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13 Burial Practices, Settlement and Regional
Connections around the Southern Lake Chad
Basin, 1500 BC–AD 1500
scott maceachern
Introduction
The Lake Chad Basin constitutes an important crossroads in Africa, in the
middle of the sweep of savanna that stretches from the Atlantic to the Nile
and articulating the Central Sahara with lands to the south. This position-
ing implicated the region in human responses to Mid-Late Holocene
environmental changes, especially those involving decreases in rainfall
regimes and the disappearance of Lake Mega-Chad. Archaeological and
other evidence indicates that these processes involved periodic population
exchanges and cultural interchanges between the southern Sahara and the
Lake Chad Basin. The period from c.1800 BC onward saw a development of
agro-pastoral systems and an expansion of permanent settlements south of
Lake Chad, first on Gajiganna Culture sites and then more widely.
This movement toward more permanent occupations, first close to the
lakeshore and later on the plains and around the Mandara Mountains to
the south, was accompanied by a great differentiation of settlement pat-
terns, including the appearance of anthropic mound sites at some popula-
tion centres. These mound sites seem to have served as cultural foci on the
landscape. Given increased permanence of settlements, it is not surprising
that burials became more important elements of the archaeological record,
nor that burial practices diversified through time. The preponderance of
burials within habitation sites may in part reflect a concentration of
archaeological effort on such sites, but may also indicate their role in
stabilising community claims to territory and history. By the late-first
millennium BC and early-first millennium AD, some of these habitation
sites were substantially large, with populations probably in the high hun-
dreds or low thousands. By the second millennium AD, internally differ-
entiated cemeteries existed adjacent to certain sites.
The resemblances and differences between burial practices in different
parts of the region may provide us with valuable data on cultural relations
around Lake Chad. They may also inform us about external relationships, 399
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especially through the incorporation of foreign objects as grave goods.
Despite their significance, burial practices in the Lake Chad Basin have
not been examined systematically, in part because the region is split
between four different countries and a number of different archaeological
research programmes. This chapter attempts to provide an overview of
variability in burial practices in the context of a very varied literature, as
well as an evaluation of possible cultural connections across the region and
beyond.
The Archaeological and Historical Background
Increased moisture availability in the early Holocene led to the dramatic
expansion of Lake Mega-Chad, and a concomitant opening up of areas
now desert or Sahel for occupation by foragers, pastoralists and eventually
farmers.
1
This would certainly have increased the potential for contacts
across the ‘green Sahara’, but paradoxically would likely have decreased the
attractiveness of much of the area around the modern Lake Chad itself.
2
We have remarkably little evidence for human occupation of the southern
Lake Chad Basin until after 2000 BC,
3
probably to a significant degree
because the marshlands and Sudanian woodlands of the Early-Mid
Holocene would have been most conducive to occupation by relatively
small foraging communities.
In contrast, the Early-Mid Holocene record is far richer for the northern
Lake Chad Basin, in areas that are now part of the Sahara.
4
Roset’s
description of the density of cultural materials close to Adrar Bous as
‘absolument étonnante’, on sites with ‘...les dimensions de très gros
villages...’is indicative of the intensity of occupation in the Early
Holocene.
5
The progressive desiccation of the Sahara and the Lake Mega-
Chad regression after 5000 calBC,
6
with successive fossil beach ridges
marking the shrinking lake, accord well with archaeological data suggest-
ing a southward shift in centres of human occupation in the southern
Sahara and Sahel during subsequent millennia.
7
Most unfortunately, in
part because of political limitations and in part because of the difficulty of
access, there is very little known of the prehistory of the areas immediately
1
Drake et al. 2011; Kropelin et al. 2008; Schuster et al. 2009.
2
See for example Brooks et al. 2005; Cruciani et al. 2010; MacEachern 2012a.
3
Breunig et al. 1996.
4
Clark and Gifford-Gonzalez 2008; Haour 2003b; Sereno et al. 2008.
5
Roset 1983: 134.
6
Drake and Bristow 2006; Schuster et al. 2005.
7
Haour 2003b; Vernet 2002.
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north-west (Diffa Region in Niger) and north-east (Kanim Region in
Chad) of Lake Chad.
The first evidence for substantial settlement in the southern Lake Chad
Basin dates to approximately 1800 BC, with the appearance of eventually
well over 100 Gajiganna Culture sites on the plains south-west of the
retreating lake (Fig. 13.1).
8
There is some evidence for contemporary habita-
tion and lithic production sites further to the south of the Gajiganna area, in
Cameroon and Nigeria,
9
but on a much smaller scale. Economic and
artefactual data indicate cultural relationships between Gajiganna commu-
nities and contemporary populations in the Central Sahara to the north and
north-west.
10
The economic adaptation may parallel that of the slightly
earlier Tenerian culture in Niger, and there are some general similarities in
decorative styles between Gajiganna ceramics and roughly contemporary
‘Culture du Nord-Est’ceramics north of Niamey in Niger.
11
Few data on
settlement types or economies for the latter communities exist, while the
definition of the Tenerian seems to be quite variable.
12
The initial stage of
Gajiganna occupation (c.1800–1200 BC) involved shifting settlements and
economies oriented toward pastoralism, hunting and fishing, along with the
utilisation of abundant wild grasses. The appearance of domesticated
Pennisetum millet after about 1200 BC, and its subsequent domination of
the archaeobotanical record, was associated with shifts toward more agro-
pastoral economies, more permanent settlement and the first stages in
accumulation of the mound sites that would be an important element in
the prehistory of the region through the next two and a half millennia.
The first millennium BC played a pivotal role in the prehistory of the
region, and not only because of the expansion and sedentarisation of the
Gajiganna culture until about 800 BC. This period seems to have been one
of demographic expansion and cultural dynamism south of Lake Chad.
