Tracing Connections: Chemical composition analysis of archaeological pottery as indicator of interregional contacts in Western and Saharan Africa before AD 1300

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The main goal of the project is to generate unbiased evidence of interregional contacts between archaeological areas and regions in western and Saharan Africa during the 1st to early 2nd millennia AD by means of comprehensive analyses of the chemical composition of pottery. Thus far, archaeological studies of interregional contacts within Africa have mainly relied on the archaeometric analysis of prestige goods or so-called exotica (e.g., glass beads) to trace such connections in an objective manner. For instance, a number of hitherto examined artifacts appear to corroborate the suggestions from written sources that various major historical places in West Africa and the Sahara – e.g., Gao, Essouk-Tadmekka and Marandet – were once connected to each other through trade routes from/to North Africa. Beyond this, however, we are still poorly informed about the interaction of those places with others in the wider region, either because there are no written sources on such traffic or because exotica are lacking or were not analyzed. The proposed project steps down from the pure analysis of exotica by demonstrating that pottery, as the most frequent artifact class in archaeological sites of the period, is equally fully suitable for tracing connections between sites and areas from adjacent regions. In fact, preliminary work by the applicant has shown that chemical composition analysis of archaeological pottery is a powerful tool for even highlighting thus far unknown interregional connections. The project intends to uncover potential interregional interactions within a research area encompassing the Libyan Sahara to the north, the Middle Niger Valley to the west and the Lake Chad Basin to the east.