Cowries in the archaeology of West Africa: the present picture

Abstract

Despite the perceived importance of cowrie shells as indicators of long-distance connections in the West African past, their distribution and consumption patterns in archaeological contexts remain surprisingly underexplored, a gap that is only partly explicable by the sparse distribution of archaeological sites within the sub-continent. General writings on the timeline of importation of cowries into West Africa often fail to take into account the latest archaeological evidence and rely instead on accounts drawn from historical or ethnographic documents. This paper is based on a first-hand assessment of over 4500 shells from 78 sites across West Africa, examining chronology, shell species and processes of modification to assess what distribution patterns can tell us about the history of importation and usage of cowries. These first-hand analyses are paralleled by a consideration of published materials. We reexamine the default assumption that two distinct routes of entry existedone overland from North Africa before the fifteenth century, another coming into use from the time sea links were established with the East African coast and becoming predominant by the middle of the nineteenth century. We focus on the eastern part of West Africa, where the importance of imported cowries to local communities in relatively recent periods is well known and from where we have a good archaeological sample. The conclusion is that on suitably large assemblages shell size can be an indication of provenance and that, while the present archaeological picture seems largely to confirm historical sources, much of this may be due to the discrepancy in archaeological data available from the Sahara/Sahel zone compared to the more forested regions of the sub-continent. Future archaeological work will clarify this matter. RÉSUMÉ Malgré l'importance supposée des cauris comme indicateurs de connexions à longue distance dans le passé ouest-africain, la question de leur distribution et leur consommation dans les contextes archéologiques demeure étonnamment peu explorée, un écart qui est seulement partiellement explicable par la distribution clairsemée des sites archéologiques. Les écrits généralistes traitant de la chronologie de l'importation des cauris en Afrique de l'Ouest ARTICLE HISTORY

Cataloging Cowries: A Standardized Strategy to Record Six Key Species of Cowrie Shell from the West African Archaeological Record

“…Identification of beach-washed shells has major implications for our understanding of cowrie use and value in West Africa. Evidence for beach-washing is common on the West African species which we have studied, suggesting that these were not collected live (Haour and Christie 2019). While it is true that L. lurida and Z. zonaria bear resemblance to M. annulus, hey are unlikely to have been confused by users.…”

“…The earliest reported to date are from the site of Kissi in Burkino Faso, where a small number of cowries were recovered within funerary contexts dated to the fifth-seventh centuries, associated with items such as brass jewellery, weapons, and glass beads (Magnavita 2015). This, and a number of other occurrences (see Haour and Christie 2019 for a recent overview), substantially predate the opening of Atlantic trade routes and thus these shells must have been transported over land for great distances.…”

“…To evaluate this proposition, we also provide guidance on distinguishing M. annulus and M. moneta from four cowries native to West Africa. In addition to the two species directly mentioned by York (1972) (L. lurida and Z. zonaria) we also include Trona stercoraria (Linnaeus 1758), and Zonaria sanguinolenta (Gmelin, 1791) as these species have also been recovered archaeologically (Haour and Christie 2019) 2 . Lepetit (1989, p. 7), describing the key species present along the West African coast, reports that Z. sanguinolenta were collected by local fishermen around the Dakar harbour and Gorée Island, observing that "Cypraea [i.e.…”

“…Lorenz and 2000, pp. 51-52, 80-81,107, 112-115) Of the four species discussed, Z. sanguinolenta has the most restricted geographical rangelimited to the waters around Senegambia -a factor that appears to have influenced its archaeological distribution (Haour and Christie 2019).…”

Material cosmopolitanism: the entrepot of Harlaa as an Islamic gateway to eastern Ethiopia

“…The piercing of the predominantly cowry material at Harlaa relates to a ubiquitous, sub-Saharan method of processing such shells for stringing and sewing (e.g. Haour & Christie 2019: 305–306). At Harlaa, however, this appears to have been achieved using an Indigenous technology—obsidian blades—with the 1352 dorsa recovered from the site indicating this process (Figure 5D).…”