Permanent occupation by farmers and pastoralists expanded well beyond
the Gajiganna heartland, on the clay plains south and south-east of Lake
Chad (again with ceramics of Saharan/Sahelian affinities) and in the more
varied environments along the southern edge of the Lake Chad Basin.
13
Breunig and Neumann argue that cultural discontinuity in the Gajiganna
area after about 800 BC is associated with regional aridity during the early-
first millennium BC, and with a transition between Neolithic Gajiganna
8
Breunig et al. 2001.
9
MacEachern 2012b.
10
Breunig and Neumann 2002b; Klee et al. 2004; Wendt 2007.
11
Vernet 1996, 172–233.
12
Haour 2003b; Smith 2006.
13
Connah 1981; Gronenborn 1998; Holl 1988b; MacEachern 2012b; Marliac et al. 2000;
Wiesmüller 2001.
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Figure 13.1. Culture areas and sites south of Lake Chad.
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Culture and subsequent Iron Age occupations.
14
However, it needs to be
noted that there is much more evidence for cultural continuity in other
areas south of the lake. The final expression of the Gajiganna Culture
involved the appearance of large, nucleated habitation sites like Zilum,
surrounded by ditches and possibly walls and dating to the middle of the
first millennium BC.
15
The socio-political dynamics associated with both
much larger site sizes and probable defensive features at this early period
have not yet been elucidated (see below), but we should note that large,
often defended sites would be characteristic of Iron Age occupation of the
region in subsequent centuries.
The appearance of metallurgy around the Lake Chad Basin continues
to be a topic of some discussion, given anomalously ancient dates of
before 3000 BP for copper and ironworking from Niger.
16
Available
data indicate a gradual and somewhat patchy introduction of iron-
working south of Lake Chad from approximately the middle of the first
millennium BC onward.
17
As Connah suggested more than 30 years
ago, iron tools would have appreciably increased the efficiency of
agriculture, especially in the heavy firki clay soils close to Lake Chad,
butinfactthroughoutthearea.
18
The spread of ironworking is prob-
ably thus generally associated with continuing increases in settlement
sizesanddensitiesacrossthesouthern Lake Chad Basin during the
first millennium AD, even though some communities did not adopt
the technology until centuries after their neighbours. The gradual
introduction of sorghum, and a shift from the herding of cattle to
the keeping of ovicaprines in more sedentary communities, was prob-
ably part of the same process, as agriculture became a predominant
element in the economy of those communities. Large Iron Age sites,
frequently anthropic mounds and sometimes walled, are found
throughout the southern Lake Chad Basin in Nigeria, Cameroon and
Chad during the first and early-second millennia AD.
19
Similar but
mostly unstudied sites in south-eastern Niger probably belong to the
same general tradition of settlement.
20
There is a good deal of evidence
for differentiation in ceramic suites across this large area, but the
14
Breunig and Neumann 2002a.
15
Breunig et al. 2006; Magnavita et al. 2004; Magnavita et al. 2006.
16
Haour 2003b, 217–18.
17
Gronenborn 1998, 232–33, 241; MacEachern 2012b; S. Magnavita et al.2009.
18
Connah 1981, 160.
19
Connah 1981; 1984; Holl 2001; Lebeuf 1969; MacEachern 2012b; S. Magnavita et al. 2009.
20
Haour 2003a; 2003b.
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association between ceramic variation and ethno-linguistic identities
remains unclear in many cases.
It is very likely that the mid/late first and early second millennia AD is the
period during which the broad features of the modern constellation of
Kanuri, Hausa and other Chadic-speaking populations came into being
across the southern Lake Chad Basin, at least in some nascent form.
We can infer this in part from the historical record, as well as through
material continuities between archaeologically known cases and recent
communities.
21
The region has been historically attested in Arabic texts as
a source of slaves from the late-first millennium AD onward, with the trade
attaining substantial numbers in the mid-second millennium AD.
22
The intensified slave trade and associated processes of predatory state
expansionism are probably the reason for the initial occupation of easily
defensible (that is non-plains) environments over the last millennium or
more, particularly in the Mandara Mountains and Lake Chad islands.
23
There is from the twelfth century onward abundant evidence for diplomatic
and cultural interchanges between the states of the southern Lake Chad
Basin (especially Kanim and then Borno and Baghirmi) and states north of
the Sahara, with Central Saharan communities playing an intermediary role
in some of those connections.
Connections and Separations
The investigation of prehistoric intra-regional cultural connections in the
Lake Chad Basin is seriously handicapped by the fragmentary nature of
data for the period in question, especially given the fact that archaeological
research is undertaken in four different countries, with data variously
analysed and interpreted in the context of Anglophone, Francophone
and Germanophone research traditions. Available archaeological data
indicates significant distinctions in ceramics between Gajiganna and des-
cendant communities south-west of Lake Chad on the one hand, and late
Neolithic and Iron Age populations occupying the firki clay plains south
and south-east of the lake, on the other. However, the detailed relations
between those populations and other groups living in the region remain
quite unclear. Similarities and differences between Lake Chad Basin popu-
lations and Saharan groups are equally complicated but, somewhat
21
Lebeuf 1969.
22
Austen 1992; Lange 1988; 1989; Lovejoy 2011. See also Harich et al. 2010.
23
Baroin 2005; MacEachern 2012c.
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paradoxically, because of their geographical separation may be easier to
analyse in an introductory overview.
There is a degree of disjuncture when we look at data on the changing
Holocene relationships between southern Lake Chad Basin communities
and populations further north in the southern Sahara. As noted above, the
region in question was originally settled by Gajiganna and other late
Neolithic populations, with discrete cultural similarities to contemporary
peoples of the (modern) southern Sahara. This is true not merely for the
ceramic assemblages, which are representative of a broader Mid Holocene
tradition of ceramic production stretching across the southern Sahara from
the Wadi Howar area to the Niger, but also for some elements of the lithic
materials.
