Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Evidence of an Eleventh-Century AD Cola Nitida Trade into the Middle Niger Region

Evidence of an Eleventh-Century AD Cola Nitida Trade into the Middle Niger Region Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-021-09445-7 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Evidence of an Eleventh‑Century AD Cola Nitida Trade into the Middle Niger Region Nikolas Gestrich  · Louis Champion · Daouda Keïta · Nafogo Coulibaly · Dorian Q. Fuller  Accepted: 7 June 2021 / Published online: 5 July 2021 © The Author(s) 2021 Abstract Kola nut (Cola cf. nitida) and Safou fruit established by the end of the first millennium AD. It (Dacryodes edulis) remains have been discovered thereby supports the hypothesis that dates the incep- in eleventh- to fourteenth-century archaeological tion of trade between the West African forest zone contexts at Togu Missiri near Ségou in Mali. These and the savanna regions to the first millennium AD. remains are evidence of early trade in perishable The circumstances of the find are discussed, as are foodstuffs from the West African forest zone into the the implications for our understanding of the wider Middle Niger region. On the basis of these finds, this exchange network based on the Niger River system in paper argues that long-distance trade links were well the late first and early second millennium CE. Résumé Des fragments de noix de cola (Cola cf. N. Gestrich (*)  nitida) et de fruits de Safou (Dacryodes edulis) ont Frobenius Institute, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany été découverts dans des niveaux archéologiques du e-mail: gestrich@uni-frankfurt.de onzième au quatorzième siècle à Togu Missiri près de Ségou au Mali. Ces vestiges témoignent d’un com- L. Champion  merce précoce des denrées périssables de la zone for- Laboratoire Archéologie Et Peuplement de L’Afrique (APA), Anthropology Unit, Department of Genetics estière d’Afrique occidentale vers la région du Moyen and Evolution, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland Niger. Sur la base de ces découvertes archéologique, cet article montre que les liens commerciaux à longue D. Keïta  distance entre la zone forestière d’Afrique de l’Ouest Musée National du Mali, Bamako, Mali et de la région des savanes étaient déjà bien établis N. Coulibaly  dès la fin du premier millénaire AD. Les contextes et Institut Des Sciences Humaines du Mali, Bamako, Mali la nature de cette découverte sont discutés, ainsi que les implications sur notre compréhension du réseau D. Q. Fuller  Institute of Archaeology, University College London, d’échange basé sur le haut et moyen Niger à la fin du London, UK premier et au début du deuxième millénaire de notre ère. D. Q. Fuller  School of Cultural Heritage, Northwest University, Xi’an, China Keywords Kola nut · African plum · Stimulants · West African archaeology · Archaeobotany · Mali D. Q. Fuller  Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 404 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 Introduction The most common species of kola nuts in West Africa, and those responsible for the vast majority of Kola nuts (the seeds of Cola nitida or Cola acumi- consumed nuts, are Cola acuminata (Vent.) Schott nata) are important to West African cultures past and et Endl. and Cola nitida (P.Beauv.) Schott et Endl. present. These seeds contain caffeine, theobromine, These two are the economically most important of and kolanin, among other bioactive phenolic com- more than 125 Cola species native to the West Afri- pounds (Niemenak et al., 2008; Nyadanu et al., 2020). can forest zone (Burkill, 2000). The growing condi- In recent times, they have been essential as gifts for tions of the trees prevent them from prospering in almost any social occasion. They accompany visits, the drier climate north of the tropical forests (Fig. 1). negotiations, reconciliations, and many other events, Thus, large parts of West Africa in which kola nuts where they are given as a sign of respect or goodwill are regularly consumed lie outside of the areas where or as a form of symbolic payment. Kola nuts also fea- they can be grown, and so the nuts need to be moved ture centrally in divination and sacrifices and are val - to reach their consumers. The trade in kola nuts ued as mild stimulants that suppress hunger and thirst is considerable today, with a global production of (Lovejoy, 1995; Sundström, 1966). Their cultural 280,000 metric tons in 2016, of which Nigeria, the uses and symbolism are fairly well described for the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, and Ghana produced 97% forest zone (Drucker-Brown, 1995; Hauenstein, 1974; (Tridge, n.d.). Kwame, 2019) but less explicitly so for the western Despite their popularity as a trade item, kola nuts Sahel, where they are a constant yet peripheral feature in are not easy to transport. Since they must be kept ethnographic accounts (Bertaux, 1984; Boujou,  2000). moist, despite warm climatic conditions, and are sus- Although they are highly valued culturally, kola nuts ceptible to pests (Lovejoy, 1980, p. 97), they must be do not grow in the Sahel. Instead, they come from frequently unpacked, checked, watered, and repacked. the West African forest zone, a fact which has even Several authors have pointed out that trade in kola led to the cardinal direction south becoming named nuts (especially historical trade that did not rely on after kola nuts in several Sahelian Mandé languages. mechanized transport) must depend on established For example, the Bambara and Northern Maninka- commercial networks so that the nuts can reach their kan word for the “south” is “wòrodugu” — lit. “the destination before they are spoiled (Lovejoy, 1980, land of kola.” p. 106; Person 1968, p. 102). Even present-day kola Fig. 1 Distribution of main production area for Cola nitida, Cola acuminata, and Dacryodes edulis (Lovejoy, 1980, Burkill, 2000) and the archaeological site (Togu Missiri) where Cola sp. and Dacryodes edulis fruit remains were recovered 1 3 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 405 trade is seen as a high-risk venture, according to (Lovejoy, 1980, p. 106). This contrasts with the evolved Kirikoshi (2019), who stresses the importance of trust cognates shared across Benue-Congo languages and relationships between the parties in this trade. basal Bantu that presumably originated in the forest zone Kola nuts are thus a trade good that cannot be (Bostoen, 2014). Thirdly, Lovejoy (1980, p. 100) points traded casually. They require carefully planned trad- out that kola nuts are an acquired taste, which means ing operations, established routes, high mobility, that a market for them had to be created. This sets and close contact between persons over large geo- them apart from many other historical West African graphical distances to minimize the risk of spoiling trade items like salt, sandstone implements, iron, the merchandise. It may be due to this risk and these cloth, or grain which are arguably more fundamen- infrastructural demands that the profit margins were tal to human needs. In this regard, a lengthy period historically very high. Roberts (1987, p. 67) speaks of contact must have existed between the Sahel/ of a gross profit of 400% for traders from the Ségou savanna and the rainforest zones before a regular area in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while trade in kola nuts could be established. While the a late nineteenth-century source speaks of a value evidence presented in this paper is the earliest for increase of 6,000% on nuts bought in Ghana and sold kola nuts in the savanna zone so far, it probably near Lake Chad (Hopkins, 2016, p. 73). Between the does not date the beginning of the kola trade, and long distances to be overcome and the risk of loss it is definitely later than the beginning of trade rela - from spoiled commodity, the beginnings of this trade tionships between the forest and savanna zones. would have faced considerable obstacles. The ques- Much of the existing literature ties the begin- tion of when and under what circumstances such a nings of the forest-savanna trade to gold. This trade began remains to be answered. is, for instance, the case with Nehemia Levtzion, who saw contacts between the savanna and the forest areas as an effect of political developments driven by the gold trade. Levtzion (1973, p. 53) Kola Trade and Trade Networks in Middle Niger supposed that the political succession from the During the First and Second Millennia AD Empire of Ghana to Sosso and then to the Empire of Mali implies a progressive movement of the Lovejoy’s (1980) study on the interior regions pro- centers of power southward from the desert edges vides the most comprehensive overview of the his- towards the forest zone, although the accuracy torical, ethnographic, and linguistic evidence for of this orthodox version of West Sudanese his- the development of the West African kola trade to tory has been questioned (Gestrich, 2019; Hun- date (also see Brooks, 1980, for the treatment of wick, 1973; MacDonald et  al., 2018). Corollaries the coastal kola trade). He claims that the market of this shift, he believes, are that the Buré gold- for kola existed in the savanna by the thirteenth fields gained importance and that the populations century and proposes, though without firm evi - in the forest zone were drawn into the pre-existing dence, that it might have been established much long-distance trade networks of the savanna. This earlier than that. There are several indications that would date the inception of regular trade links to kola nuts are a product that must have been traded the early fourteenth century. Paradoxically, Lev- following a long formative period of exchange rela- tzion states elsewhere (1973, p. 181) that the use tionships, which allowed the kola nut to gradually of kola nuts was well established in the savanna gain popularity in the Sahel. Firstly, the perishable by then and that it “already fulfilled many of its nature of the nuts means they must be transported more recent economic and social functions” dur- quickly or traders risk losing their cargo. Hence, ing the period of the “great empires.” Certainly, routes with safe and fast passage must be known the fourteenth-century date for the inception of and negotiated in advance. Secondly, the linguis- the kola nut trade appears to be late since we have tic evidence of widely shared names across many documentary records that suggest the inclusion of languages suggests that kola nuts became avail- kola nuts in the trans-Saharan trade before 1356 able in the savanna and Sahel zones within a short (al-Maqqarī in Levtzion & Hopkins, 2000, p. 307). period, rather than through a lengthy, gradual spread 1 3 406 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 R. McIntosh sees a similar link to gold as a driver (1980) reconstruction of the linguistic evidence shows of north–south trade, though he believes this trade considerable diversity in words for kola nuts in the began considerably earlier, by the middle of the first languages of the forest zone. By contrast, the terms millennium AD. For R. McIntosh, the kola and gold for kola in the savanna from the Atlantic coast to trades are a southern add-on