, Ghana, during the Transition from Trans-Saharan to Atlantic Trade

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Kranka Dada is a village site on the periphery of Bono Manso, a complex polity occupied between the 14th – 17th centuries AD, at the height of the trans-Saharan trade and the shift to early Atlantic trade. Questions remain about the degree and nature of the involvement of sites like Kranka Dada in these different trade networks. In this paper, we offer preliminary results on archaeobotanical analysis of flotation samples from Kranka Dada. The archaeobotanical assemblage is dominated by indigenous pearl millet, with little to no botanical evidence for introduced crops like maize. This is in contrast to the pottery assemblage, which includes maize cob impressed pottery and tobacco pipes in 16th-17th century contexts. One of the most interesting botanical finds from Kranka Dada is probable indigo, which suggests the presence of a local cloth-dyeing industry. We consider the implications of these archaeobotanical results for understanding the dynamics of craft and trade in the region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24848