Reinventing Equality: The Archaeology of Kirikongo, Burkina Faso.

Abstract

Burkina Faso today is home to a diverse array of societies living in concentrated and dispersed villages, and politically spanning egalitarian societies to feudal states. However, trajectories leading to this cultural mosaic are poorly understood, as the region has received only limited archaeological investigation. Even basic information about the origins and development of Voltaic societies is as yet unknown. This work examines the Iron Age village of Kirikongo (AD 100-1700), located in the Mouhoun Bend of western Burkina Faso. This ancient settlement is composed of a cluster of small mounds that represent households, and each contains many layers of decayed domestic structures. Activities throughout the site were identified over two seasons of excavation and survey, and subsequent analyses of artifacts. The archaeological data are contextualized with a survey of modern Voltaic societies (Bwa, Gourounsi, Gouin, Lobi) that provide a regionally informed framework for interpretations. This dissertation describes a trajectory of events that led to an egalitarian revolution. Settled ca. AD 100, Kirikongo grew from a single homestead to a village of unranked generalized households ca. AD 500. The ancestral lineage then began a process of increasing authority until they were socially ranked above the community in the early second millennium AD. Their authority was materialized through control over the village territory and production of symbolically powerful iron. The community revolted ca. AD 1100, changing social, political, economic, and religious trajectories. This episode was not a simple return to an idealized egalitarian past: it was the invention of a new political system, informed by the knowledge of past inequalities. The community divided authority between the ancestral lineage, household heads, and specialized smiths/potters. Communal hunting and communal-level marriage compensation tied units together, as did economic interdependence. Most dramatically, they rejected the material means of inequality, wealth in cattle. This work thus addresses many central issues in West African and general archaeology: social foundations for early sedentary life, regional models for the origins of rank, and contexts for the emergence of craft specialization. Most importantly, it is a unique case study of the reinvention of equality in the creation of a novel society.