From Kin to Great House: Inequality and Communalism at Iron Age Kirikongo, Burkina Faso

Dueppen, Stephen A.

doi:10.7183/0002-7316.77.1.3

Cited by 31 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 54 publications

(23 reference statements)

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“…Throughout the Voltaic region an important component of social and political action (legitimisation) is historically derived from the ritual petitioning of the divinities (spirits, deities or ancestors) by a representative of a social group (e.g. Delafosse 1912;Tauxier 1912;Cremer 1927;Labouret 1931;Fortes 1945;Manessy 1960;Goody 1962;Capron 1973;Duval 1985;Şaul 1991;Dacher 1997;Izard 2003;Kuba 2006;Insoll et al 2009;Lentz 2009; see also Dueppen 2008Dueppen , 2011. Although they vary with social setting, ritualbased hierarchies (ascribed and achieved) are common, and positions are held by leaders of families, multi-family houses, communities, kin-groups, age-sets, alliances, craft-specialist groups etc.…”

Section: Chickens In the Voltaic Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early evidence for chickens at Iron Age Kirikongo (c. AD 100–1450), Burkina Faso

Dueppen¹

2011

Antiquity

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An excavated sequence from Burkina Faso shows that the Asian jungle fowl Gallus gallus, also known as the chicken, had made its way into West Africa by the mid first millennium AD. Using high precision recovery from a well-stratified site, the author shows how the increasing use of chickens could be chronicled and distinguished from indigenous fowl by both bones and eggshell. Their arrival was highly significant, bringing much more than an additional source of food: it put a sacrificial creature, essential for numerous social and economic transactions, in reach of everyone.

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Section: Chickens In the Voltaic Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early evidence for chickens at Iron Age Kirikongo (c. AD 100–1450), Burkina Faso

Dueppen¹

2011

Antiquity

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“…A focus on the social house has been a fruitful avenue for archaeological and ethnological research incorporating diverse indigenous social formations into anthropological inquiry (e.g., Beck ; Carston and Hugh‐Jones ; Chiang ; Drucker‐Brown ; Dueppen , ; González‐Ruibal ; Joyce and Gillespie ; Sparkes and Howell ; Ur ). This trend was inspired by Levi‐Strauss (, , ), who defined the house as “a corporate body holding an estate made up of both material and immaterial wealth, which perpetuates itself through the transmission of names, its goods, and its titles down a real or imaginary line, considered legitimate as long as this continuity can perpetuate itself in the language of kinship or of affinity and most often, of both” (Levi‐Strauss , 151).…”

Section: Houses In the Ethnohistory Of Western Burkina Fasomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research at Kirikongo was initiated with a goal of examining the longer histories leading to the development of large, heterarchically organized communities with an egalitarian communalistic ethos (Dueppen , , ; Dueppen and Gallagher ). Located in the Mouhoun Bend of Burkina Faso, Kirikongo is composed of 13 spatially discrete mounds ranging in depth from 2 to 4 meters, forming 5.6 ha of mounds in a 37.5 ha space (Figure ).…”

Section: The Archaeological Site Of Kirikongomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Phases are further sub‐divided into seven ceramic sub‐phases (Yellow I and II, Red I, II, III, IV, and V), for which analyses of all but the final two periods (Red IV and V) are advanced. The discussions below draw upon extensive publications on the settlement history based upon excavations, surface collections, small test pits between mounds, and the recording of road cuts in three mounds (Dueppen , , , , ; Dueppen and Gallagher ; Gallagher, Dueppen, and Walsh ).…”

Section: The Archaeological Site Of Kirikongomentioning

confidence: 99%

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5 Bridging House to Neighborhood: The Social Dynamics of Space in Burkina Faso, West Africa

Dueppen

2019

Archaeological Papers of the American

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Important aspects of the social, economic, and political lives of large villages, towns, and cities are spatially situated within neighborhoods. In ethnohistoric central West Africa, identities derived from multi-family social "houses" with large membership frequently intersected neighborhood identities. Drawing from archaeological and ethnohistoric examples, this chapter explores how transformations in the nature of houses over time enabled the development of neighborhoods and wards in the region. At the long-lived settlement of Kirikongo, Burkina Faso (ca. 100-1700 CE), changing house identities were fundamental to a major sociopolitical transformation from a hierarchically organized community to a more egalitarian one. The restructured and now larger settlement was integrated through the physical and social opening of houses to the greater community, including the establishment of crosscutting practices and institutions. The resulting community was rooted in equitable economic interdependence between houses and characterized by a presence of a stronger spatial identity at the settlement level. As these are also typical of ethnohistoric settlements with neighborhoods and wards, the Kirikongo case study provides an example of the potential pathways by which settlements may have successfully combined the strong identities of multi-family houses into larger, spatially oriented units. In some cases, these changes may have been critical elements for the development of urbanism.

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“…Dueppen, Egalitarian Revolution . Dueppen, ‘Kin to Great House’. Gallagher et al , ‘Archaeology of Shea Butter’.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Archaeology of West Africa, ca. 800 BCE to 1500 CE

Dueppen¹

2016

History Compass

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Recent archaeological research has transformed our understandings of events and processes in West Africa between the beginning of iron‐use ca. 800 BCE and the arrival of Europeans in the 15th century CE, forcing reinterpretations of older narratives that were derived from unbalanced archaeological coverage and over‐privileging of the limited textual record. During this period, economic experimentation and transformation were common in West Africa, as farming economies ultimately expanded over the entire region, while specialization and artistic traditions developed within societies for the production of iron, pottery, textiles, terracotta figurines, glass and copper‐based objects. Some societies actively participated in interregional economies and cultivated the growth of trans‐Saharan trade routes, resulting in the development of large‐scale medieval states and empires (e.g. Ghana and Mali) and initial conversions to Islam in northern locations, while elsewhere societies were more focused on local sources of power and authority. Sociopolitical systems varied significantly throughout the region and included mobile foraging groups, diverse village communities, cities with large palaces, cities without hierarchical leadership and territorial states with no urban centres. This article provides an overview of this exciting era in the African past, calling attention to both regional and local historical trajectories.

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From Kin to Great House: Inequality and Communalism at Iron Age Kirikongo, Burkina Faso

Cited by 31 publications

References 54 publications

Early evidence for chickens at Iron Age Kirikongo (c. AD 100–1450), Burkina Faso

Early evidence for chickens at Iron Age Kirikongo (c. AD 100–1450), Burkina Faso

5 Bridging House to Neighborhood: The Social Dynamics of Space in Burkina Faso, West Africa

The Archaeology of West Africa, ca. 800 BCE to 1500 CE

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