24
In addition, the semi-sedentary, pastoralist economic orienta-
tion of the initial Gajiganna settlers parallels that of communities further to
the north a millennium or two earlier. The archaeological data are paral-
leled by linguistic and genetic data that, although disputed in details,
broadly emphasise the origins of modern Chadic- and Nilo-Saharan popu-
lations around Lake Chad in a complex set of mid Holocene interactions in
the southern ‘green Sahara.’
25
Our concentration on cultural connections
to the north is in part explained by a comparative ignorance of mid
Holocene cultural relations between the southern Lake Chad Basin and
points further east, south or west –but there is no real doubt that the initial
settlers south of the lake were significantly related to contemporary
Saharan populations.
Between about 1000 BC and AD 1000, the situation was substantially
different. During this period, which also encompasses the time period
associated with the Garamantian culture, economic and settlement prac-
tices in the southern Lake Chad Basin diverged from earlier pastoralist
norms, with a greater investment in sedentism, cereal agriculture and
larger, more complex community structures. It is quite possible that
specialised cattle pastoralism came into being as an economic adaptation
into the first millennium AD, whether ethnically based (as in more recent
times) or not, but we see few traces of it in the archaeological record.
The palaeo-climatological record indicates progressively drier conditions
in the southern Lake Chad Basin between about 800 BC and AD 300, and
this expression of a general late Holocene aridification is likely implicated
in this divergence in cultural norms. To best appreciate the dynamics of
this divergence, we would need data from the areas north-east and north-
24
Breunig et al. 1996, 141.
25
Blench 1999; Cerny et al. 2009; Cruciani et al. 2010; Ehret 2006; Tishkoff et al. 2009.
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west of Lake Chad, where the economic commonalities and cultural rela-
tions of the earlier mid Holocene ‘green Sahara’were presumably being
‘pulled apart’in progressively drier environments during this time.
As noted, however, the archaeological record is essentially non-existent
for that area before the second millennium AD, after which time there have
been a number of small-scale investigations of sites associated with the
Kanim-Bornu polities.
26
If cultural and economic connections were being maintained between
the southern Lake Chad Basin and Saharan communities (including the
Garamantian region) during the first millennium BC and first
millennium AD, we might expect to find some material traces of such
connections, most obviously in the form of trade goods –potentially in
burial as well as other contexts. It is remarkable, however, just how little
material evidence for such long-distance trade exists in the region during
this period. There are scattered finds of amazonite and carnelian beads
from southern Lake Chad Basin sites, including Zilum, Blé, Houlouf and in
addition Mege (date somewhat uncertain), Doulo Igzawa I, Ghwa Kiva and
Aissa Dugjé.
27
These are most likely of Saharan provenance and the
carnelian played a significant role in Garamantian international trade, at
least from the point of view of Roman authors.
28
It is notable that carnelian
and amazonite beads are also found in contemporary Niger Bend sites and
probably somewhat later at Igbo-Ukwu.
29
In general, though, the archae-
ological data suggest that the southern Lake Chad Basin was not playing
a central role in sub-continental exchange networks through this period.
As we will see, the situation changed considerably in the mid/late first
millennium AD. A wider variety of exotic artefact types, including cowries
and glass and carnelian beads, began to appear on sites in the region,
although such material is never really abundant.
30
In addition, the remains
of at least a dozen horses were recovered during excavations at Aissa Dugjé,
the earliest dating to calAD 620–890 (1310±60 BP; Δ13 -16.2; TO-7515).
31
In later times, horses would of course be heavily implicated in warfare and
elite display across the Sudanic zone, and the discovery of horse remains
(in contexts indicating that their possession conferred some status) sug-
gests that the origins of these associations date to the late first
millennium AD at least. We should not push these inferences too far, but
it is worth remembering that the chief ‘product’exported from the
26
Haour 2008; Haour and Gado 2009.
27
Personal field notes. See also, Gronenborn 1998, 237–38; S. Magnavita et al. 2009, 54.
28
Insoll et al. 2004; Wilson 2012.
29
Insoll and Shaw 1997; MacDonald 2011.
30
S. Magnavita et al. 2009.
31
MacEachern et al. 2001; MacEachern 2012b.
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southern Lake Chad Basin during the historical period was slaves, and that
the first historical mention of such a trade from the broader area dates to
only perhaps two centuries later than the earliest horse remains from Aissa
Dugjé. Horses were also historically central to the process of slave-raiding
in the southern Lake Chad Basin, and until breeding populations were
established, they would probably have constituted an important trade good
in and of themselves. This is also the period associated with the discovery of
pottery originating in the Lake Chad Basin on the site of Marandet, about
800 km to the north-west near the Aïr Mountains in Niger,
32
a remarkable
testimony to the long-distance movement of a relatively fragile artefact
class at this time. During the second millennium AD, evidence for long-
distance trade is thus significantly more common in the region.
During the Garamantian period between approximately 1000 BC and AD
700,
33
the material evidence for contacts between the populated areas south of
Lake Chad and Saharan communities is thus quite minimal. Some potential
reasons for this will be evaluated below, but it is important to remember that
relations between these two areas were always dynamic through time. This
involved an initial period of settlement south of Lake Chad when Saharan
cultural connections were quite important, through a long period of relative
differentiation and separation contemporaneous with the Garamantes,
through what seems a period of steadily increasing contact from the late
first millennium AD. It is not as if there was a gulf fixed between these regions
that was eventually bridged after perhaps AD 700, but rather a developing set
of late Holocene cultural configurations that interacted more strongly at some
times than at others.
