Daily Life in the Land of Bambuk: An Archaeological Study of Political Economy at Diouboye, Senegal

Abstract

This dissertation examines the political economy of Diouboye, a village occupied circa AD 1000-1400 on the eastern banks of the Falémé River (Upper Senegal region). Historical sources place this area within the gold-producing realm of Bambuk whose decentralized societies maintained connections to trans-Saharan trade networks vis-à-vis medieval states and merchant diasporas. Against this historical backdrop, the archaeological study of economic practices within Diouboye investigates the ways in which sociopolitical institutions and cultural traditions at multiple scales shaped, and were shaped by, the daily life of this village community. Archaeological research in and around Diouboye focuses on three economic spheres—namely, subsistence, craft, and long-distance exchange—that underwrote political relations at local, regional, and interregional scales across precolonial West Africa. In order to consider how these economies intersected within the village community, this dissertation presents the results of surface collection, mapping, and excavation of six residential areas across Diouboye, as well as a survey of nearly 72 square kilometers surrounding the site. Material and spatial dimensions of these data demonstrate that residential groups within the community maintained a generalized subsistence regime based on farming, hunting, and possibly herding. Specialization in some craft activities provided a source of social differentiation, possibly complementing the authority held by non-specialists who initially settled the village. All residential groups participated in down-the-line exchange, and perhaps direct barter, for objects traded across the Sahara. Even as these economic processes helped to balance access to social authority at Diouboye, they established the community as an important political center on the Falémé River where it may have benefitted from access to the gold of Bambuk. The symmetrical political relations among residential groups within Diouboye, supported in part by limited economic specializations, persisted throughout the occupation of the village even as increasingly specialized subsistence, craft, and exchange economies fueled the rise and fall of complex polities in neighboring regions during the early-second millennium AD.