Trade and the Development of Social Complexity

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All modern nations are completely dependent upon the special mechanical and electrical properties of metals. Iron and aluminum are abundant and widely distributed, but major deposits of many other critically important metals are scarce, so these must be obtained by international trade. The southern third of the African continent is unusually rich in the rarer metals. It has the world's largest reserves of platinum, cobalt, copper and manganese, and has historically produced more gold than any other region. Mining and metallurgy now account for a major proportion of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of most nations in central and southern Africa, but few know that mining in this region began long ago. Iron and copper have been mined and smelted here since at least 200 AD, and gold since at least 1200 AD. Copper objects are often found in archaeological sites far from any potential source of copper. Few citizens of southern and central African are aware of the extent of precolonial mining, or of trade in copper in this region. The anticipated results of this project on ancient copper mining and trade will likely be widely covered in African print and electronic news media, and will be incorporated into educational materials for African schools and universities. The research funded by this award will study the circulation of copper within southern Africa between 200 CE to about 1700 CE. Dr. David Killick and graduate student Jay Stephens will collaborate with archaeologists in southern Africa, and with geochemists at the University of Arizona, to reconstruct long-distance movements of copper in prehistoric times by matching the lead isotope ratios of copper objects to those from ore deposits throughout the region. This research will provide a novel way to study some key issues in the archaeology of southern Africa. These include: tracing the routes taken by the earliest metal-using peoples (the Bantu migration) into South Africa; establishing when mining of specific copper deposits began; documenting trade links between the major prehistoric states in the region; and providing a new way to look at the changes that occurred in these trading systems after Europeans settled in the region, from the early sixteenth century.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.