Connecting the middle Niger through borrowed words and shared objects: Archaeo-linguistic network analysis and modelling of cultural entanglements between the Malian Sahara and the Nigerian forests (AD 700-1500).

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This research project investigates cultural contact and interaction along the middle reaches of the Niger in the period prior to 1500 from a joint perspective of historical linguistics and archaeology. In our approach, we map entanglement via dynamic networks and analyze historical regional interaction in an interdisciplinary and multimodal network model as well as via the stratification of historical language and cultural contact. In doing so, we draw on recent developments in historical loanword and network research and develop new possibilities for cooperation between historical linguistics and archaeology via the connection level of cognition. In its exploration of the middle Niger as a connected cultural sphere, our approach provides a new perspective on one of the most dynamic and diverse areas of West African history.The initial phase was dedicated to raising, systematizing or revisiting data and implementing proof-of-concept studies based on ceramics. Ceramics are both the most widespread and widely published archaeological material and have been the basis for most previous work on diversity and connection in the area. Our current work shows that much available ethno-archaeological, archaeological, and linguistic data can be profit from further analysis using Social Network Analysis methods and can be integrated into complex data models – if properly transformed an operationalized. We have shown the applicability of the approach and its analytical power in several proof-of-concept cases on the Middle Niger and the Niger Bend. Our results show that systematic comparison of taxonomies and inventories give new insights into the history of material culture and highly valuable insight into culture contact and its history. They further show that employing a network approach leads to new insights on the structure of historical connections and leads to new interpretations of the area’s ceramic record. In the second phase we will further refine our network models and extend the area of research to the Lower and Upper Niger. Our focus will be on the question of contact between Manding varieties (Bambara- Maninka), and Manding and Northern Mande cultures (e.g. Bambara-Soninke, Soninke-Bozo). We will broaden the field of enquiry to encompass plants, animals, and frequent small finds such as metals, thus creating network components reflective of economic specialization and long distance trade. In the course of this extension, we will be able to include the data from other projects within the SPP. These data will supplement already established the spatial and integrated network models of cultural contact, and language contact-stratification analysis.