I turn now to the evidence of burials and grave goods around Lake Chad,
separating my coverage into areas that correspond primarily to different
research programmes, themselves correlated with different geographical/
cultural zones.
Burials in the Southern Lake Chad Basin
Gajiganna Culture and Succeeding Sites South-West of Lake Chad
A number of burials were encountered during the original excavations on
Gajiganna habitation sites.
34
Four burials from the NA90/5A site probably
date from approximately 1250–1000 BC; all were buried in a flexed
32
S. Magnavita 2017.
33
Mattingly 2003, 348–49.
34
Breunig et al. 1996, 135; Wendt 2007, 16, 22.
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position, with arms flexed near the head, and with no common orientation.
There was no evidence for grave pits or grave goods. Two were adult males,
and two juvenile females. A very similar, and very poorly preserved,
interment was discovered in excavation on the NA90/5D site, but dating
to the seventh century AD –which testifies to the stability of this burial
practise. Carlos Magnavita notes the existence of five burials at the
Gilgila (Gajiganna Phase II: c.1300–900 BC), Zilum (‘Gajiganna Phase
III’:c.500 BC) and Gilgila, Elkido Nord and Dorota (early Iron Age: c.AD
100–600) sites in the same area.
35
These are very similar to the other
Gajiganna burials: burials within habitation sites, crouched positions
with flexed arms, a variety of orientations, and no evidence for grave
goods. At Zilum, it appears that pits used for craft industries, probably
tanning, were later reused as secondary burials.
36
Most of the burials
appear to be on their right sides.
As noted above, there are very rare finds of central Saharan carnelian
and amazonite in these sites dating from the mid first millennium BC
onward, none of which are certainly associated with burials contexts.
Daima and Other Sites in Borno
Graham Connah excavated a number of anthropic (‘tell’) mound sites in
Borno in the 1960s, most notably Daima.
37
In the course of that field-
work, he recovered the remains of four individuals from Borno 38, nine
from Kursakata, and approximately 67 from the large excavations at
Daima. The period covered by these excavations runs from the first half
of the first millennium BC (Borno 38 and Kursakata) through to per-
haps 600 BC to AD 1200 (Daima). In general, the pattern of burials on
these sites through most of this period was similar to that of the
Gajiganna sites noted above. Burials were located in habitation sites,
with grave pits (when detectable) averaging about a metre in depth.
At Kursakata, the nine interments were sufficiently clustered in depth, in
a relatively small excavation unit, that led Connah to believe they may
be from a cemetery context.
38
The skeletons were strongly flexed, usually
with hands close to the face, and most often on their right sides.
Directional orientation of the body was quite variable until Daima III
times (probably c.AD 700 –1200, significantly later than the burials
from the Gajiganna area further to the west), when almost all skeletons
35
Magnavita 2008, 24–25, 36–43, 54–60.
36
Magnavita 2008, 125.
37
Connah 1981.
38
Connah 1981, 95.
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where orientations could be identified were buried with their heads to
the west.
There is also little evidence for grave goods until the Daima III period.
Connah noted the considerably greater diversity of the grave goods from
Daima III contexts, and their increased evidence for contacts beyond the
immediate region of the firki clay plains.
39
Daima III grave goods include
iron, bronze/brass and copper ornaments, and a great diversity of carne-
lian, stone, glass and ostrich eggshell beads. The change in burial customs
can be perhaps best represented by Burial I in the Daima III levels, a sub-
adult individual buried with 4,181 beads and cowrie shells, of which
approximately 2,850 are glass or carnelian beads. It is notable that some
of the jewellery found in Daima III levels, for example, the necklace and
bracelet associated with Burial 27, are quite similar to Garamantian exam-
ples that are presumably some centuries older.
40
This may, of course, be
due simply to limits in the possibilities of stringing a common repertoire of
bead types.
There is artefactual evidence for a good deal of cultural continuity
between the Daima II and Daima III periods, but evidently by Daima III
times, the inhabitants of the site were more integrated into exchange net-
works that articulated with Saharan trading systems. It is interesting that the
contemporary Yau site in the Komadugu Yobe valley close to the border
with Niger, north-westof the Gajiganna sites and also excavated byConnah,
yielded no burials and almost no evidence of exotic artefacts beyond a single
cowrie shell.
41
This serves to remind us that there were probably significant
differences in the ways that particular settlements articulated with wider
exchange networks at this time.
Detlef Gronenborn investigated a number of plains sites near Daima,
and discovered 18 burials in Ndufu (probably late first millennium BC,
found over approximately 1.5 m vertically), a single burial at Mege (date
uncertain, but possibly the late first millennium AD) and one burial at
Ngala (eighth century AD).
42
Gronenborn believes that the concentration
of burials at Ndufu again indicates a cemetery, and that layers of ash and
fire-reddened clay associated with the burials was part of a funeral ritual.
In all cases, these individuals were buried in strongly flexed positions, with
no standard orientation of the skeleton. No grave goods were found
with the 18 individuals buried at Ndufu, but carnelian beads were found
with the Mege burial.
39
Connah 1981, 173–78.
40
Connah 1981, 174–75; Mattingly et al. 2009, 127,Fig. 15a.
41
Connah 1981, 201–12.
42
Gronenborn 1998.
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Mandara Burials
In the course of excavations on sites around the Mandara Mountains during
the mid-1990s, we recovered burials from a number of sites, all dating to the
Iron Age. Two burials were recovered from units on the Doulo Kwovré
habitation site (PMW 631), a well-preserved sub-adult (Fig. 13.2) and
a partial adult skeleton. Both were dated to the first half of the second
millennium AD, on the basis of ceramic associations. Both were buried in
a flexed position on their right sides: the sub-adult’sarmswereflexed,andthat
individual appears to have been clasping an egg in their hands. About 20 cm
vertical depth of the burial pit was detectable in the case of the sub-adult.
