Ceramic Petrography in Early Osogbo, ca. 1600–1750: Crafting Technology, Regional Exchanges, and Social Complexity in Central Yoruba Region

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Past excavations in the Early Osogbo settlement (central Yoruba region, Nigeria) have yielded an unprecedented diversity of ceramic forms. Located at the crossroads of regional trading and political networks and in the transitional zone between the rainforest and the savanna woodland ecotypes, Early Osogbo served as a buffer zone between the Oyo Empire and the Ilesa Kingdom and was a major regional market center during the seventeenth through the mid-eighteenth century. Three ceramic complexes are represented in the settlement’s ceramic assemblage: the Osun, Oyo, and Ife complexes. This study uses thin-section petrography to answer questions about clay and other raw material sourcing and compositionality, manufacturing technology and style, and the relationships between raw material attributes and ceramic forms associated with the three ceramic complexes and tobacco pipes. The petrographic analysis sheds light on the dynamics of craft technology, trade, migration, and the nature of social complexity in a Yoruba formative frontier settlement during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, a period marked by commercial revolution (e.g., a monetized economy, intensified economic specialization, and Atlantic slave trade), increased mobility, refashioning of identities, and political consolidation in West Africa.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51677