Africa and its archaeology
The archaeology of the African continent is perhaps best known for its
fossil record of our earliest ancestors: most scholars agree that Africa is
where we, modern humans, evolved. However, Africa also possesses a
rich archaeological heritage linked to the more recent past. The West
African landscape, in particular, is littered with tangible remains of
occupation by people in the past 2000 years: pottery sherds, remains or
ironworking furnaces, large mounds…
This is also a time period for which we have some indirect historical
evidence. Historians and geographers based in North Africa and the
Middle East wrote about West Africa from the eighth century onwards:
they described the wealth of the rulers of large empires, the local cuisine,
social customs and traditions, trade across the Sahara desert, and many
more things. One famous ruler, Mansa Musa of Mali, was one of the
richest men of all time. Then from the 15th century Europeans arrived on
the coast of West Africa and provided further commentaries on the region,
while from the 16th century onwards locals started putting down their
history in writing. These historical sources are extremely valuable but
often they do not tell us about many important questions: what did these
‘empires’ actually look like on the ground? What do we know about the
daily life of people? Little by little, archaeology is beginning to provide
these answers.