Nineteen human burials were uncovered in the course of excavations at
the Aissa Dugjé (PMW 642) site, which was occupied between the middle
of the first and the early second millennia AD.
43
Many of these were very
poorly preserved; in addition, our agreements with local Islamic commu-
nity leaders involved getting their approval to excavate when burials were
found, and we did not continue with excavation after the initial discovery
of six of the burials. In all of these cases, interments were discovered within
the multiple mounds that characterise the site. For the most part, these
were adult burials, often placed under cairns made of stones and pots, and
in a number of cases probable L-shaped burial pits were noted, similar to
Figure 13.2. Sub-adult burial from the Doulo Kwovré site (PMW 631).
43
Bourges et al. 1999; MacEachern et al. 2001; MacEachern 2012b.
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those made in non-Islamic communities in the Mandara Mountains today.
Infants and young children were frequently buried in large pots, generally
similar to those used for beer and water storage in the area today. In all
non-pot burials, skeletons were flexed, usually on their right sides, and
where hand/arm positions were detectable, they were drawn up to the face.
Some of the pot burials were so tightly contracted as to suggest that the
bodies were bound before being placed in the vessels. Intact pots were
associated with a number of burials, and a carnelian bead may have been
associated with one burial dating to the late first millennium AD.
A concentration of four burials in a limited area of Unit 1 excavations
may indicate part of a cemetery, as was noted from other sites. One
characteristic of this site, and of other mound sites excavated in this area
during the 1980s and 1990s,
44
was the presence of isolated human bones,
bone fragments and teeth in excavation units, not associated with intact
burials. This probably testifies to the degree of disturbance caused by
human activity on these mound sites through time. There were rare finds
of carnelian beads from these sites, dating from the first millennium BC
onward, but none were definitively associated with burial contexts.
We should note as well that another form of burial practice informs the
question of regional connections at Aissa Dugjé –that of the horses noted
above. Skeletal remains from a dozen domesticated equids (ponies or small
horses) were found at the site (Fig. 13.3), and at least four of these were in
burial pits; these include one very old animal with hip dysplasia, unable to
be ridden, probably fed while tethered and ultimately buried in association
with a dog. It is probable that these animals were being bred locally and had
been so for some time, given that local breeds of small equids were also
characteristic of the region through the historical period. But they certainly
constitute evidence of some inter-regional contacts in the Lake Chad Basin
before the late first millennium AD, either across the Sahara or via the Nile
Valley. Practices similar to the Aissa Dugjé horse burials are known from
a number of late precolonial communities along the eastern edge of the
Mandara Mountains, and it is likely that in early times at least these horses
were kept more for their role as status symbols than as tools of war and
aggression.
The Thuliva Kwacha (PMW 768) mound site in Nigeria, within 200 m of
the Cameroonian border, was not excavated, but burials in pots were
eroding out the banks of a seasonal stream adjacent to the site
in August 1993 (Fig. 13.4). The bones were very scattered, but seemed to
44
David and MacEachern 1988.
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include a variety of adults and sub-adults. The age of this site is unknown,
but it probably dates to the late Iron Age. To date, no burials have been
recovered from sites in the Mandara Mountains.
‘Sao’and Related Sites
Survey and excavations since the late 1940s by Jean-Paul Lebeuf and
colleagues in areas of Cameroon and Chad close to Lake Chad (and
primarily associated with modern Kotoko people) have uncovered the
Figure 13.3. Horse burial from Aissa Dugjé (PMW 642).
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remains of more than 600 sites, which Lebeuf designated as ‘Sao’–
a terminology associated with the pre-Islamic, pre-Kanuri populations of
the region.
45
These prehistoric sites certainly display similarities in material
culture to others around the southern Lake Chad Basin, and use of the term
‘Sao’to designate these specific sites is thus to some degree associated with
a particular research programme. Over more than 20 years of fieldwork, this
research programme involved the production of a map of archaeological
sites and large-scale excavations on a number of anthropic mound sites.
46
Students and colleagues, especially Augustin Holl, continued that work.
47
One problem with some of the excavations is a relative lack of chron-
ological control, so that cultural sequences are sometimes difficult to
discern.
48
The walled mound site of Mdaga, situated north of
N’Djaména, certainly originated in the Iron Age, but different parts of
the site provide radiocarbon sequences from the second century BC until
the eighteenth century AD, and there is some evidence for mixing of
materials from different parts of the site. It appears that approximately
57 skeletons were recovered in the course of excavations on the Mdaga site,
Figure 13.4. Pot burial exposed in stream bank at the Thuliva Kwacha site (PMW 768).
45
Lange 1989.
46
Lebeuf 1962; 1969; Lebeuf et al. 1980.
47
See especially Holl 1988a; 2001.
48
For example Lebeuf et al. 1980.
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along with a cemetery of pot burials about 200 m south-west of the main
mound.
49
The burials within the habitation mound seem to be distributed
fairly evenly through the stratigraphy; in contrast with the other areas exam-
ined to this point, the majority of individuals appear to have been buried in an
extended position and often on their backs, although this varies somewhat
across the site. The orientation of the burials is quite varied. There is little
information available on grave goods associated with these mound burials,
but the recovery of more than 250 carnelian beads from the excavations is of
interest. The pot burials off the mound itself probably date from the later part
of the occupation sequence, given their proximity of the ground surface, and
link the site to others in the region (see below). At least three of the pot burials
also contained carnelian and/or glass beads, while another contained three
copper bracelets.
Work near Lake Chad in Cameroon by Holl has uncovered evidence for
a complex cultural sequence that probably begins in the late first
millennium BC.