to earlier networks Lake Chad virtually all use a variation of goro or that brought iron, sandstone objects, and salt into woro, indicating that they are borrowed from a West the Inland Niger Delta in exchange for foodstuffs Atlantic language in the Sierra Leone-Guinea border and led to specialized and regular trading expedi- area, where the Niger has its headwaters. Although tions (McIntosh, 1998, p. 217). All of these relate to the kola nut was undoubtedly known throughout the the broader economic connections in the West Afri- forest zone, it therefore seems to have been this area can savanna and the Sahel, for which archaeological from where its commercialization and trade into the research is increasingly showing that a high-volume savanna began. This linguistic evidence also suggests trade over medium to long distances developed in that none of the other growing areas traded north the mid to late first millennium. The existence of sufficiently early to influence the vocabulary of the such interregional trading networks has been mostly savanna peoples, who had settled on the *goro root documented in iron (Gestrich, 2013; Gestrich & before areas like the Akan region became involved in MacDonald, 2018; Håland, 1980; McIntosh, 1995; the trade. When exactly the first regular trade links Serneels & Perret, 2003) and likely also extends to to the latter area developed is currently impossible foodstuffs, salt, sandstone, and charcoal. The main to say. However, the Gonja region of north  central drivers of this trade are the diversity in ecological Ghana seems to have been involved in trade with zones and regional variations in geology, which gov- the savanna, possibly the Inland Niger Delta, by the ern the distribution of plants, animals, and mineral twelfth century AD, as the presence of African rice resources such as iron ore, salt, and sandstone. These (Oryza glaberrima) at Old Buipe indicates (Cham- regional ecological and geological contrasts mean pion in Genequand et al., 2020), and thus, earlier than that many areas are abundant in a particular set of Wilks (1961) had previously suggested. vital resources while lacking others. If we suppose Thus, the extant literature documents the estab- Levtzion’s and McIntosh’s proposals for the connec- lishment of regular trade routes linking the West tion between gold and kola trades to be accurate, we African forest zone with the savanna and the desert might suggest that the kola trade developed before edge sometime between the mid-first millennium and the seventh or eighth century since this is when we the early second millennium AD. Through these net- have the earliest written mentions and earliest archae- works, which might have initially developed for gold ological evidence for the trans-Saharan gold trade trade, kola nuts began to be traded into the savanna (Nixon, 2017, p. 157–160). In this context, it is also and even across the Sahara. The initial trade seems to worth mentioning Brooks’ (1993) work on the early have focused on the source areas of the Niger river expansion of pre-European contact trade networks, in today’s Sierra Leone-Guinea border region, but in which he also links kola and gold as major factors it subsequently developed across several areas in in the rise of Mandé-speaking populations to politi- the forest zone, where kola trees were also known cal power and their demographic expansion. Brooks, and grown. From the outset, the trade in kola nuts however, sees this trade as developing in response to required well-known routes, at least part-time special- a southward shift in climatic zones around 1100. ized traders, and social contacts spanning large dis- In historical linguistics, names for kola are recon- tances. From the beginning of the second millennium structible to considerable time depths. Williamson AD, Togu Missiri near Ségou in Mali was part of this (1993) showed that terms for kola could be recon- trade network. structed in many West African proto-languages. A root that occurs in Benue-Congo languages in Nigeria and Cameroon is shared with Proto-Bantu and recon- The Maraka Settlement of Togu structed to *-bèdú (Blench, 2006; Bostoen, 2014). The term góóró from Songhay appears to have been spread Togu is today a large village on an unpaved road link- by Hausa traders later (Blench, 2006). Lovejoy’s ing the city of Ségou to the market town of Dioro. It 1 3 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 407 consists of a recent sprawling settlement and an older they play a key role in local histories preceding the core beside a large pond, which is seasonally fed from Segu fanga.  Their origins are controversial and their the canals of the neighboring irrigation scheme, the age was formerly unknown. Nevertheless, previous Opération Riz Ségou (see Fig. 2). During the time of authors have seen them as a key enduring part of an the Segu fanga, a polity founded in the early eight- ancient settled landscape (MacDonald & Camara, eenth century by “Biton” Mamari Coulibaly and 2011) and sociopolitical system (Bazin, 1972, 1988). effectively ended by El-hajj Umar Tall’s conquest in Although they were politically sidelined, they were 1860, Togu was one of the major marakadugu, set- not removed in the demographically and politically tlements of the Maraka group. The Maraka were, and turbulent developments of the fanga period and con- are, understood as a contrast to the majority Bamana tinued to be of commercial and religious importance. group (Bazin, 1972, 1985) and engaged in activities Our ongoing project has carried out archaeological that were not part of Bamana lifestyle, most signifi - surveys and excavations as well as extensive inter- cantly the practice of Islam, the refusal to take part views on local traditions in an attempt to gain a mul- in warfare, and an engagement in long-distance com- tiperspective understanding of the past of the Maraka merce. The marakadugu are the focus of a research and their neighboring communities. This undertaking program which aims to understand the settlement brought team members to Togu on several occasions and population dynamics in the area between the between 2016 and 2020. Niger and the Bani before the eighteenth century. As Richard Roberts (1987) has described for Sin- Together with the Traoré lineages (Bazin, 1988), zani, one of the main Maraka centers of trade and Fig. 2 Location of the site below the eastward turn of the Niger at Markala (archaeological sites of the area are shown in black) 1 3 408 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 production in the Segu fanga, the Maraka commer- of the settlements at Togu and that it was inhabited cial activities took several forms. Instead of trading by one of the founding lineages of the Jiré patronym. in the market, the Maraka of Sinzani mainly acted as brokers (jatigi) to Azawagh Arab (Suraka) traders bringing salt from the north, in exchange primarily The Site of Togu Missiri for slaves, which the Segu fanga supplied in large numbers. Yet, there was also a southern component Togu Missiri consists of a cluster of thirteen set- of this trade, based entirely on foodstuffs, in which tlement mounds, seemingly in two distinct areas Maraka traders were directly involved. Accord- (Fig. 4). The mounds are most likely the remains of a ing to our informants in the region, salt, dried fish, single settlement, with the lower-lying areas between and sunbala (a condiment made from the fermented them representing seasonal ponds, open spaces, and pods of the nɛ̀rɛ tree — Parkia biglobosa) were car- roadways. The height of the mounds varies between ried south on donkeys as far as Man, Bouaké, and 1.5 and 3.0  m. The excavations carried out in Janu- Abidjan in Cote d’Ivoire (see Fig.  3) until recently. ary and December 2017 targeted the larger northern The traders returned with kola nuts and cloth. In the part of the site and tested one of the higher mounds, first detailed French reports on Ségou in 1893/1894, Mound G. Here, a 3- × -3-m test trench aimed at gain- Togu is listed as a staging point for caravans going ing an overview of the stratigraphy and dates of the towards the southeast, crossing the Bani, and from settlement was excavated to a depth of around 3  m there taking many different directions (ANOM 51 below surface. The excavations, led by Daouda Keita, PA 1). uncovered a sequence of layered earth and mud-brick Our surveys in 2016 revealed four archaeologi- buildings, floor levels, and midden deposits subdi - cal site complexes surrounding the present village vided into four phases (Gestrich & Keita, 2017). The of Togu — three habitation sites and one small iron sequence was dated with five AMS dates on wood smelting site (Gestrich & Keita, 2017). We focused charcoal between the early ninth and the late thir- our attention on the site known as “Togu Missiri,” teenth century (Table 1). which translates as “mosque (or, the meeting place) In terms of material culture, Togu Missiri is com- of Togu.” The town notables that we interviewed in parable to other sites investigated in the area in recent the course of our research believe this to be the first years, mainly Sorotomo (MacDonald et  al., 2011), Fig. 3 Map of locations mentioned in the text 1 3 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 409 different from the contemporaneous ones in the region. What was remarkable at Togu Missiri was the number of midden deposits uncovered by the exca- vations. These mostly consisted of soils with a high amount of ash and organic admixture which were rich in finds. There were pit features containing such midden deposits as well as midden layers between the occupation levels of the site (see Fig.  5). In the other sites that have been excavated in the area, no such deposits were found, with the possible exception of a deep pit feature at Sorotomo Unit B (MacDonald et  al., 2011). The reason why our excavation trench at Togu Missiri had such an exceptional amount of midden material cannot so far be explained, nor do we know whether this is a feature of the site in gen- eral rather than only of the small area selected for test excavations. The Botanical Assemblage The soil samples analyzed for this study came from midden deposits (nine samples), from the sediment found inside intact pottery vessels (seven samples), and from living floors (two samples). They do not represent a systematic sample of the site, but all major Fig. 4 Map of the individual settlement mounds at Togu Mis- siri, showing the location of the 2017 excavations architectural rebuilding phases are represented. The soil samples were subjected to bucket flotation and subsequently passed through a 0.25-mm mesh sieve Marakaduguba, and Faraku. A combination of recti- by the students of Bamako University’s HOPE labo- linear and curvilinear construction in mud-brick and ratory under the supervision of Nikolas Gestrich and coursed earth, tamped laterite gravel floors, and pot - N’Ji Jacques Dembélé. The samples were analyzed in tery decorated with folded strip roulettes, fish spine London and Frankfurt by Louis Champion following roulettes, red slip, and burnish are among the typical the methodology described in Champion and Fuller elements of the archaeology of this region in the first (2019). Three samples were devoid of any plant half of the second millennium AD. Overall, the mate- remains. In total, 1425 archaeobotanical items were rial culture of this settlement was not significantly recovered from 100 L of soil. The density of finds, Table 1 Radiocarbon dates Sample no Site Context Depth below BP 95.4% cal AD from Togu Missiri datum (cm) Beta-464271 TOG2 5 29 780 ± 30 1,210–1,281 Beta-464267 TOG2 13 90 880 ± 30 (68.4%) 1,117–1,222 (27%) 1,042–1,104 Beta-464272 TOG2 20 116 900 ± 30 1,039–1,210 Beta-502929 TOG2 42 235 1,140 ± 30 (78.6%) 854–981 (11.3%) 802–848 Beta-502928 TOG2 50 257 1,140 ± 30 (78.6%) 854–981 (11.3%) 802–848 1 3 410 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 Fig. 5 Profiles of the excavations Togu Missiri showing midden deposits 14.3 botanical items per liter of soil, is high compared the East (Fig.  1). The fruit is an ellipsoid drupe of to other sites in the West African savanna and Sahel, 8–12 cm by 3–6 cm that usually supports one oblong where the average is around 10 botanical remains per seed up to 6  cm long. In Cameroon, where Safou is liter of soil (Champion, 2019). a daily staple, it is usually boiled in water and con- The archaeobotanical assemblage from Togu Mis- sumed as a side plate. It is usually the pulpy pericarp siri (Table  2) is largely dominated by fonio remains, that is eaten, either raw or cooked. The pulp could of which 709 grains were found in 13 samples (72% also be reduced to a sort of butter. The seed kernel is of ubiquity), representing a frequency of 54%. Pearl also rich in oil and can be turned into butter (Bostoen, millet is also well represented with 348 items (for 2014; Burkill, 2000). 