Rise of Civ. - Africa D. A. Wilkinson

Introduction

It was not until the 1920s that the global archaeological community began to admit the very possibility of “African civilization” – which was seen as contradiction in terms.

Racist and colonial ideologies assumed that civilization was beyond the capabilities of Black Africans - evidence for urban communities or states within Africa regarded as the result of foreign influence or colonization by outsiders.

Even today, African states still very marginal in archaeological accounts of the ancient world, compared to their more glamourous rivals such as the Maya or ancient Egyptians. Consider how little attention Africa gets in textbooks compared with other civilizations of the Old World.

However, the refusal to admit potential existence of African societies was not for want of physical evidence.

Nubia

- Location of tropical Africa’s first cities and states- Between 1st and 6th cataracts of the Nile- Upper Nubia is to the south, Lower Nubia is to the north (like Upper and Lower Egypt)

The presentation of ancient Egypt as a civilization tends to rely overly on the modern political boundaries of the Egyptian nation-state, however, present-day borders are often misleading when back-read onto ancient states and empires. Egypt was the northern part of a broader area along the Nile which saw the emergence of state societies. The southern part, which includes much of Sudan, is referred to as Nubia (or by the ancient Egyptians as Kush). The history of interactions between Nubia and Egypt is one of constant push and pull between the two powers for dominance over zone between their two heartlands (Lower Nubia). At times Egypt was dominant, and at others, Nubia was dominant.

Site of KERMA emerges as centre of a significant polity around time of Egyptian Old Kingdom – reaching its peak during 2nd Intermediate Period (the ‘classic Kerma’ phase).

Evidence of clearly non-Egyptian architectural forms‘Circular structure’ – c. 1500-2000 BC, prob. with conical roof 12 metres highSimilar to African elite audience chambers

Western Deffufa - 27 by 52 metres, adobe temple, modified over long period

Royal cemetery consisting of burial mounds (unlike pyramid/mastaba burials from contemporary Egypt). Largest 91 metres in diameter. 322 sacrificed humans found in one tumulus, along with large numbers of cattle. Site excavated by Charles Bonnett in 1990s and 2000s.

Kerma society, although having urban centres was not based on settled agricultural production as was Egypt further to the north. Nubia is primarily composed of shifting desert and grassland pastures, and the Nile Valley is very narrow and deep (usually too narrow to permit major cultivation). Such as landscape is more suited to nomadic pastoralism based on herds rather than planted cereal crops. Cattle herding was the foundation of the economy at Kerma, and the term “mobile elites” is often used to describe the way its social hierarchy operated. It is typical to think of pastoralists as being people who do not create cities, because they live highly mobile lifestyles, but the site of Kerma demonstrates that this is not always the case.

Evidence of Egyptian styles often interpreted as cultural influence or colonization

In the 7th and 8th Centuries BC, after the fall of the New Kingdom - Egypt is conquered by Nubia. 25th Dynasty pharaohs are Nubian. The 25th Nubian dynasty of Egypt and Nubia is the only time in history that the Nile has been unified into a single polity from the 1st to the 6th cataracts.

Site of MEROË emerges as capital of major state during the Ptolemaic (Greek) Period. Heavily influenced by Egyptian culture as a result of having conquered Egypt – compare Roman adoption of Greek culture after conquering Greece.

Meroë well-known for its pyramids, but 2-3 ky after Egypt. Laying claim to Egyptian past not present. More complex than simple emulation? Perhaps evoking prestige of a shared Nilotic past? Compare 20th Century Washington D.C. and classical Rome/Greece.

Synthesis of Egyptian (e.g. Isis, Hathor, Amun) and Nubian (e.g. Apademek) gods and goddesses – not 2 different religions but a synthesis of the pantheons (a process known as syncretism).

Traditional Egyptologist’s View of Egypt and Nubia

• Nubia seen as subordinate to Egypt, based heavily on Egyptian documentary descriptions of Nubian societies

• Historical agency and dynamism often located in Egypt, with Nubia seen as reacting or responding to developments further north

• Described by Thomas Barfield (2001) as a ‘Vulture Empire’ that preyed upon and took advantage of Egyptian weakness and internal strife

• Tendency to look for Egyptian cultural influence in Nubian sites as evidence for the diffusion of Egyptian civilization to Nubia

Revisionist Approach of Archaeologists

• Ancient Nubia described by David O’Connor (1993) as ‘Egypt’s rival in Africa’• Old Kingdom Egypt and Early Kerma regarded as mutually stimulating each

other’s urban development• Search for Nubian cultural influence on Egypt as well as vice versa• Nubia seen as powerful, militarized, centralized state that was able to resist Egypt

as a peer, rather than an unruly Egyptian colony in the Sudan.

