Farming Beyond the Escarpment: Society, Environment, and Mobility in Precolonial Southeastern Burkina Faso.

Abstract

This thesis presents the results of two seasons of survey and excavation in a 75 km2 catchment of the Koabu drainage near the Gobnangou Escarpment (Tapoa Province, Burkina Faso, West Africa). Over 500 archaeological sites including settlements and activity areas were identified in the study region. The Gobnangou was first inhabited by mobile hunter-gatherers during the Late Stone Age. In the mid-first millennium AD, residents of the region slowly incorporated domestic plants and animals into their diet, and constructed the first puddled mud structures in the region, although they continued to fish in the Pendjari River to the south. The early second millennium AD is characterized by the widespread practice of shifting cultivation, resulting in hundreds of dispersed ephemeral sites roughly the size of family compounds. This shift is accompanied by evidence of greater regional integration including the development of a complex yet standardized pottery tradition and a significant expansion in iron smelting. Finally, in the late second millennium AD, residents of the study region shift their settlements out of the floodplains and cluster near the base of the escarpment, although residences are still widely spaced and frequently moved. While this change in settlement pattern during the 19th century AD is often attributed to insecurity in the region, in this case it is accompanied by the expanded participation in extra-regional trade networks (possibly with Hausa, Mossi, or other Gourmantche traders). Residents of the study region built multiple complexes of plastered dye pits associated with intensive production of indigo cloth. Throughout the work, the archaeological data are presented in the context of the local natural and cultural environment, and results from the archaeological record are compared to the oral history of the region.