24% of the total assemblage [frequency]). Sorghum Kola nuts (Cola cf. nitida) and Safou fruits is present as well but only in low frequency (4%). (Dacryodes edulis) (Fig.  6) are present in each soil Finally, cowpea is present in very low frequency, sample from the last three phases (D, C, B) but are with only three cowpea remains (less than 1% of the absent in the earliest phase. Cola nitida fruits are dry, assemblage). With 37 remains (3%), cotton is the woody capsules (or aphiscarum) that grow in radial main cash crop present. clusters of two to six fruits (Fig.  6A). Inside the One major diachronic development visible in the shell is a series of ovate to obturbinate seeds (“kola assemblage is the arrival of cotton, which is not pre- nuts”) arranged in two rows. The seeds are three- sent before around AD 1200 in Phase B. Further, a or four-sided, with an indented hilum on the wider constant decrease in the frequency of pearl millet end, and often coming to point; in cross section, remains is noted (from 67% in Phase E to 7% in phase they are three- or four-sided. Pods of ~ 10  cm long B; Table 2). African rice is observed only in the ear- contain three to 14 seeds, which are reddish when liest phase but only in a very small proportion (2% fresh, ~ 3  cm long, and surrounded by white fleshy in phase E) and is absent in other phases. These agri- aril. The C. nitida seed has a typical dicotyledon- cultural results will be further discussed in a separate ous structure, unlike C. acuminata with a seed that publication. The focus here is on kola nut and safou can split into three to six lobes (Dah-Nouvlessounon, fruit remains. et  al., 2016; Niemenak et  al. 2008). The specimens Like kola nuts, safou fruit trees, Dacryodes edu- studied here have two cotyledons and are therefore lis, grow natively in the countries bordering the Gulf referred to as Cola. cf. nitida (Fig.  6B, C), the spe- of Guinea but are cultivated (and naturalized) from cies that is natural to the western side of the kola Sierra Leone to Angola in the South and Uganda in belt. Dacryodes edulis, the Safou or “African plum,” 1 3 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 411 Table 2 Archaeobotanical Togu Missiri assemblage at Togu Missiri by phases: number of items Date AD Phase E Phase D Phase C Phase B Total recovered, frequency, and 900–1,000 1,000–1,100 1,100–1,200 1,200–1,300 ubiquity for the main crops Number of samples 3 5 5 5 18 Volume of soil in liters 15 25 25 25 100 Digitaria exilis - 315 336 58 709   Frequency 56% 59% 32% 54%   Ubiquity 75% 100% 100% 72% Pennisetum glaucum 72 161 103 12 348   Frequency 67% 29% 18% 7% 24%   Ubiquity 100% 100% 100% 75% 89% Sorghum bicolor 3 14 35 - 52   Frequency 3% 2.5% 6% 4%   Ubiquity 33% 100% 100% 67% Oryza glaberrima 2 - - - 2   Frequency 2% < 1%   Ubiquity 33% 5% Vigna sp. - 3 - - 3   Frequency < 1% < 1%   Ubiquity 40% 10% Gossypium sp. - - - 37 37   Frequency 20% 2%   Ubiquity 75% 22% Tree/bush (fruit) 1 16 65 53 135   Frequency < 1% 3% 11% 25% 10%   Ubiquity 33% 75% 75% 75% 55% Cola cf. nitida - Present Present Present Present   Ubiquity 100% 100% 100% 84% Dacryodes edulis - Present Present Present Present   Ubiquity 100% 100% 100% 84% Total number 108 562 574 181 1425 Density (item/liter) 7.2 22.5 23 7.2 14.3 produces elliptical drupes (~ 7 cm long) that ripen to their deposition. It is not usual to find any botanical a purple or blue hue, but the edible pulp (mesocarp) trace of kola nuts at the point of consumption since is somewhat tough and oily and will soften when they are reduced to a pulp by chewing and often boiled. While the endocarp and testa of the stone are digested. Further, no durable specialized material cul- thin and unlikely to preserve, the highly convoluted ture is currently or historically used in their transport and segmented embryo within it (Fig.  6D) is denser and storage. Kola nuts are usually stored and trans- and thus able to survive charring (as in Fig. 6E). ported in baskets and wrapped in leaves. Why, then, do we find large fragments of nuts here? We suggest that whole kola nuts or large fragments would only Togu Missiri and the Long‑Distance Trade enter the archaeological record in important numbers of the Late First and Early Second Millennium during the regular process of repacking the nuts and AD discarding those that are no longer in good condition and risk spoiling others by spreading mold or infesta- How Did the Tropical Produce Get to Togu Missiri? tion. If Togu Missiri were a regular halt on the kola trade route northwards, then it would make sense The find of kola nut and Safou fruit remains at Togu that nuts would regularly be discarded there and that Missiri raises questions about the circumstances of some would survive alongside other organic material 1 3 412 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 Fig. 6 Modern Cola sp. and Dacryodes edulis draw- ings and archaeobotanical remains from Togu Missiri. A Fruit cluster, sectioned fruit, seed and seed sections of Cola acuminata (after Kohler 1890). B and C Archaeobotanical remains, Cola cf. nitida carbonized fruit from Togu Missiri archaeological deposits A14 and A6. D Dacryo- des edulis fruit and seeds (after Hooker, 1899). E Archaeobotanical remains, Dacryodes edulis carbon- ized fruit from Togu Missiri archaeological deposit A17 in the midden deposits. Their charred state might Leone-Guinea border highlands (Lovejoy, 1980), then not be an accident but rather a deliberate burning of the kola nuts would have reached Togu Missiri on a infested nuts to prevent the spread of pests, as is also route that roughly follows the course of the Niger. suggested by current best practice guidelines, which From the mid-eighteenth century onwards, accord- advocate burning and burying the discarded nuts ing to Roberts (1987), the kola trade from the Segu (Ndingwan et  al., 2013). It is a question of chance area was focused mainly on the trade entrepots of that these middens were deposited on the habitation Wassulu and Bonduku, with only a secondary route mound and in the area of our excavations. However, to Guinea and Sierra Leone. The oral accounts that the finds do allow us to suggest that Togu Missiri was we have collected also speak of recent trade for kola a settlement through which kola nuts were regularly through entrepots in Côte d’Ivoire, in particular Man, traded, rather than only being a point where they were Bouaké, and even Abijan (Fig.  3). Roberts (1987, p. consumed. 62) further states that the Maraka kola trade did not If Paul Lovejoy’s interpretation of the linguistic often use the river but instead relied on overland data is correct and kola trade originated in the Sierra caravans for their journeys, which were often more 1 3 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 413 than 500  km one way. In the establishment of early Hunwick et al., 1979) and slaves and to neglect other trade from the Guinea highlands to the Middle Niger, trade items. A notable exception is Brooks (1993), prior to the last centuries of the first millennium, it whose list of traded items is considerably more var- is difficult to imagine that the river would not have ied. The archaeological focus has been on gold, salt, played some role in transport or at least in the estab- iron, stone, cowrie shells, and beads. Some of the lishment of contacts between the populations of the less frequently documented trade items include ani- two regions. As Kuba (2009) points out, for the lower mal hides (Dueppen & Gokee, 2014) and ivory (Stahl reaches of the Niger, river trade (at least downstream) & Stahl, 2004). However, the accounts collected by was considerably faster, with less need for tolls and Roberts (1987) and the Markadugu project (Gestrich negotiations, something that would be convenient & Keita, 2017) suggest that the emphasis, at least for the trade of perishable goods. For now, however, in recent centuries, was on dried fish, the fermented we must treat the question of trade routes as mostly tree-pod spice sunbala, horses, tobacco, re-exported unknown. This is because the northern edges of the desert salt, and cotton cloth. From a seventeenth- forest zone, especially the areas of Guinea and north- century source, we also know that grain was exported ern Cote d’Ivoire, have seen little archaeological from the area of Ségou to Timbuktu (Houdas, 1964, work and no archaeobotanical analyses from this area p. 406). Gold is nowhere mentioned, though we do are known to the authors. know from Mungo Park (1858) that there was a trade in gold 250  km further upstream at Kangaba in the What Was the Wider Trade Network and Who Were late eighteenth century. the Traders? On the present evidence, we assume that the popu- lation of Togu Missiri was involved in trading forest Our results suggest that kola nuts were not the only zone items further northwards, into the Niger’s Inland commodities traded north from the forest into the Delta and its margins, and to the desert edge. This savanna zone. The safou fruit remains found at Togu trade network intersects with others and feeds into a Missiri shows us two things: Firstly, those trade complex and high-volume network of exchange cen- operations were fast enough to bring tropical fruits tered on the middle reaches of the Niger. The often- northward into the savanna. Secondly, the previous cited geological and environmental differences in the archaeological and historical view on traded items West African interior appear to have been the basis in West Africa was too narrow. The Arabic historical for the development of high-volume  long-distance sources with their