50
About a dozen burials were recovered from habitation
contexts on a number of sites, and dating to the late first and early second
millennia AD. In general, these resemble burials at Mdaga and other ‘Sao’
sites: most were straightforward inhumations, buried in extended or
slightly flexed positions and with varying orientations, and with few
grave goods except for pottery and rare carnelian beads. There were also
a number of child pot burials at the Mishikwa site, directly comparable to
those at Aissa Dugjé and probably also dating from the late first
millennium AD. On the mound site of Houlouf, however, a similar burial
pattern over the period of approximately AD 500–1400 (that is, extended
inhumations with few grave goods, scattered through the deposits) was
replaced c.AD 1500–1600 by a cemetery containing 25 adult pot burials,
apparently arranged in a social ranking system.
51
Grave goods were again
dominated by a variety of artefacts made of copper alloys, and carnelian
beads, of which over 900 were found.
Durbi Takusheyi
Although they sit well outside the Lake Chad Basin, the extraordinary
Durbi Takusheyi elite burials in the kasar hausa, between Katsina and
Daura in north-central Nigeria, are worthy of note in this context.
52
The seven tumuli at this site, with a long and complex history of
49
Lebeuf et al. 1980, 91–96.
50
Holl 1988a; 2001.
51
Holl 1994.
52
Gronenborn et al. 2012.
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investigations, probably were built at various times between the thirteenth
and early sixteenth centuries AD, during a period of florescence of devel-
oping Hausa elites. The very rich grave goods recovered from these tumuli,
including various copper alloy and gold objects, cowries and glass and
carnelian beads, testify to active participation in exchange networks and
systems of elite display extending to the Near East at least. It is likely that
most of these objects were either procured directly from Saharan sources
(for example the carnelian beads) or brought into the region along Central
Saharan trade networks.
Interpretations from Grave Contexts
Burial Contexts
There was a good degree of consistency in burial practices in the southern
Lake Chad Basin in the period under study, and also in the ways in which
those practices changed through time. First, known burials through the
entire period are found within or in very close proximity to habitation
sites, both the mound sites that are such prominent points upon the plains
landscape and on flat (but perhaps ditched/walled) sites like Zilum and
Elkido Nord. A comparatively large number of burials are encountered in
even quite modest excavations in some cases. This is of course very much
related to the fact that all of the archaeological research programmes in the
region have involved survey for habitation sites, so that off-site burials have
much more rarely been located; it is entirely possible –and indeed, given the
relationship between community sizes and numbers of recovered burials,
quite likely –that at least some people were buried away from habitation
sites. That being said, placement of the dead in close and constant contact
with the living was a common cultural element, one that invokes complex
historical relationships and often justification for residence and control over
particular places.
53
This is a striking contrast with modern practice, not merely in the now-
Islamised plains but in the communities of the Mandara Mountains that
seem to be at least in part historically related to Iron Age southern plains
sites. In Mandara communities, demarcated cemeteries play similar roles
of historical positioning through their spatial and ideological placement at
the centre of dispersed farming communities.
54
Southern Lake Chad Basin
burial locations also provide a significant contrast with the contexts of
53
Chapman 2008; Evans 2005.
54
MacEachern 2002.
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Garamantian burials, which involved placement in formal cemeteries away
from nucleated habitation sites and, it appears, a more complex typology of
tomb types.
55
This tendency to bury at least some dead individuals in close
proximity to the active living probably also accounts for some of the
characteristics of the burials discovered, perhaps especially in mound
sites: the orientations of inhumations tended to be quite variable (probably
because of the complexity of depositional circumstances); there is abun-
dant evidence for prehistoric disturbance and damage to the remains; and
fragmentary human skeletal material is often found throughout the soil
matrix more generally.
There is significant differentiation in burial postures in different parts of
the region. Skeletons in north-eastern Nigerian and northern Cameroonian
sites (and thus south-west and south of Lake Chad), tend to be buried in
flexed/contracted postures, usually with hands in front of the head and
usually but by no means always on their right sides. On the ‘Sao’sites and
other sites south-east of and closer to Lake Chad, extended burials are more
common even in pre-Islamic periods, and seem to be a majority on sites like
Mdaga. The other marked contrast between the two areas is in the preva-
lence of human burials in large pots or double pots. On relatively weak
chronological evidence, this practise may be older and is certainly more
widespread in the south-eastern ‘Sao’sites, and indeed the large ceramic
vessels used in these burials are known as ‘Sao pots’through the southern
Lake Chad Basin. They may have been used first for burials of children and
later for adults; certainly by the time of the Houlouf cemetery in the
mid second millennium AD, they were being used for high-status male
burials. Such burials tend to be rarer and later south-west of the lake.
The region around the Mandara Mountains seems to be to some degree
an area of overlap between these two regional sub-traditions. Skeletons
found within mound sites in that area are usually flexed/contracted and
mostly lying on their right sides, as in northern Nigeria. Uniquely, as far as
I am aware, at Aissa Dugjé, we have evidence for L-shaped burial pits and
cairns of pots and stones above the burials. However, there were also
a number of burials of sub-adults in large single pots on the site through
the occupation period, which links Aissa Dugjé to burial practices on the
‘Sao’sites. The practice of using large ‘Sao pots’for adult burials seems to
have spread more widely through the southern Lake Chad Basin in the
early second millennium AD, and as noted above they are found in Chad,
Cameroon and Nigeria.
56
55
Mattingly et al. 2009; Mattingly et al. 2010.
56
Connah 1981, 48, 55–57, 239–41.
