Description
Book SynopsisKirikongo is an archaeological site composed of thirteen remarkably well-preserved discrete mounds occupied continually from the early first to the mid second millennium AD. It spans a dynamic era that saw the growth of large settlement communities and regional socio-political formations, development of economic specializations, intensification in interregional commercial networks, and the effects of the Black Death pandemic. The extraordinary preservation of architectural units, activity areas and industrial zones provides a unique opportunity to discern the cultural practices that created stratified mounds (tells) in this part of West Africa. Building from a new detailed zooarchaeological analysis and refinements in stratigraphic precision, this book argues that repeated ritual activity was a significant factor in the accumulation of stratified archaeological deposits. The book details consistencies in form and content of discrete loci containing animal bones, food remains, and broken and unbroken objects and suggests that these are the remnants of sequential ancestor shrines created when domestic spaces were converted to tombs or dedicated mortuary monuments were constructed. Continuities and transformations in ancestral rituals at Kirikongo inform on earlier West African ritual practices from the second millennium BC as well as political and social transformations at the site. More broadly, this case study provides new insights on anthropogenic mound (tell) formation processes, social zooarchaeology, material culture theory, historical ontology, and the analysis of ritual and religion in the archaeological record.
Winner of the 2023 SAfA Book Prize for "a book that has been successful in taking African archaeology to a world audience"
Table of ContentsChapter 1. Archaeology and Sacrifice in Central West Africa
Chapter 2. Kirikongo in Historical and Social Context
Chapter 3. Archaeology of Animals in West Africa
Chapter 4. The Animals of Kirikongo
Chapter 5. Depositional Contexts and Relational Associations
Chapter 6. Divine Consumption: Feasts, Sacrifice, and Societal Transformation
Chapter 7. Emplacing Ancestors: Enabling Co-Presence through Material Sacrifice and Rituals of Attachment/Detachment
Chapter 8. Sacrificing Animals, Objects, and Houses: Toward an Archaeology of Attachment and Detachment
