Divine Consumption Sacrifice, Alliance Building, and Making Ancestors in West Africa - Monumenta Archaeologica

Kirikongo, in the west African country of Burkina Faso, is an archaeological site composed of thirteen remarkably well-preserved discrete mounds occupied continually from the early first to the mid second millennium AD. It spans a dynamic era that saw the growth of large settlement communities and regional socio-political formations, development of economic specializations, intensification in interregional commercial networks, and the effects of the Black Death pandemic.The extraordinary preservation of architectural units, activity areas and industrial zones provides a unique opportunity to discern the cultural practices that created stratified mounds (tells) in this part of West Africa. Building from a new detailed zooarchaeological analysis and refinements in stratigraphic precision, this book argues that repeated ritual activity was a significant factor in the accumulation of stratified archaeological deposits. The book details consistencies in form and content of discrete loci containing animal bones, food remains, and broken and unbroken objects and suggests that these are the remnants of sequential ancestor shrines created when domestic spaces were converted to tombs or dedicated mortuary monuments were constructed. Continuities and transformations in ancestral rituals at Kirikongo inform on earlier West African ritual practices from the second millennium BC as well as political and social transformations at the site. More broadly, this case study provides new insights on anthropogenic mound (tell) formation processes, social zooarchaeology, material culture theory, historical ontology, and the analysis of ritual and religion in the archaeological record.

ISBN:	9781950446278
Publisher:	Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press
Imprint:	Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press
Published date:	12 Jul 2022
DEWEY:	966.25
DEWEY edition:	23
Language:	English
Number of pages:	326
Weight:	1101g
Height:	286mm
Width:	222mm
Spine width:	23mm

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