focus on gold are extremely limited trade in basic provisions, especially salt and tools, by in their information on trade goods in the West Afri- the mid-first millennium AD. This can be seen from can interior. Early European sources contain much growing imports and less local manufacture in met- more detail for the coastal regions, but not until the ropolitan areas such as Jenné-jeno (McIntosh, 1995) fifteenth century. Archaeological research has missed and increased evidence of large-scale, market-ori- many goods traded across the region because of pres- ented manufacturing in peripheral regions (Gestrich, ervation problems, especially for organic objects. The 2013; Gestrich & MacDonald, 2018). Long-distance fortunate finds of kola nut and safou fruits from Togu but low-volume trade in nonessential items had Missiri strongly suggest that we need to imagine early existed in the region since the Late Stone Age. That long-distance trade in West Africa as incorporating trade was fundamentally different from the high- a much more diverse range of items than the current volume trade that began in the first millennium AD. historical and archaeological evidence documents. It included cash crops, large-scale manufacture for It is usual for authors on historical trade in West export, specialist traders with established networks, Africa to focus on gold, and as we have stated above, and above all, the dependency of large populations the link between kola and gold trades has been made on the availability of traded items such as iron tools by Levtzion and R. McIntosh. It is, however, also and grinding stones (for a description of this system the case that the early written sources for the area of growing specialization and regional interdepend- have the gold trade as their main concern. It is per- ency, see R. McIntosh, 1998). Societies along the haps these sources that lead many historians to place Niger were already used to buying and selling things a disproportionate emphasis on gold (Green, 2019; regularly by the mid-first millennium AD, probably 1 3 414 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 with a socioeconomic system that was sufficiently In fact, many local populations regard it as received monetarized to cope with the large scale and high wisdom that all Soninké are traders. Due to this, it frequency of transactions. The earliest known cow- has become usual for authors on the past of Sahelian rie shells from the region also date from the mid- West Africa to associate all trade with the Soninké, first millennium and were clearly used as currency and with the Empire of Ghana, a desert-edge pol- by the beginning of the second millennium (Haour ity engaged in Saharan trade. Both R. McIntosh & Christie, 2019). The regular trade in basic items (1998) and Lovejoy (1980), for example, assume and the concurrent development of specialist trad- that Soninké networks must be behind the early kola ers and long-distance routes will have opened up trade. At first glance, our results would support this the possibility for any item to be traded in any vol- identification. Togu is, and is claimed to always have ume along the same routes. The fact that forest zone been, a settlement of the Maraka population group, safou fruits were brought to Togu Missiri, appar- and maraka is the Bambara word for those who call ently regularly during three centuries, may therefore themselves Soninké. This has led to the assumption act as an example of how economically connected that the Maraka settlements of the Ségu area were the entire interior of West Africa was in the late first founded as part of the Wagadu polity or as part of its and early second millennium AD. dissolution and the scattering of its population (e.g., It is, therefore, interesting to note the absence of Pageard, 1961). However, a closer look reveals that kola nut and safou remains in the pre-tenth-cen- the term Maraka nowadays describes people of very tury layers at Togu, although midden deposits were varied ethnic backgrounds. They share a certain num- equally abundant there. Of course, this is not evi- ber of cultural practices, by which their identity is dence that the trade in kola nuts did not exist during defined in opposition to the Bamana who also settle this period, but it might not have had the same vol- in this area (Bazin, 1985). A Maraka is supposed to ume, or it might not have used Togu Missiri as a reg- be Muslim, engage in trade, and not take part in wars. ular stop. In any case, we must suppose other items For the Maraka of the Ségu area, this is not overtly to have traveled along the same routes until a market a profound cultural difference, and becoming Maraka for kola nuts was established. By then, specialized often simply denotes the addition of Islamic reli- traders had well-established relationships along their gious practices or a change of clothing style (Bazin, trading routes. 1972). Anyone could and can become Maraka, but It remains to discuss the sociocultural and eco- men engaging in these activities would have been nomic contexts within which such specialized traders excluded from their communities of origin to a cer- operated. A large number of historical and archaeo- tain degree. They would no longer have been part of logical writings have focused on the structure of trade initiation societies, the family farming enterprise, or in West Africa, emphasizing the establishment of the strict scheme of succession within the family unit. trade diasporas, the importance of shared cults, or a A male Maraka’s work and life are incompatible with shared and exclusive Muslim identity as key factors male identity in most agricultural societies of Sahe- in the establishment of trade links (Brooks, 1993; lian West Africa, including the Soninké. While the Wilks, 1961). Following Levtzion (1973), these trade Maraka are known far and wide as traders, engaging diasporas are often linked to the Empire of Ghana in this activity means leaving behind the ties of the and its downfall. This link has become cemented in sedentary agricultural lineages. The word maraka, for the historical literature of the area due to the identi- us, thus equates with a set of practices that include, fication of the Ghana of the medieval Arabic sources but are not limited to, trade. It has become attached with the Wagadu polity of Soninké historical tradi- to the Soninké by virtue of the high number of them tions (see Gestrich 2018). Across many parts of West engaged in commerce. Africa, Soninké individuals and communities have We have focused on this argument to make explicit functioned as long-distance traders and have set up that there is no dependable link of the early kola trade diaspora communities over a remarkably wide geo- to either the Soninké ethnicity or the Wagadu polity/ graphic area. Many of them link their existence in the Empire of Ghana. Secondly, we want to stress the diasporic communities to the “scattering” (saanxi) extent to which traders in Sahelian West Africa were event that marks the fall of Wagadu in oral traditions. a professional group, yet one with such pronounced 1 3 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 415 social distance from others that they could be consid- in turn, aided specialized production when coupled ered almost like an ethnic group. In contrast to some with long-distance trade. While the four contribu- other West African occupational specialists, member- tions that discussed Lovejoy’s and Roberts’ papers ship is open, and there are no strict rules regarding mainly focused on the role of polities and slavery as endogamy. The degree to which individuals in such depending on or creating trade links, several impor- groups engaged in commerce, however, could be tant further points were raised which continue to be highly variable. There were surely those who plied topical now. Amselle (1980), for instance, pointed long-distance trade routes several times a year, as out the uncertain causality between trade, polity, and well as those for whom joining a trading caravan was slavery and that ecological factors alone were some- a one-off when they found themselves in a position to what too weak to explain the development of long- do so and those who engaged only in resale. We can- distance trade. According to him, the growers in kola- not be certain how far back in time Maraka identity producing areas needed to make a conscious decision existed and whether the inhabitants of Togu Missiri to plant and tend to the plants, harvest and pack them, would have understood themselves as being Maraka and thereby make a seasonally abundant crop of lim- or even belonging to a trading group, separate from ited sale value into a product for export. At the time, the surrounding population. For the moment, the Amselle came to the rather vague conclusion that the integration of traders into local society in this area is West African subcontinental economy was a globaliz- still an open question, but one we hope to address in ing system in which everyone had their role to play. future studies. Based on the archaeological work of the intervening 40  years and with the arguments presented here, we might add some precision to this debate. Conclusions: Early Kola Trade Into the Middle By the end of the first millennium AD, the West Niger African interior was connected by trade routes. These occasionally transported luxury goods but Lovejoy’s history of the West African kola trade regularly moved all sorts of materials between the appeared in a themed issue of the Cahiers d’études different geological and ecological zones. Some of africaines, alongside an article by Roberts (1980) these materials were moved in high volumes. It is which criticized some fundamental points of Hop- now apparent that the environmental differences kins’ Economic History of West Africa. Hopkins that Roberts underlined did more than just present had seen African societies as largely self-sufficient opportunities for trade. Rather, they made trade before the nineteenth century, a view that is fre- inevitable: there are strong indicators that the large quently repeated to this day (e.g., Eltis, 2013), often population living in and around the Inland Niger in the first chapter of historical overviews focused Delta from the mid-first millennium AD would not on later periods. For Hopkins, local exchange was have covered its needs without a medium- to long- limited because everyone was producing the same distance, high-volume movement of nonluxury goods under the same conditions. Long-distance items. The archaeological data indicates that the trade, for him, was limited to luxury items destined populations of such ecological and economic niche to individuals with high buying power. In addition areas drove high-volume exchange and regional to criticizing Hopkins’ static picture of the pre-nine- economic specialization and the development of teenth-century past, Roberts pointed out that several internally differentiated specialized traders and important long-distance trade goods, such as salt and craftspeople. Over time, this had an integrating kola, were accessible to ordinary buyers because the effect on the broader region and, from the mid-first quantities required were small. People bought when millennium