West Africa Before the Europeans

Archaeology & Prehistory

O. Davies

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317605317
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book covers the whole range of West African archaeology to the arrival of the Portugese on the Guinea coast. Parts of this territory are very ill-explored, and emphasis is accordingly laid on the better-known regions: Ghana, Nigeria, the middle Niger valley and Western Senegal. After introducing the geographical background and chronology, subsequent chapters deal with the Palaeolithic, Neolithic and early iron ages, ending with a brief account of the protohistoric period. Published in 1967. Includes map and topographical index.

CHAPTER ONE

The Geographical Background

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Introductory

West Africa is the territory which bounds the Gulf of Guinea on the north. From east to west it extends roughly 2,700 kilometres, from Cap Vert to the Cameroons Mountains. Its north-south width is less, at a maximum 1,350 kilometres, because it is rightly considered to cease at the River Niger and the edge of the Sahara. The Sahara itself is not properly a part of West Africa, although colonial frontiers by chance included large blocks of it in the West African territories, Mauritania and Niger which are almost wholly Saharan, and a big wedge north of the Niger bend which was attached to the French Sudan. But the ecology and human geography of the desert is entirely different from that of the cultivated savannah and forest; and there is evidence that in pluvial times, when the Sahara was more densely populated by animals and plants as well as by man, it enjoyed on the whole a winter rainfall and so formed a projection of the Mediterranean Maghreb rather than of the West African tropics.

This book will discuss mainly the western and central parts of West Africa, with no more than occasional reference to its eastern quarter, now Nigeria. It is not thereby implied that Nigeria does not resemble the rest of West Africa. It has its own problems; there is no parallel farther west to the great embayment filled with soft tertiary deposits and now occupied by the delta of the Niger. The reason for omitting a detailed description of Nigeria is practical. The Nigerian archaeological survey, and now several of the Nigerian universities are devoting close attention to the prehistory of their country. Within the next ten years it is expected that a mass of information will be collected in Nigeria, and then it will be for the local scholars to write it up. At present the record is patchy, and anything written now about Nigeria will rapidly be out of date. For the rest of West Africa, however, educational and scientific prospects are very different. Some countries, such as Ghana and a few of the territories served by the Institut français d’Afrique noire (I.F.A.N.), especially the Dakar area and the Niger Valley between Bamako and Timbuktu, are well explored archaeologically; for these this book may form a useful summary of our present knowledge and a foundation for future work, as we have reached the critical stage where little more surface surveying can profitably be carried out and where excavation must be planned to solve specific problems. In many other areas hardly any surface work has been done, and there seems little likelihood of any being done for many years. There are no local scholars, and the political fragmentation of West Africa makes it more and more difficult for exploration to be conducted from neighbouring states. For these territories this book will rather consolidate our ignorance than form a foundation for future knowledge, and I can do no more than refer to any scraps of information which seem to be relevant to the general picture. Liberia is the worst; we know nothing at all about its archaeology. Sierra Leone and Portuguese Guinea are nearly as bad. About the remaining territories we know something, but not enough to piece together the archaeological record of any one of them. Some are at present in nearly the same state as Nigeria, but without the hope that Nigeria has of great advance within the next few years.

Physical Geography, Rainfall, Vegetation

The physical geography of West Africa is rather dull. Violent pre-Cambrian distortion followed by peneplanation left a stable plateau whence protrude ridges of resistant quartzite. On it accumulated deposits from palaeozoic seas, and round its margins there have been transgressions of the ocean, which have not extended very far except in Senegal. Some of the Late pre-Cambrian peneplain may never have been submerged. Between the Mamelles at Dakar and the Cameroons fault there has been slow epeirogeny, but few signs of tectonic movement or vulcanism; on the north too the last areas of tectonic activity are the Hoggar, the Aïr and Tibesti.

The axis of West Africa is the summit of the pre-Cambrian peneplain which runs parallel to the south coast and, except through the Ivory Coast, not more than 300 kms. inland, from Sierra Leone to Nigeria. This plateau consists of granites and of folded sedimentary rocks, which generally strike north-north-east. Catching the rain from the south-west, it is covered by forest. In general, its summit is not much more than 300 m. S.L.; but there stand out from it ridges of harder rock like the Togo quartzites (above 600 m.) and Mt. Nimba (summit over 1,600 m.). The forest only just extends north of it, for in its rain-shadow the rainfall drops rapidly, the dry season lengthens and orchard bush begins. This plateau is in general a watershed, drained to the south by numerous short and turbulent rivers; but in the Ivory Coast the watershed bends to the north, and the Comoe has cut back through it to rise in the palaeozoic Banfora massif 560 kms. from the coast. In general, however, the drainage from the northern slopes of this watershed flows northward into the wide level basin of the western Sudan. At the western end the Gambia and some of the tributaries of the Senegal turn westward, down the westward slope of the basin, into the Atlantic. The streams behind Sierra Leone, Liberia and the northwestern Ivory Coast flow into the great swamps of the Upper Niger, whence on occasions they drained westward, more recently have formed vast lakes in the southern Sahara, and in very recent times have overflowed and cut a passage into the Lower Niger near Bourem.¹ The east-central region is the basin of the Volta, which breaks through a gorge formed by faulting into the Gulf of Guinea. Behind and east of it is the interior basin of the Lower Niger, which again has cut its way through several hard ridges into the delta zone of subsidence.

