Provisioning the Coast: Salt, grain and Atlantic Commerce on the Gambia River

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Sal, Bacalhau e Açúcar : Trade, Mobility, Circular Navigation and Foodways in the Atlantic World", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

At the time of Portuguese arrival on the Gambia River (1446) the coastal polity of Niumi was a local source for salt for the interior and caravans coming to the coast. The region's entanglement in Atlantic commerce at various points between the 17th and 20th centuries lead to a local production emphasis on various provisions for European and later American merchants along the Senegambian coast including grains, domesticates, salt and eventually groundnut. The ability of these polities to meet these demands altered local diets and the ability of different communities along the river to amass wealth during various phases of the Atlantic trade. Archaeological and archival records are engaged in this paper to assess the day-to-day impacts of these activities on the local communities on the Gambian coast.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Sal, Bacalhau e Açúcar : Trade, Mobility, Circular Navigation and Foodways in the Atlantic World

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow