What do we learn if we look in parallel at the past of two distinct parts of the world? Anne Haour weighs this question by considering both the central Sahel of West Africa and the European countries around the North Sea, for the period 800-1500. This is a time for which historical records are scarce, and to which archaeology is making ever-increasing contributions. It is also, and foremost, a time when the central Sahel and northern Europe alike were undergoing far-reaching changes that were to define key aspects of their identity today. New monotheistic religions were replacing the...
What do we learn if we look in parallel at the past of two distinct parts of the world? Anne Haour weighs this question by considering both the centra...
The need for archaeological research in the Hausa area is very real. What work has been done is often casual and cursory. Considering that the modern Hausa heartland includes up to twenty-five million people and is as large as Britain, this neglect cannot be explained in terms of demographics or of scale. Nor can it be excused on the grounds that there is nothing of interest in the soil of the kasar hausa. This volume (the latest in the series of Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology) focuses on the particular site of Kufan Kanawa,...
Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 56
The need for archaeological research in the Hausa area is very real. What work has been done i...
Studies of liminality have a long history in anthropology. In archaeology, identifying past people - rather than faceless entities - through material culture is still a work in progress, but a project that has seen increased attention in recent years. Focusing on West Africa, this book argues that we should explore what happens when the primary label assigned to a person's identity is that of an outsider - when he or she is of, but not in, society. Such outsiders can be found everywhere in the West African past: rulers show off their foreign descent, traders migrate to new areas, potters and...
Studies of liminality have a long history in anthropology. In archaeology, identifying past people - rather than faceless entities - through material ...
