Bone Tool Technology in West Africa: Contributions from the Diallowali Site System, Senegal

Summary

This is an abstract from the "African Archaeology throughout the Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Worked bone has a long history across the African continent, occurring as early as the Middle Stone Age in eastern and southern Africa. However, since the beginning of the Holocene, barbed and un-barbed points – associated with the so-called ‘African Aqualithic’ peaking at 9,000 BP – have likewise been recovered from sites within Sahelian and Saharan zones of West Africa. Despite the ubiquity of bone implements throughout the region, the majority of documented examples occur in the central Sahara, Mauritania, and northern Mali. This has lead, unfairly, to their designation as a Saharan phenomenon. Indeed, Senegal has produced an impressive, although somewhat limited, assemblage of worked bone, most notably from the coastal shell midden of Khant. However, recent excavations at the Senegalese site of Diallowali (c. 3000 BP), have yielded an extensive assemblage of worked bone implements (n=159). In this paper, we present the analysis of the Diallowali assemblage, placing it within the broader context of trade, migration, technological developments, and shifting environmental conditions across the region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• African Archaeology throughout the Holocene   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24964