onward, led to societies in which spe- they could. He further showed how the market limi- cialization and the buying and selling of goods were tations identified by Hopkins were overcome by commonplace. The end product is the situation that transporting surpluses into areas beyond the limits Amselle described, a globalized economy in which of local markets where that product was in demand. everyone had their place — that is, everyone pro- He argued that ecological differences strongly influ - duced something to sell. Although some communi- enced precolonial West African trade and that this, ties may have been able to cover their basic needs 1 3 416 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 the Institut des Sciences Humaines de Mali and the Université for food, clothing, and shelter, almost all would des Sciences Sociales et Gestion in Bamako. have also been able, and were willing, to produce something that traders would buy from them on a Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Com- regular basis. mons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits The find of Cola sp. and Dacryodes edulis remains use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the at Togu Missiri shows that the regional trading net- original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Crea- works that included the Middle Niger region were tive Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The well-organized by the early second millennium and images or other third party material in this article are included ran from the West African forest zone through the in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not Savanna and Sahara to North Africa. Much research included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your has concentrated on the trans-Saharan portion of this intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds trade, to the detriment of the sub-Saharan portion, the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly though the latter is likely to have been economically from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http:// creat iveco mmons. org/ licen ses/ by/4. 0/. far more important. That kola nuts reached Arab trad- ers in Walata in the mid-thirteenth century is a testa- ment to how efficient these networks were (Levtzion References & Hopkins 2000, p. 307). Even more impressive is that fresh tropical fruit appears to have been brought ANOM 51 PA 1. Notice sur le cercle de Ségou (vers from the forest to at least the southern margins of the 1893/1894). Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en- Inland Niger Delta. Provence. 51 PA 1, ark:/61561/vl918kfz. Previous research on early sub-Saharan trade in Amselle, J.-L. (1980). Autosubsistance, petite production marchande et chaînes de sociétés. Cahiers D’études Afric- West Africa tends to concentrate on archaeologi- aines, 20(77–78), 155–160. cally more visible items such as iron, and on gold Bazin, J. (1972). Commerce et predation. L’Etat Bambara de destined for North Africa. Other goods are often Segou et ses Communautés Marka. Conference on Man- assumed to have also been part of long-distance ding Studies. Royal Anthropological Institute MS415/9. Manuscript. trade, such as salt, sandstone, wood, clothing, and Bazin, J. (1985). À chacun son Bambara. In J.-L. Amselle & slaves. Yet our results show that we must in the E. M’Bokolo (Eds.), Au coeur de l’ethnie: Ethnies, trib- future envisage this trade to have incorporated a alisme et état en Afrique (pp. 87–128). Ed. la Découverte. much larger pallet of perishable items, especially Bazin, J. (1988). Princes désarmés, corps dangereux: Les “Rois-Femmes” de La région de Segu. Cahiers D’études foodstuffs. And in the face of such a regular, high- Africaines, 28(111/112), 375–441. volume trade, we must also consider the entire sub- Bertaux, C. (1984). La technique des prescriptions sacrifi - continent to have been closely and regularly con- cielles dans la géomancie bambara (région de Ségou, nected, at least from the late first millennium AD. Mali). Systèmes De Pensée En Afrique Noire, 6, 117–130. Blench, R. M. (2006). Archaeology, language, and the African past. AltaMira. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the peo- Bostoen, K. (2014). Wild trees in the subsistence economy ple of Togu for their enthusiastic support for this research. In of early Bantu speech communities. In C. J. Stevens, S. particular, we thank Seydna Oumar Dembele and his family Nixon, M. A. Murray, & D. Q. Fuller (Eds.), Archaeology for being our hosts while in Togu, as well as those who par- of African plant use (pp. 129–140). Left Coast Press. ticipated in the excavations: Bafing Djiré, Zoumana dit Bagui Boujou, J. (2000). Clientélisme, corruption et gouvernance Djiré, Baba Koita, Ladji Kanouté, Madou dit Fa Dembélé, locale à Mopti (Mali). Autrepart, 14, 143–163. Bassa Dembélé. We thank David Glauser for his help with the Brooks, G. E. (1980). Kola trade and state-building: Upper photographs of the archaeobotanical remains. We thank the th th Guinea coast and Senegambia, 15 -17 centuries. Work- students of the HOPE lab in Bamako for their help with the ing Papers in African Studies, No. 38. Boston: Afri- flotation of the soil samples. can Studies Center. https:// hdl. handle. net/ 2144/ 40581. Accessed 20 June 2021. Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by Brooks, G. E. (1993). Landlords and strangers. Westview Projekt DEAL. The research for this article was carried out Press. as part of the Markadugu Project, funded by the Volkswagen Burdock, G. A., Carabin, I. G., & Crincoli, C. M. (2009). Foundation. The archaeobotanical analyses were carried out at Safety assessment of kola nut extract as a food ingredient. the UCL Institute of Archaeology in London and Goethe Uni- Food and Chemical Toxicology, 47, 1725–1732. versity in Frankfurt am Main. The fieldwork was supported by Burkill, H. M. (2000). Useful plants of West Tropical Africa (2nd ed.). Kew Publishing. 1 3 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 417 Hopkins, A. G. (2016). An economic history of West Africa. Champion, L. (2019). The evolution of agriculture, food and 2nd edition. Routledge. drink in the ancient Niger River basin: Archaeobotanical Hunwick, J. O. (1973). The mid-fourteenth century capital of studies from Mali and Benin. Ph.D. thesis, University Col- Mali. The Journal of African History, 14, 195–206. lege London, London. Hunwick, J. O., Meillassoux, C., & Triaud, J.-L. (1979). Champion, L., & Fuller, D.Q. (2019). Archaeobotany: Meth- La géographie du Soudan d’après al-Bakri Trois Lec- ods. In Spear, T. (Ed.),  The Oxford encyclopedia of Afri- tures.  Revue Française D’histoire D’outre-Mer, 66, can historiography: Methods and sources. Vol 1. Oxford: 111–138. Oxford University Press. Interviews Markadugu Project (2016). Group interview with Dah-Nouvlessounon, D., Adoukonou-Sagbadja, H., Nafan, D., village council at Togu, 13/12/2016. Group interview Adjanohoun, A., Noumavo, P. A., Sina, H., et  al. (2016). with village council at Marakaduguba, 14/12/2016. Inter- Morpho-agronomic variability of three kola trees acces- views conducted by Seydou Camara, Soumaila Coulibaly, sions [Cola nitida (Vent.) Schott et Endl., Cola acuminata Daouda Keita and Nikolas Gestrich. (P. Beauv.) Schott et Endl., and Garcinia kola Heckel] Kirikoshi, H. (2019). Migrants’ participation in cocoa produc- from Southern Benin. Genetic resources and crop evolu- tion: Trust-building among multi-ethnic groups in West tion, 63(3), 561–579. Africa. In H. Kirikoshi, Y. Matsunami, & S. Takeuchi Drucker-Brown, S. (1995). The court and the kola nut: Woo- (Eds.),  Development, migration, and resources in Africa ing and witnessing in Northern Ghana. The Journal of the (pp. 45–59). ASC-TUFS Working Papers. Royal Anthropological Institute, 1(1), 129–143. Köhler, H. A. (1890). Medizinal-Pflanzen, Vol. 2. Franz Eugen Dueppen, S. A., & Gokee, C. (2014). Hunting on the margins Köhler. of medieval West African states: A preliminary study of Kuba, R. (2009). Cultural contacts between the savannah and the zooarchaeological record at Diouboye, Senegal. Aza- the forest: Trade along the Eastern Niger. In S. Mag- nia: Archaeological Research in Africa, 49(3), 354–385. navita, L. Koté, P. Breunig, & O. A. Idé (Eds.), Cross- Eltis, D. (2013). The slave trade and commercial agriculture in roads/Carrefour Sahel: Cultural and technological an African context. In R. Law, S. Schwarz, & S. Strickrodt developments in first millennium BC West Africa (pp. (Eds.), Commercial agriculture, the slave trade and slav- 147–156). Journal of African Archaeology Monograph ery in Atlantic Africa (pp. 28–53). Boydell & Brewer. Series 2. Africa Magna. Houdas, O. (Ed.) (1964). Tarikh es-Soudan: Par Abder- Kwame, A. (2019). An ethnographic sketch of social inter- rahman b. Abdallah b. ’Imran b. ’Amir es-Sa’di. actions in Dagbon society: The case of greeting, shar- Adrien-Maisonneuve. ing drinks and kola nut. Journal of Multidisciplinary Genequand, D., Apoh, W., Gavua, K., Canetti, M., Champion, Research at Trent, 2(1), 1–20. L., Gyam, S., Hajdas, I., Maret, F., de Reynier, C., & Levtzion, N. (1973). Ancient Ghana and Mali. Methuen. Ruben, I. (2020). Preliminary report on the 2019 season Levtzion, N., & Hopkins, J. F. P. (Eds.) (2000). Corpus of of the Gonja Project, Ghana. SLSA Jahresbericht, 2019, early Arabic sources for West African history. Markus 225–289. Wiener. Gestrich, N. (2013). The archaeology of social organisation Lovejoy, P. E. (1980). Kola in the history of West Africa. at Tongo Maaré Diabal. Ph.D. thesis. University College Cahiers D’études Africaines, 20(77–78), 97–134. London, London.  Gestrich, N. (2019). The empire of Ghana. In Spear, T. (Ed.), Lovejoy, P. E. (1995). Kola Nuts. The ‘coffee’ of the central Oxford research encyclopedia of African history. Oxford Sudan. In Goodman, J., Lovejoy, P. E., & Sherratt, A. University Press. https:// doi. org/ 10. 1093/ acref ore/ 97801 (Eds.), Consuming habits. Drugs in history and anthro- 90277 734. 013. 