The palaeozoic sandstones and shales, generally horizontally bedded, must formerly have covered large parts of West Africa, and have been fragmented by erosion. Tropical weathering is prone to cause scarp retreat, and fallen rock fragments disintegrate and are removed on the moister valley floors. Prominent precipices bound the surviving blocks of sandstone, like those round the Volta sandstones in Ghana or the Falaise de Banfora (Upper Volta); they also confine valleys draining the massifs. Weaker beds in the rock may be hollowed by wind or underground streams, and caves are formed [pl. 1], which have been used for habitation or ritual. But scarp retreat is so rapid that none of these caves is very ancient. The oldest yield neolithic remains (Bosumpra near Abetifi, Ghana; and some of the caves in F. Guinea) or paintings which are believed to be Iron Age (especially in the Bamako region², a very few are known in Ghana) [fig. 112].

But widespread uniformity of relief, with well-developed ancient land surfaces, does not imply uniformity of ecology. The vegetation changes rapidly as one travels inland from the coast. The coastal hills trap rain-bearing winds, and West Africa lies at a critical latitude where rainfall declines from degree to degree. Below 8° N there is usually dense equatorial forest [pl. 2]. The extent of this must have varied in the past, but it cannot within geologically recent times have entirely disappeared, as it would have been unable to recolonize. In places there is a strip of savannah, humid but with low rainfall, between the forest and the shore. North of Sierra Leone the forest disappears, and all along its northern margin it is fringed with orchard bush, trees about 10 m. high able to resist spells of drought, and much tall grass. As one proceeds north, the grass becomes less luxuriant; trees are smaller and give way to thorn bush and scrub; and these ultimately to desert. The vegetational zones³ are not strictly parallel, but run fairly closely along lines of latitude; they are determined entirely by the length of the dry season and also by the depth of soil able to store moisture. Patches of forest in orchard bush [pl. 3] often mark old sites where the earth is richer and deeper. Lines of gallery forest [pl. 4] extend far up the rivers into the savannah, not only along the banks but over the deep silts which fill pleistocene valleys much wider than the modern.

As West Africa lies within the tropical belt, almost all its rainfall is in the form of heavy showers, usually short, though at the peak of the rainy season they may last many hours, and several inches of rain within one day are not uncommon. The storms follow the progress of the sun. Near the coast, where the sun crosses the zenith in April and September, there are two peaks of rainfall, in June and October, and usually a minor peak in April or May. Further inland there is a single peak, in July or August. At the height of summer, parts of the coast come within the south-east trade-winds, and there are sometimes in June days of wet cold mist without storms, blown in from the Gulf of Guinea; July is often cold and dry, with little sun. In mid-winter the dry north-east trade winds blow down to the edge of the forest, and sometimes break through for a few days to the coast, causing humidity to drop sharply.

Seasonal rainfall controls the behaviour of West African rivers. The coastal streams are short and turbulent, at all seasons carrying a good deal of water because there is never a true dry season in the forest, but with rock-barriers which hinder navigation. Owing to fluctuations of pleistocene base-level they are all young, and have not had time to grade their beds to a mature stage. The whole of the interior is drained by few very large rivers which cut their ways through the watershed to the coast; and the re-entrant of the watershed in the Ivory Coast produces much longer and wider coastal streams.

Heavy seasonal rains in the southern savannah and the northern edge of the forest provide a great deal of water which must be drained away, so that the large rivers rise eight or ten metres towards the end of the rainy season. They are navigable for small boats even against the strong current. In the dry season the Volta and Comoe are very low, there are many rocks in the bed, and they are navigable only with caution by canoes. Between dangerous rapids and sandbanks there are deep stretches in which fish and crocodiles take refuge. The Niger is so long and traverses such different climates that it carries a good deal of water at all seasons, and navigation is possible except through the rock-barriers [pl. 5]. At Bamako, near its source, it falls in the winter and exposes the bar of Sotuba; but at Niamey last summer’s floodwater from the head-waters arrives only in the middle of the dry season, while the river is fed in the wet season by local savannah rains. Shorter rivers, like the Senegal and Benue, are navigable only for a limited period in the wet season.

There are small areas of swamp in the forest, and especially along the drowned coast from Sierra Leone to north of the River Gambia,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• 1. The Geographical Background
• 2. Chronology
• 3. The Palaeolithic in West Africa
• 4. The Neolithic in West Africa
• 5. The Early Iron Age
• 6. The Europeans Arrive
• Select Bibliography
• List of Plates
• Topographical Index
• Plates
• Subject Index
• Map