Jenné-jeno

Historical sources describe large number of trading cities on southern edges of Sahara (the Sahel, meaning “shore” in Arabic) from 8th Century AD onwards e.g. Timbuktu, Gao and Koumbi Saleh. Also, from the around 1000 AD onwards, we see a series of large-scale kingdoms and empires emerge along the Sahel belt. These include the kingdom of Ghana and the empires of Mali and Songhay.

How did these urban societies develop? Traditionally seen as a consequence of the trans-Saharan trade (using camel caravans) and pioneered by Arabic-speaking Muslims from North Africa.

Sahara often conceived as an sea in the Middle Ages. Introduction of the Arabian domesticated camel to W. Africa in early 1st Mill. AD. Described as ‘ship of the desert’ – able to carry up to 150 kg over long distances, tolerate high temp. and go for days without water.

Archaeologist Peter Mitchell states: “For people living in the Sahara, its adoption was transformative, for those seeking to move things across it, revolutionary”.

Sahel zone on southern edges – a kind of shore. Towns were trading ports on the edge of a huge sea, albeit one of sand, not water.

Site of Jenné-jeno in Mali excavated by Susan and Roderick McIntosh in the 1980s and 1990s – has radically altered our understanding of urban origins in this region. The site is located on an island on the floodplain of the Inland Niger Delta (a false delta that does not discharge into the sea).

Urban development of Jenné-jeno

Phase I: AD 1- 300 Approx. 12 hectares (30 acres) in size Phase II: AD 300- 450 Approx. 25 hectares (62 acres) in sizePhase III: AD 450-850 Approx: 33 hectares (82 acres) in size

Including nearby satellite of Hambarketolo, total size comes to 41 hectares (100 acres).

The site shoes evidence for corporate labour activities in the form of an adobe wall which encircles the urban core (probably a flood-defence structure) that is 2km long and has an average width of 3.7 m.

Traditional View of West African Urbanism• Historical consensus that urban or state development south of the Sahara had not

occurred prior to the development of the trans-Saharan trade networks through Muslim caravans

• Impetus for social change attributed to non-African outsiders – the so-called ‘Arab Stimulus Paradigm’

• Long-distance exchange within the West African sahel, savanna and forested zones seen as emerging as a result of Arab trade with North Africa, rather than predating the trans-Saharan trade

Revisionist (Archaeological) View of West African Urbanism• Excavations at Jenné-jeno reveal urban societies dating to 1st Millennium AD –

some 700 years before the establishment of the trans-Saharan trade by Muslim caravans

• Jenné-jeno is therefore “too big, too early and too far south” (McIntosh and McIntosh 1980) for the Arab Stimulus Paradigm to be considered tenable

• Arab traders thus tapped into pre-existing exchange and trade networks rather than created them

There is no evidence for significant class stratification at Jenné-jeno, seen either in the urn burials that are common at the site, or in the size and elaboration of the residential architecture. As a result, Roderick McIntosh (1998) suggests Jenné-jeno society may have been organized through interacting ethnic groups or guilds, rather than occupational classes.

These ethnic groups or guilds would have been economically specialized (e.g. blacksmithing, hunting, trading) and would have exchanged resources with other groups. Different forms of craft production (ceramic manufacture, iron smelting etc.) appear to be clustered in different areas geographically in the Inland Niger Delta during the 1st

Millennium AD, suggesting that these activities were concentrated in the hands of interdependent ethnic and/or kin groups as McIntosh suggests.

Monumental projects such as the wall at Jenné-jeno would have been constructed through mutually agreed communal labour, rather than under the coercive direction of a government or ruling class. This is referred to as “heterarchy” in contradistinction to the more common idea of hierarchy.

Heterarchy is not simply the same as an absence of hierarchy, which would be egalitarianism. Jenne-jeno was a complex society, with central planning and urbanism. However it was not (apparently) governed on a hierarchical basis. People status was not earned in their lifetimes, because they were born into their occupation by virtue of

membership in an ethnic group – however the differences between such ethnic groups/occupational classes was not based on a pyramidal hierarchy.