396. pology (pp.103–125). Routledge. Gestrich, N., & Keita, D. (2017). Report on a season of MacDonald, K. C., & Camara, S. (2011). Segou: Warfare and prospection and excavation near Ségu, Mali. Nyame the origins of a state of slavery. In P. Lane & K. C. Mac- Akuma, 88, 48–55. Donald (Eds.), Slavery in Africa. Archaeology and mem- Gestrich, N., & MacDonald, K. C. (2018). On the margins of ory (pp. 25–46). Proceedings of the British Academy 168. Ghana and Kawkaw: Four seasons of excavation at Tongo MacDonald, K. C., Camara, S., Canós-Donnay, S., Gestrich, Maaré Diabal (AD 500–1150), Mali. Journal of African N., & Keita, D. (2011). Sorotomo: A forgotten Malian Archaeology, 16, 1–30. capital? Archaeology International, 13(14), 52–64. Green, T. (2019). A fistful of shells . University of Chicago MacDonald, K. C., Gestrich, N. , Camara, S., & Keita, D. Press. (2018). The ‘Pays Dô’ and the origins of the empire of Håland, R. (1980). Man’s role in the changing habitat of Méma Mali. In T. Green & B. Rossi (Eds.), Landscapes, sources during the old Kingdom of Ghana. Norwegian Archaeo- and intellectual projects of the West African past: Essays logical Review, 13, 31–46. in honour of Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias (pp. Haour, A., & Christie, A. (2019). Cowries in the archaeology 63–87). Brill. of West Africa: The present picture. Azania: Archaeologi- McIntosh, R. J. (1998). The peoples of the Middle Niger. cal Research in Africa, 54, 287–321. Blackwell Publishers. Hauenstein, A. (1974). La noix de cola. Coutumes et rites de McIntosh, S. K. (Ed.). (1995). Excavations at Jenne-Jeno, quelques ethnies de Côte d’lvoire. Anthropos, 69(3/4), Hambarketolo and Kaniana (Inland Niger Delta, Mali), 457–493. the 1981 Season. University of California Press. Hooker, W. J. (1899). Icones Plantarum, Vol. 26. Dulau and Co. 1 3 418 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 Meillassoux, C. (1973). Etat et conditions des esclaves a Roberts, R. (1980). Linkages and multiplier effects in the eco - Gumbu (Mali) au XIXe Siecle. The Journal of African logically specialized trade of precolonial West Africa. History, 14(3), 429–452. Cahiers D’études Africaines, 20(77–78), 135–148. Ndingwan, M. A., Tsobeng, A., Asaah, E., Degrande, A., & Roberts, R. (1987). Warriors, merchants, and slaves: The state Tchoundjeu, Z. (2013). Best practices on kola nut conser- and the economy in the Middle Niger Valley, 1700–1914. vation and storage. Handbook for Kola producers. World Stanford University Press. Agroforestry Centre. Serneels, V., & Perret, S. (2003). Quantification of smith - Niemenak, N., Onomo, P. E., Lieberei, R., & Ndoumou, D. O. ing activities based on the investigation of slag and other (2008). Purine alkaloids and phenolic compounds in three material remains. In Archaeometallurgy in Europe. Pro- Cola species and Garcinia kola grown in Cameroon. South ceedings of the International Conference (Milano, Sep- African Journal of Botany, 74(4), 629–638. tember 24–26, 2003), 469–478. Nixon, S. (2017). Trans-Saharan gold trade in pre-modern Stahl, A. B., & Stahl, P. (2004). Ivory production & consump- tion in Ghana in the early second millennium AD. Antiq- times: Available evidence and research agendas. In D. J. uity, 78, 86–101. Mattingly, V. Leitch, C. N. Duckworth, A. Cuénod, M. Sundström, L. (1966). The cola nut: Functions in West Afri- Sterry, & F. Cole (Eds.), Trade in the ancient Sahara and can social life. Studia Ethnographica Uppsaliensia XXVI, beyond (pp. 156–188). Cambridge University Press. Varia, II, 135–149. Nyadanu, D., Lowor, S. T., Akpertey, A., Tchokponhoué, D. Tridge, n.d. https:// www. tridge. com/ intel ligen ces/ kola- nut/ A., Pobee, P., Dogbatse J. A., et al. (2020). Genetic vari- produ ction. Accessed 09 Mar 2020. ability of bioactive compounds and selection for nutraceu- Wilks, I. (1961). The northern factor in Ashanti History: tical quality in kola [Cola nitida (Vent) Schott. and Endl.]. Begho and the Mande. The Journal of African History, PLoS ONE, 15(12): e0242972 2(1), 25–34. Park, M. (1858). Travels in the interior of Africa. A. and C. Black. Pageard, R. (1961). Note sur le peuplement du pays de Ségou. Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard Journal De La Société Des Africanistes, 31, 83–90. to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional Person, Y. (1986). Samori: Une révolution dyula. Vol. 1. affiliations. Dakar: IFAN. 1 3 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png African Archaeological Review Springer Journals

Evidence of an Eleventh-Century AD Cola Nitida Trade into the Middle Niger Region

Download PDF
16 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/evidence-of-an-eleventh-century-ad-cola-nitida-trade-into-the-middle-0Gp7a20FDv

References (66)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021
ISSN
0263-0338
eISSN
1572-9842
DOI
10.1007/s10437-021-09445-7
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-021-09445-7 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Evidence of an Eleventh‑Century AD Cola Nitida Trade into the Middle Niger Region Nikolas Gestrich  · Louis Champion · Daouda Keïta · Nafogo Coulibaly · Dorian Q. Fuller  Accepted: 7 June 2021 / Published online: 5 July 2021 © The Author(s) 2021 Abstract Kola nut (Cola cf. nitida) and Safou fruit established by the end of the first millennium AD. It (Dacryodes edulis) remains have been discovered thereby supports the hypothesis that dates the incep- in eleventh- to fourteenth-century archaeological tion of trade between the West African forest zone contexts at Togu Missiri near Ségou in Mali. These and the savanna regions to the first millennium AD. remains are evidence of early trade in perishable The circumstances of the find are discussed, as are foodstuffs from the West African forest zone into the the implications for our understanding of the wider Middle Niger region. On the basis of these finds, this exchange network based on the Niger River system in paper argues that long-distance trade links were well the late first and early second millennium CE. Résumé Des fragments de noix de cola (Cola cf. N. Gestrich (*)  nitida) et de fruits de Safou (Dacryodes edulis) ont Frobenius Institute, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany été découverts dans des niveaux archéologiques du e-mail: gestrich@uni-frankfurt.de onzième au quatorzième siècle à Togu Missiri près de Ségou au Mali. Ces vestiges témoignent d’un com- L. Champion  merce précoce des denrées périssables de la zone for- Laboratoire Archéologie Et Peuplement de L’Afrique (APA), Anthropology Unit, Department of Genetics estière d’Afrique occidentale vers la région du Moyen and Evolution, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland Niger. Sur la base de ces découvertes archéologique, cet article montre que les liens commerciaux à longue D. Keïta  distance entre la zone forestière d’Afrique de l’Ouest Musée National du Mali, Bamako, Mali et de la région des savanes étaient déjà bien établis N. Coulibaly  dès la fin du premier millénaire AD. Les contextes et Institut Des Sciences Humaines du Mali, Bamako, Mali la nature de cette découverte sont discutés, ainsi que les implications sur notre compréhension du réseau D. Q. Fuller  Institute of Archaeology, University College London, d’échange basé sur le haut et moyen Niger à la fin du London, UK premier et au début du deuxième millénaire de notre ère. D. Q. Fuller  School of Cultural Heritage, Northwest University, Xi’an, China Keywords Kola nut · African plum · Stimulants · West African archaeology · Archaeobotany · Mali D. Q. Fuller  Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 404 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 Introduction The most common species of kola nuts in West Africa, and those responsible for the vast majority of Kola nuts (the seeds of Cola nitida or Cola acumi- consumed nuts, are Cola acuminata (Vent.) Schott nata) are important to West African cultures past and et Endl. and Cola nitida (P.Beauv.) Schott et Endl. present. These seeds contain caffeine, theobromine, These two are the economically most important of and kolanin, among other bioactive phenolic com- more than 125 Cola species native to the West Afri- pounds (Niemenak et al., 2008; Nyadanu et al., 2020). can forest zone (Burkill, 2000). The growing condi- In recent times, they have been essential as gifts for tions of the trees prevent them from prospering in almost any social occasion. They accompany visits, the drier climate north of the tropical forests (Fig. 1). negotiations, reconciliations, and many other events, Thus, large parts of West Africa in which kola nuts where they are given as a sign of respect or goodwill are regularly consumed lie outside of the areas where or as a form of symbolic payment. Kola nuts also fea- they can be grown, and so the nuts need to be moved ture centrally in divination and sacrifices and are val - to reach their consumers. The trade in kola nuts ued as mild stimulants that suppress hunger and thirst is considerable today, with a global production of (Lovejoy, 1995; Sundström, 1966). Their cultural 280,000 metric tons in 2016, of which Nigeria, the uses and symbolism are fairly well described for the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, and Ghana produced 97% forest zone (Drucker-Brown, 1995; Hauenstein, 1974; (Tridge, n.d.). Kwame, 2019) but less explicitly so for the western Despite their popularity as a trade item, kola nuts Sahel, where they are a constant yet peripheral feature in are not easy to transport. Since they must be kept ethnographic accounts (Bertaux, 1984; Boujou,  2000). moist, despite warm climatic conditions, and are sus- Although they are highly valued culturally, kola nuts ceptible to pests (Lovejoy, 1980, p. 97), they must be do not grow in the Sahel. Instead, they come from frequently unpacked, checked, watered, and repacked. the West African forest zone, a fact which has even Several authors have pointed out that trade in kola led to the cardinal direction south becoming named nuts (especially historical trade that did not rely on after kola nuts in several Sahelian Mandé languages. mechanized transport) must depend on established For example, the Bambara and Northern Maninka- commercial networks so that the nuts can reach their kan word for the “south” is “wòrodugu” — lit. “the destination before they are spoiled (Lovejoy, 1980, land of kola.” p. 106; Person 1968, p. 102). Even present-day kola Fig. 1 Distribution of main production area for Cola nitida, Cola acuminata, and Dacryodes edulis (Lovejoy, 1980, Burkill, 2000) and the archaeological site (Togu Missiri) where Cola sp. and Dacryodes edulis fruit remains were recovered 1 3 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 405 trade is seen as a high-risk venture, according to (Lovejoy, 1980, p. 106). This contrasts with the evolved Kirikoshi (2019), who stresses the importance of trust cognates shared across Benue-Congo languages and relationships between the parties in this trade. basal Bantu that presumably originated in the forest zone Kola nuts are thus a trade good that cannot be (Bostoen, 2014). Thirdly, Lovejoy (1980, p. 100) points traded casually. They require carefully planned trad- out that kola nuts are an acquired taste, which means ing operations, established routes, high mobility, that a market for them had to be created. This sets and close contact between persons over large geo- them apart from many other historical West African graphical distances to minimize the risk of spoiling trade items like salt, sandstone implements, iron, the merchandise. It may be due to this risk and these cloth, or grain which are arguably more fundamen- infrastructural demands that the profit margins were tal to human needs. In this regard, a lengthy period historically very high. Roberts (1987, p. 67) speaks of contact must have existed between the Sahel/ of a gross profit of 400% for traders from the Ségou savanna and the rainforest zones before a regular area in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while trade in kola nuts could be established. While the a late nineteenth-century source speaks of a value evidence presented in this paper is the earliest for increase of 6,000% on nuts bought in Ghana and sold kola nuts in the savanna zone so far, it probably near Lake Chad (Hopkins, 2016, p. 73). Between the does not date the beginning of the kola trade, and long distances to be overcome and the risk of loss it