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Artefacts
Artefact patterning associated with burials through time in these sites is
particularly interesting. There is relatively little evidence for the inclusion
of grave goods with burials in the region until the late first millennium AD:
some pottery is occasionally found in association with burials, but given
the intensity of human activity and disturbance on habitation sites, it is
often difficult to tell whether the association is deliberate or simply due to
taphonomic processes. As noted above, there are scattered, very infrequent
finds of carnelian and amazonite beads on the southern Lake Chad Basin in
different contexts of the first millennium BC to mid first millennium AD.
Given the likely value of these exotic artefacts and their association with
burials in later periods, it is very likely that these earlier discoveries were
also originally associated with burials and later disturbed, but that hypoth-
esis cannot be proven.
The presence of these exotic goods does indicate at least some indirect
exchange relationships between the southern Lake Chad Basin and the
Central Sahara in Garamantian times. A number of different factors, acting
together, may account for the small amount of material evidence for such
relations:
•these connections were extremely tenuous and sporadic during this
period;
•southern Lake Chad Basin communities were at the very end of sub-
continental exchange networks; and/or
•the goods most frequently exchanged in trade by these communities
were subsistence goods (for example salt and dried fish), as was the case
during the historical period, so that exotic artefacts only rarely made it to
the very end of the line of trading relations.
Any and all of these factors might play a part in explaining the rarity of
exotic items in this region at different times over this period. We do not
know whether any trade in slaves existed south of Lake Chad before
approximately the end of the first millennium AD, although the defensive
features around a number of settlements dating to the previous 1500 years
suggests that at least a local trade in captives might have existed.
It is clear that the frequency of these exotic artefacts, and especially
carnelian, increased very significantly from the late first millennium AD
onwards, both associated with burials and in contexts not obviously so
related. This presumably indicates more significant connections, and an
increased integration of the southern Lake Chad Basin into sub-
continental socio-economic systems, during this period. The rich burials
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from the Daima III period at Daima, Mdaga and Houlouf imply the emer-
gence of some degree of social rankings within regional communities,
expressed in part by the accumulation of valuable and exotic items that
would eventually be used as grave goods. In general, there is a strong
association between the number of burials and the number of exotic beads
found on sites during this period. This suggests that these exotic artefacts
were not restricted to funerary contexts, but rather certain communities.
57
Although there are few exotic grave goods such as carnelian at Aissa Dugjé,
the presence of horses on that site (some deliberately buried) provides
similar associations of emergent political power and far-flung socio-
political connections. The origins of the various copper-alloy artefacts
found in burials from this same time period and onwards are more obscure,
since they could either be of West African origin or Saharan or Trans-
Saharan imports: on balance, for this time and area, the latter seems more
likely.
58
At the same time, these artefacts do provide similar evidence for
social ranking in these later communities.
Discussion
It is fairly obvious from the evidence surveyed in this chapter that archae-
ological investigations of relationships between the Central Sahara and the
Lake Chad Basin are just beginning. There is relatively little that would
permit researchers to detect movement of people from this latter area into
the Garamantian world during the mid/late Holocene, especially given the
cultural disruptions that would go along with enslavement. Some charac-
teristic genetic features might indicate specific regional ancestry, but in
general neither the timing nor the geographical spread of such character-
istics are known with great accuracy.
59
Isotopic approaches may provide
data on the origins and movement of individuals,
60
but the utility of stable
carbon isotope ratios is somewhat impaired by the discovery of sorghum
and millet on Garamantian sites, while spatial and temporal variability in
strontium and oxygen ratios around the Sahara are not well understood.
Discovery of artefacts and practices correlating to particular sub-
Saharan cultural systems might provide further insights into contacts
57
A similar situation takes place in Fazzan several hundred years earlier with a concentration of
Mediterranean imports in associated settlement and funerary contexts, see Mattingly et al.,
Chapter 2, this volume.
58
Craddock and Hook 1995.
59
For example Podgorná et al. 2013.
60
Power et al., Chapter 4, this volume.
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between these regions, but the specificity of such practices must be kept in
mind. Pot burials were distinctive of southern Lake Chad Basin sites, for
example, but there is no reason to think that such burials would be permitted
among enslaved people in Fazzan. The fascinating discovery of a female
burial with a lip-plug in a Garamantian cemetery certainly hints at sub-
Saharan affinities, but provides little further information than that, given the
wide distribution of this artefact type.
61
Other artefact types and production
techniques (for example, hand-made pottery or roulette decoration) may
also indicate sub-Saharan origins, but again provide rather little specific
information on where those origins might be. A significant sample of
distinctive decorative motifs might show the movement of pots themselves,
while analyses of forming practices in the ‘chaîne opératoire’of ceramic
production could indicate the presence of sub-Saharan potters on
Garamantian sites –but to this point samples do not exist for these inves-
tigations. It is likelythat, in the medium term at least, archaeometric analyses
of specific artefact types found on either Saharan or sub-Saharan sites will
continue to provide the most useful information on material flows, whether
these involve ceramics, stone or glass beads or other materials that can often
be sourced with some precision.
62
In a recent conference paper, Wynne-Jones and Haour provocatively
examined the implications of ‘small-world’systems forthe study of exchange
in Africanist archaeology,
63
while Haour has also written about networks of
trust in trade systems around the Central Sahara, especially as these would
have been transformed with the coming of Islam.
64
These issues must be
related in this region, as they no doubt are in manyother areas of the world.
Shared, super-regional ideological systems that can bind together far-flung
centres and actors into interacting networks, even ‘thin’ones (as with Islam
in the second millennium AD Sahara, or Christianity in mediaeval Western
Europe), can be a potent force for facilitating economic and cultural inter-
change. Such ideological systems may have a considerable time-depth in the
Sahara and Sahelian zones,
65
although the particular case of literate, uni-
versalist world religions is probably quite different from anything that had
gone before. We have much less information for areas of such networks
further to the south in Africa. There seems to be a complex, overlapping
florescence of site nucleation, ironworking and figurine production that
stretches from at least the Walasa area, south of Lake Chad, toward the Jos
Plateau from the mid first millennium BC onward, and that may involve
61
Mattingly et al., Chapter 2, this volume.