Great Zimbabwe

As early as the 1600s , European explorers had noted the presence of large ruined stone-built settlements in southeastern Africa, what is now Zimbabwe – today some of Africa’s best-known archaeological sites.

João dos Santos, Portuguese explorer who traveled in what is now Zimbabwe –attributed them to influence from the Near East, specifically King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. An interpretation that was to dominate European’s interpretations of African ruins for centuries.

European interest in Africa grew substantially throughout the 1800s, beginning with various scientific and exploratory expeditions, such as David Livingstone’s travels in the 1850s and 1860s. It was exploration and mapping, the work of scientists that made possible the ‘Scramble for Africa’ in the 1880s, in which the continent was almost entirely carved up by the various European imperial powers. Possible – not just on the practical level of knowing what the terrain to be dominated and colonized looked like – but also possible on the level of ideological justifications.

The first European to take a serious interest in the ruins of Zimbabwe was Carl Mauch , a German geologist – who worked at Great Zimbabwe in 1871. Mauch’s excavations at the site were part of a determined effort to prove that local peoples could not have built a structure like Great Zimbabwe. In his own words he was trying to clear away the “decadence and filth of the Kaffir occupation”, meaning the material culture of the Mashona people who live in the area today. In doing so he actually destroyed most of the preserved archaeological remains at the site.

Cecil Rhodes – British South Africa company in MaShonaland from in 1890. Funded research by Royal Geographical Society and British Association for the Advancement of Science at Great Zimbabwe.

J. Theodore Bent carried out research funded by Rhodes – saw the builders of the site as a “northern race” dated to biblical times.

In 1971 the white supremacist Ian Smith government in Rhodesia ordered a ban on any publications that claim Great Zimbabwe was of Bantu origin

Great Zimbabwe is now recognized as the capital of a significant indigenous kingdom that dominated the Zimbabwe plateau from the 11th to the 15th centuries AD. It is but the largest of approximately 200 zimbabwe-style sites in the region.

The earliest evidence for state level complexity is found at the site of Mapungubwe (1100-1275) which might also be considered as a stratified chiefdom. There were clearly elite burials as seen through grave goods (including gold objects).

The term originates from the language of the MaShona people who currently reside in the area:

dzimba dza mabwe - “great houses of stone”dzimbahwe - “chiefly court or grave”

dzimba woye - “venerated houses”

The plural in the MaShona language is madzimbabwe

Cattle – able to be herded in large numbers on the Zimbabwe Plateau due to an absence of tsetse. A “peninsula in a sea of tsetse” (Graham Connah 2001). Great Zimbabwe sites are largely found above 1,000 m on the Zimbabwe Plateau where it is too cold for the tsetse fly to breed. The lack of Tsetse was the condition which allowed for very large herds of cattle to be kept and thus provided the economic basis for the Zimbabwe state.

Social relations – elite individuals and rulers especially probably practised polygamy. More wives meant more relatives whom one could call upon for exchange relations and military obligations

No evidence for figurative depictions or images of rulers, although soapstone birds have been interpreted as representing ‘royal ancestor figures’ by some archaeologists. Link to ancestors perhaps source of prestige and authority for elites.

Great Zimbabwe exhibits a pattern of urbanism that is highly dispersed – settlements and buildings are much less concentrated compared to what we find in Mesopotamia, Egypt or Harrapa. There are few multistory dwellings and no streets with a rigid grid plan. Why?

Some archaeologists (e.g. Roland Fletcher) have argued that this may be a feature of urbanism without writing (one of Childe’s secondary criteria). In order to resolve social conflict people moved to somewhere else rather than appeal to administrative or judicial authorities. This is much more practical in a society where one’s wealth is largely invested in cattle herds. Cattle, unlike fields and craft goods are mobile and so movement is much less costly than it is for people in more classic urban contexts. Lacking a need to regulate social conflict in tight, dense urban spaces, people may have not seen the need to develop complex law codes or the writing systems that they depend upon.

Africa therefore offers radically different models for understanding the character of urban societies that challenge the classic paradigms derived from Egypt, Mesopotamia and the other more ‘glamourous’ civilizations