is definitely later than the beginning of trade rela - from spoiled commodity, the beginnings of this trade tionships between the forest and savanna zones. would have faced considerable obstacles. The ques- Much of the existing literature ties the begin- tion of when and under what circumstances such a nings of the forest-savanna trade to gold. This trade began remains to be answered. is, for instance, the case with Nehemia Levtzion, who saw contacts between the savanna and the forest areas as an effect of political developments driven by the gold trade. Levtzion (1973, p. 53) Kola Trade and Trade Networks in Middle Niger supposed that the political succession from the During the First and Second Millennia AD Empire of Ghana to Sosso and then to the Empire of Mali implies a progressive movement of the Lovejoy’s (1980) study on the interior regions pro- centers of power southward from the desert edges vides the most comprehensive overview of the his- towards the forest zone, although the accuracy torical, ethnographic, and linguistic evidence for of this orthodox version of West Sudanese his- the development of the West African kola trade to tory has been questioned (Gestrich, 2019; Hun- date (also see Brooks, 1980, for the treatment of wick, 1973; MacDonald et  al., 2018). Corollaries the coastal kola trade). He claims that the market of this shift, he believes, are that the Buré gold- for kola existed in the savanna by the thirteenth fields gained importance and that the populations century and proposes, though without firm evi - in the forest zone were drawn into the pre-existing dence, that it might have been established much long-distance trade networks of the savanna. This earlier than that. There are several indications that would date the inception of regular trade links to kola nuts are a product that must have been traded the early fourteenth century. Paradoxically, Lev- following a long formative period of exchange rela- tzion states elsewhere (1973, p. 181) that the use tionships, which allowed the kola nut to gradually of kola nuts was well established in the savanna gain popularity in the Sahel. Firstly, the perishable by then and that it “already fulfilled many of its nature of the nuts means they must be transported more recent economic and social functions” dur- quickly or traders risk losing their cargo. Hence, ing the period of the “great empires.” Certainly, routes with safe and fast passage must be known the fourteenth-century date for the inception of and negotiated in advance. Secondly, the linguis- the kola nut trade appears to be late since we have tic evidence of widely shared names across many documentary records that suggest the inclusion of languages suggests that kola nuts became avail- kola nuts in the trans-Saharan trade before 1356 able in the savanna and Sahel zones within a short (al-Maqqarī in Levtzion & Hopkins, 2000, p. 307). period, rather than through a lengthy, gradual spread 1 3 406 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 R. McIntosh sees a similar link to gold as a driver (1980) reconstruction of the linguistic evidence shows of north–south trade, though he believes this trade considerable diversity in words for kola nuts in the began considerably earlier, by the middle of the first languages of the forest zone. By contrast, the terms millennium AD. For R. McIntosh, the kola and gold for kola in the savanna from the Atlantic coast to trades are a southern add-on to earlier networks Lake Chad virtually all use a variation of goro or that brought iron, sandstone objects, and salt into woro, indicating that they are borrowed from a West the Inland Niger Delta in exchange for foodstuffs Atlantic language in the Sierra Leone-Guinea border and led to specialized and regular trading expedi- area, where the Niger has its headwaters. Although tions (McIntosh, 1998, p. 217). All of these relate to the kola nut was undoubtedly known throughout the the broader economic connections in the West Afri- forest zone, it therefore seems to have been this area can savanna and the Sahel, for which archaeological from where its commercialization and trade into the research is increasingly showing that a high-volume savanna began. This linguistic evidence also suggests trade over medium to long distances developed in that none of the other growing areas traded north the mid to late first millennium. The existence of sufficiently early to influence the vocabulary of the such interregional trading networks has been mostly savanna peoples, who had settled on the *goro root documented in iron (Gestrich, 2013; Gestrich & before areas like the Akan region became involved in MacDonald, 2018; Håland, 1980; McIntosh, 1995; the trade. When exactly the first regular trade links Serneels & Perret, 2003) and likely also extends to to the latter area developed is currently impossible foodstuffs, salt, sandstone, and charcoal. The main to say. However, the Gonja region of north  central drivers of this trade are the diversity in ecological Ghana seems to have been involved in trade with zones and regional variations in geology, which gov- the savanna, possibly the Inland Niger Delta, by the ern the distribution of plants, animals, and mineral twelfth century AD, as the presence of African rice resources such as iron ore, salt, and sandstone. These (Oryza glaberrima) at Old Buipe indicates (Cham- regional ecological and geological contrasts mean pion in Genequand et al., 2020), and thus, earlier than that many areas are abundant in a particular set of Wilks (1961) had previously suggested. vital resources while lacking others. If we suppose Thus, the extant literature documents the estab- Levtzion’s and McIntosh’s proposals for the connec- lishment of regular trade routes linking the West tion between gold and kola trades to be accurate, we African forest zone with the savanna and the desert might suggest that the kola trade developed before edge sometime between the mid-first millennium and the seventh or eighth century since this is when we the early second millennium AD. Through these net- have the earliest written mentions and earliest archae- works, which might have initially developed for gold ological evidence for the trans-Saharan gold trade trade, kola nuts began to be traded into the savanna (Nixon, 2017, p. 157–160). In this context, it is also and even across the Sahara. The initial trade seems to worth mentioning Brooks’ (1993) work on the early have focused on the source areas of the Niger river expansion of pre-European contact trade networks, in today’s Sierra Leone-Guinea border region, but in which he also links kola and gold as major factors it subsequently developed across several areas in in the rise of Mandé-speaking populations to politi- the forest zone, where kola trees were also known cal power and their demographic expansion. Brooks, and grown. From the outset, the trade in kola nuts however, sees this trade as developing in response to required well-known routes, at least part-time special- a southward shift in climatic zones around 1100. ized traders, and social contacts spanning large dis- In historical linguistics, names for kola are recon- tances. From the beginning of the second millennium structible to considerable time depths. Williamson AD, Togu Missiri near Ségou in Mali was part of this (1993) showed that terms for kola could be recon- trade network. structed in many West African proto-languages. A root that occurs in Benue-Congo languages in Nigeria and Cameroon is shared with Proto-Bantu and recon- The Maraka Settlement of Togu structed to *-bèdú (Blench, 2006; Bostoen, 2014). The term góóró from Songhay appears to have been spread Togu is today a large village on an unpaved road link- by Hausa traders later (Blench, 2006). Lovejoy’s ing the city of Ségou to the market town of Dioro. It 1 3 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 407 consists of a recent sprawling settlement and an older they play a key role in local histories preceding the core beside a large pond, which is seasonally fed from Segu fanga.  Their origins are controversial and their the canals of the neighboring irrigation scheme, the age was formerly unknown. Nevertheless, previous Opération Riz Ségou (see Fig. 2). During the time of authors have seen them as a key enduring part of an the Segu fanga, a polity founded in the early eight- ancient settled landscape (MacDonald & Camara, eenth century by “Biton” Mamari Coulibaly and 2011) and sociopolitical system (Bazin, 1972, 1988). effectively ended by El-hajj Umar Tall’s conquest in Although they were politically sidelined, they were 1860, Togu was one of the major marakadugu, set- not removed in the demographically and politically tlements of the Maraka group. The Maraka were, and turbulent developments of the fanga period and con- are, understood as a contrast to the majority Bamana tinued to be of commercial and religious importance. group (Bazin, 1972, 1985) and engaged in activities Our ongoing project has carried out archaeological that were not part of Bamana lifestyle, most signifi - surveys and excavations as well as extensive inter- cantly the practice of Islam, the refusal to take part views on local traditions in an attempt to gain a mul- in warfare, and an engagement in long-distance com- tiperspective understanding of the past of the Maraka merce. The marakadugu are the focus of a research and their neighboring communities. This undertaking program which aims to understand the settlement brought team members to Togu on several occasions and population dynamics in the area between the between 2016 and 2020. Niger and the Bani before the eighteenth century. As Richard Roberts (1987) has described for Sin- Together with the Traoré lineages (Bazin, 1988), zani, one of the main Maraka centers of trade and Fig. 2 Location of the site below the eastward turn of the Niger at Markala (archaeological sites of the area are shown in black) 1 3 408 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 production in the Segu fanga, the Maraka commer- of the settlements at Togu and that it was inhabited cial activities took several forms. Instead of trading by one of the founding lineages of the Jiré patronym. in the market, the Maraka of Sinzani mainly acted as brokers (jatigi) to Azawagh Arab (Suraka) traders bringing salt from the north, in exchange primarily The Site of Togu Missiri for slaves, which the Segu fanga supplied in large numbers. Yet, there was also a southern component Togu Missiri consists of a cluster of thirteen set- of this trade, based entirely on foodstuffs, in which tlement mounds, seemingly in two distinct areas Maraka traders were directly involved. Accord- (Fig. 4). The mounds are most likely the remains of a ing to our informants in the region, salt, dried fish, single settlement, with the lower-lying areas between and sunbala (a condiment made from the fermented them representing seasonal ponds, open spaces, and pods of the nɛ̀rɛ tree — Parkia biglobosa) were car- roadways. The height of the mounds varies between ried south on donkeys as far as Man, Bouaké, and 1.5 and 3.0  m. The excavations carried out in Janu- Abidjan in Cote d’Ivoire (see Fig.  3) until recently. ary and December 2017 targeted the larger northern The traders