Historical Anthropological Study of Ancient Kingdoms in West Africa

本财年是我们研究项目的最后一年。我们在夏天开了工作坊，安排研究计划和期末报告。Nakaya和我与两名马里学者Tereba Togola和Mamadou Cisse在西非马里共和国进行了实地考察，他们是文化部文化遗产司司长和文化遗产科科长马马杜·西塞。这次考古发掘从2003年11月到2004年1月在马里东部的加奥进行了大约72天。在这次调查中，我们发现了一座完全用石头建造的巨大建筑，这是西非稀树草原地区的首次发现。虽然我们将挖掘面积扩大到20m×28m，但仍无法找到这座建筑的全部规模。至于它的建造时期，通过与2001年我们在Gao-Saney进行的先例发掘所发现的陶器进行比较，我们认为它在7至11世纪之间。根据中世纪的阿拉伯资源，Gao是撒哈拉以南非洲最早的王国之一。它的规模、材料和年代表明，这座建筑是考古发掘所能发现的西非最古老的王宫遗址。我们今年的研究是非常成功的，因为它不仅可以揭示西非历史上鲜为人知的时期，而且可以揭示社会人类学的一个重要课题--社会分层的过程。

This fiscal year is the last year of our research project. We held the work shop in summer to arrange for the research plan and the final report.Prof. NAKAYA and I performed the field survey in Republic of Mali, West Africa with two Malian scholars, Tereba TOGOLA, Director of the Cultural Heritage of Ministry of Culture and Mamadou CISSE, Chief of the section of the Cultural Heritage. This archaeology excavation has been held in Gao, eastern Mali for about 72 days between November 2003 and January 2004.During this survey, we could find a huge building totally made with stones, the stone building being the first findings in the savanna zone of West Africa. Though we expanded excavation area to 20m × 28m, we could not yet find the full scale of this building. As for the period of its construction, we situate it between 7^<th> and 11^<th> century from the comparison with the earthenware found through our precedent excavation held at Gao-Saney in 2001.According to the medieval Arabic resources, Gao was one of the first Kingdoms in Sub-Saharan Africa. Its scale, materials, and epoch suggest that this building is the ruins of the oldest king's palace in West Africa that the archeological excavation can have found.Our research of this year is a very successful one, being that it can illuminate not only the obscure periods of the West African History, but the process of the social stratification that is an important subject of Social Anthropology.