62
S. Magnavita 2017.
63
Wynne-Jones and Haour 2014. See also Sindbaek 2007.
64
Haour 2017.
65
MacDonald 1998.
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some such shared cultural/ideological elements.
66
It may be that southern
Lake Chad Basin communities were more broadly engaged with elements of
that network, as sedentism and its consequences became more and more
significant after about 500 BC. However, that cultural system is known only
in its vaguest outlines to this point.
For the time periods associated with Garamantian culture in Fazzan
(that is between about 1000 BC and AD 700), there is little evidence for
interchange between the southern Lake Chad Basin and Central Saharan
communities. The presence of rare carnelian and amazonite beads on
Chadian sites does indicate that such interchange sporadically took place,
although its nature is difficult to evaluate. Initially, quite egalitarian socie-
ties south of Lake Chad, where (in contrast to the lands south of the Niger
Bend) gold was unavailable, would probably have been of interest to the
Garamantian state chiefly as a source of slaves, especially during the latter
part of this period.
67
It is extremely unlikely that any enslavement of
southern Lake Chad Basin peoples during this period would have involved
the Garamantes directly, and much more likely that slaving ‘sub-
contractors’(peripheral groups engaged in taking slaves and selling them
to commercial centres) would have been located in the archaeologically
nearly-unknown areas directly north-east and north-west of Lake Chad,
and thus intermediate between Fazzan and the lands south of the lake.
In southern Saharan environments experiencing increasing aridification,
the agricultural resources of increasingly sedentary communities further to
the south would have been significant as well, so any slave raids could have
been a part of broader interaction networks. In the Mandara Mountains
during the historical period, seasonal slave raiding, often by ‘sub-
contractors’, coexisted with significant trading and exchange networks.
68
It is possible that some similar relations might have existed in the southern
Lake Chad Basin in earlier times.
There has been a good deal of discussion about the settlement nucleation
and enclosing ditches that are found at Zilum and related sites south-west
of Lake Chad from c.500 BC onward.
69
Before these sites were located, it
was assumed that socio-political contexts had not generated large villages
and defensive features for a thousand years after that time. It is probable
that the processes leading to such large and complex sites are primarily
endogenous, but one wonders if slave raiding from the western and north-
66
Breunig et al. 2008; MacEachern 2013.
67
Fentress 2011; Mattingly 2011.
68
MacEachern 1993.
69
Magnavita et al. 2004; Magnavita et al. 2006.
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western borders of Lake Chad may have played a role in their formation as
well. This is certainly more likely than the immigration of masses of refugee
Near Eastern nobility proposed by other researchers.
70
It is quite likely that
substantial contacts between Fazzan and the Niger Bend began earlier than
they did to the southern Lake Chad Basin, West African gold likely providing
a significant impetus to the former.
71
The late first/early second millennia AD was the period in which the
environs of Lake Chad begin to be mentioned in Arabic historical sources,
originally involving the state of Kanim and rather quickly its trade in slaves.
It is also during this period that evidence for material contacts between the
southern Lake Chad Basin and communities in the Central Sahara became
much more significant. It is likely that these processes, historical recogni-
tion, enslavement and trade, were linked at some level. They might, for
example, reflect an increase in the strength and reach of exchange systems
around Lake Chad, probably with slaves increasingly sought as one of the
primary resources tradable for exotic, high-status artefacts. As noted, sub-
stantial nucleated settlements had existed south of Lake Chad from the
middle of the first millennium BC, but archaeological and historical evi-
dence for local socio-political differentiation, active participation in sub-
continental exchange systems, and large-scale slave raiding does not
appear for over a thousand years after that. Increased participation in
these exchange networks predates any strong evidence for Islam in the
regions around Lake Chad, at least; most of the societies now occupying the
areas where these archaeological sites are found remained substantially
non-Muslim until after AD 1500. It appears more generally that, around
the Central Sahara, the expansion of exchange networks predated the
influence of Islam by at least a century or two. As Haour says, ‘...[T]he
fundamental difference between the pre-Islamic and the Islamic contexts
was not one of nature, but of scale...’
72
and the number of people involved
in inter-regional exchange systems was probably very small indeed. At the
same time, Haour is undoubtedly correct that participation in shared
Islamic sociocultural systems acted to facilitate the expansion of these
trading systems.
One important element in the dynamics of trade and exchange
around Lake Chad may be the role of the Garamantian polity itself,
and particularly its demise. It is quite likely that the environmentally
linked disappearance of the Garamantian state in the mid first
70
Lange 2004; compare with Magnavita and Breunig 2008.
71
MacDonald 2011; S. Magnavita 2009.
72
Haour 2017.
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millennium AD opened the field to ambitious former slaving sub-
contractors and traders living in more amenable environments around
Lake Chad to the south. These would eventually appear in history
within just a few centuries as the rulers of Kanim –still raiding for
slaves yet further to the south and trading into and across the Sahara to
the north. The greatly increased frequency of Saharan and other exotic
artefacts south of Lake Chad might then have resulted in part from the
possibilities of more direct participation in sub-continental exchange
networks after Garamantian control of those networks ended, as well as
to increasing levels of social and political hierarchy in the area. If that
were the case, we might see this change in the socio-political balance of
power as the long-term continuation of the processes of aridification
that led to the appearance of Gajiganna people south-west of Lake
Chad more than two millennia earlier, in parallel with the relative
depopulation of the southern Sahara, and thus gave rise to the complex
constellation of peoples that exist in the region today.
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