returned with kola nuts and cloth. In the part of the site and tested one of the higher mounds, first detailed French reports on Ségou in 1893/1894, Mound G. Here, a 3- × -3-m test trench aimed at gain- Togu is listed as a staging point for caravans going ing an overview of the stratigraphy and dates of the towards the southeast, crossing the Bani, and from settlement was excavated to a depth of around 3  m there taking many different directions (ANOM 51 below surface. The excavations, led by Daouda Keita, PA 1). uncovered a sequence of layered earth and mud-brick Our surveys in 2016 revealed four archaeologi- buildings, floor levels, and midden deposits subdi - cal site complexes surrounding the present village vided into four phases (Gestrich & Keita, 2017). The of Togu — three habitation sites and one small iron sequence was dated with five AMS dates on wood smelting site (Gestrich & Keita, 2017). We focused charcoal between the early ninth and the late thir- our attention on the site known as “Togu Missiri,” teenth century (Table 1). which translates as “mosque (or, the meeting place) In terms of material culture, Togu Missiri is com- of Togu.” The town notables that we interviewed in parable to other sites investigated in the area in recent the course of our research believe this to be the first years, mainly Sorotomo (MacDonald et  al., 2011), Fig. 3 Map of locations mentioned in the text 1 3 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 409 different from the contemporaneous ones in the region. What was remarkable at Togu Missiri was the number of midden deposits uncovered by the exca- vations. These mostly consisted of soils with a high amount of ash and organic admixture which were rich in finds. There were pit features containing such midden deposits as well as midden layers between the occupation levels of the site (see Fig.  5). In the other sites that have been excavated in the area, no such deposits were found, with the possible exception of a deep pit feature at Sorotomo Unit B (MacDonald et  al., 2011). The reason why our excavation trench at Togu Missiri had such an exceptional amount of midden material cannot so far be explained, nor do we know whether this is a feature of the site in gen- eral rather than only of the small area selected for test excavations. The Botanical Assemblage The soil samples analyzed for this study came from midden deposits (nine samples), from the sediment found inside intact pottery vessels (seven samples), and from living floors (two samples). They do not represent a systematic sample of the site, but all major Fig. 4 Map of the individual settlement mounds at Togu Mis- siri, showing the location of the 2017 excavations architectural rebuilding phases are represented. The soil samples were subjected to bucket flotation and subsequently passed through a 0.25-mm mesh sieve Marakaduguba, and Faraku. A combination of recti- by the students of Bamako University’s HOPE labo- linear and curvilinear construction in mud-brick and ratory under the supervision of Nikolas Gestrich and coursed earth, tamped laterite gravel floors, and pot - N’Ji Jacques Dembélé. The samples were analyzed in tery decorated with folded strip roulettes, fish spine London and Frankfurt by Louis Champion following roulettes, red slip, and burnish are among the typical the methodology described in Champion and Fuller elements of the archaeology of this region in the first (2019). Three samples were devoid of any plant half of the second millennium AD. Overall, the mate- remains. In total, 1425 archaeobotanical items were rial culture of this settlement was not significantly recovered from 100 L of soil. The density of finds, Table 1 Radiocarbon dates Sample no Site Context Depth below BP 95.4% cal AD from Togu Missiri datum (cm) Beta-464271 TOG2 5 29 780 ± 30 1,210–1,281 Beta-464267 TOG2 13 90 880 ± 30 (68.4%) 1,117–1,222 (27%) 1,042–1,104 Beta-464272 TOG2 20 116 900 ± 30 1,039–1,210 Beta-502929 TOG2 42 235 1,140 ± 30 (78.6%) 854–981 (11.3%) 802–848 Beta-502928 TOG2 50 257 1,140 ± 30 (78.6%) 854–981 (11.3%) 802–848 1 3 410 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 Fig. 5 Profiles of the excavations Togu Missiri showing midden deposits 14.3 botanical items per liter of soil, is high compared the East (Fig.  1). The fruit is an ellipsoid drupe of to other sites in the West African savanna and Sahel, 8–12 cm by 3–6 cm that usually supports one oblong where the average is around 10 botanical remains per seed up to 6  cm long. In Cameroon, where Safou is liter of soil (Champion, 2019). a daily staple, it is usually boiled in water and con- The archaeobotanical assemblage from Togu Mis- sumed as a side plate. It is usually the pulpy pericarp siri (Table  2) is largely dominated by fonio remains, that is eaten, either raw or cooked. The pulp could of which 709 grains were found in 13 samples (72% also be reduced to a sort of butter. The seed kernel is of ubiquity), representing a frequency of 54%. Pearl also rich in oil and can be turned into butter (Bostoen, millet is also well represented with 348 items (for 2014; Burkill, 2000). 24% of the total assemblage [frequency]). Sorghum Kola nuts (Cola cf. nitida) and Safou fruits is present as well but only in low frequency (4%). (Dacryodes edulis) (Fig.  6) are present in each soil Finally, cowpea is present in very low frequency, sample from the last three phases (D, C, B) but are with only three cowpea remains (less than 1% of the absent in the earliest phase. Cola nitida fruits are dry, assemblage). With 37 remains (3%), cotton is the woody capsules (or aphiscarum) that grow in radial main cash crop present. clusters of two to six fruits (Fig.  6A). Inside the One major diachronic development visible in the shell is a series of ovate to obturbinate seeds (“kola assemblage is the arrival of cotton, which is not pre- nuts”) arranged in two rows. The seeds are three- sent before around AD 1200 in Phase B. Further, a or four-sided, with an indented hilum on the wider constant decrease in the frequency of pearl millet end, and often coming to point; in cross section, remains is noted (from 67% in Phase E to 7% in phase they are three- or four-sided. Pods of ~ 10  cm long B; Table 2). African rice is observed only in the ear- contain three to 14 seeds, which are reddish when liest phase but only in a very small proportion (2% fresh, ~ 3  cm long, and surrounded by white fleshy in phase E) and is absent in other phases. These agri- aril. The C. nitida seed has a typical dicotyledon- cultural results will be further discussed in a separate ous structure, unlike C. acuminata with a seed that publication. The focus here is on kola nut and safou can split into three to six lobes (Dah-Nouvlessounon, fruit remains. et  al., 2016; Niemenak et  al. 2008). The specimens Like kola nuts, safou fruit trees, Dacryodes edu- studied here have two cotyledons and are therefore lis, grow natively in the countries bordering the Gulf referred to as Cola. cf. nitida (Fig.  6B, C), the spe- of Guinea but are cultivated (and naturalized) from cies that is natural to the western side of the kola Sierra Leone to Angola in the South and Uganda in belt. Dacryodes edulis, the Safou or “African plum,” 1 3 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 411 Table 2 Archaeobotanical Togu Missiri assemblage at Togu Missiri by phases: number of items Date AD Phase E Phase D Phase C Phase B Total recovered, frequency, and 900–1,000 1,000–1,100 1,100–1,200 1,200–1,300 ubiquity for the main crops Number of samples 3 5 5 5 18 Volume of soil in liters 15 25 25 25 100 Digitaria exilis - 315 336 58 709   Frequency 56% 59% 32% 54%   Ubiquity 75% 100% 100% 72% Pennisetum glaucum 72 161 103 12 348   Frequency 67% 29% 18% 7% 24%   Ubiquity 100% 100% 100% 75% 89% Sorghum bicolor 3 14 35 - 52   Frequency 3% 2.5% 6% 4%   Ubiquity 33% 100% 100% 67% Oryza glaberrima 2 - - - 2   Frequency 2% < 1%   Ubiquity 33% 5% Vigna sp. - 3 - - 3   Frequency < 1% < 1%   Ubiquity 40% 10% Gossypium sp. - - - 37 37   Frequency 20% 2%   Ubiquity 75% 22% Tree/bush (fruit) 1 16 65 53 135   Frequency < 1% 3% 11% 25% 10%   Ubiquity 33% 75% 75% 75% 55% Cola cf. nitida - Present Present Present Present   Ubiquity 100% 100% 100% 84% Dacryodes edulis - Present Present Present Present   Ubiquity 100% 100% 100% 84% Total number 108 562 574 181 1425 Density (item/liter) 7.2 22.5 23 7.2 14.3 produces elliptical drupes (~ 7 cm long) that ripen to their deposition. It is not usual to find any botanical a purple or blue hue, but the edible pulp (mesocarp) trace of kola nuts at the point of consumption since is somewhat tough and oily and will soften when they are reduced to a pulp by chewing and often boiled. While the endocarp and testa of the stone are digested. Further, no durable specialized material cul- thin and unlikely to preserve, the highly convoluted ture is currently or historically used in their transport and segmented embryo within it (Fig.  6D) is denser and storage. Kola nuts are usually stored and trans- and thus able to survive charring (as in Fig. 6E). ported in baskets and wrapped in leaves. Why, then, do we find large fragments of nuts here? We suggest that whole kola nuts or large fragments would only Togu Missiri and the Long‑Distance Trade enter the archaeological record in important numbers of the Late First and Early Second Millennium during the regular process of repacking the nuts and AD discarding those that are no longer in good condition and risk spoiling others by spreading mold or infesta- How Did the Tropical Produce Get to Togu Missiri? tion. If Togu Missiri were a regular halt on the kola trade route northwards, then it would make sense The find of kola nut and Safou fruit remains at Togu that nuts would regularly be discarded there and that Missiri raises questions about the circumstances of some would survive alongside other organic material 1 3 412 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 Fig. 6 Modern Cola sp. and Dacryodes edulis draw- ings and archaeobotanical remains from Togu Missiri. A Fruit cluster, sectioned fruit, seed and seed sections of Cola acuminata (after Kohler 1890). B and C Archaeobotanical remains, Cola cf. nitida carbonized fruit from Togu Missiri archaeological deposits A14 and A6. D Dacryo- des edulis fruit and seeds (after Hooker, 1899). E Archaeobotanical remains, Dacryodes edulis carbon- ized fruit from Togu Missiri archaeological deposit A17 in the midden deposits. Their charred state might Leone-Guinea border highlands (Lovejoy, 1980), then not be an accident but rather a deliberate burning of the kola nuts would have reached Togu Missiri on a infested nuts to prevent the spread of pests, as is also route that roughly follows the course of the Niger. suggested by current best practice guidelines, which From the mid-eighteenth century onwards, accord- advocate burning and burying the discarded nuts ing to Roberts (1987), the kola trade from the Segu (Ndingwan et  al., 2013). It is a question of chance area was focused mainly on the trade entrepots of that these middens were deposited on the habitation Wassulu and Bonduku, with only a secondary route mound and in the area of our excavations. However, to Guinea and Sierra Leone. The oral accounts that the finds do allow us to suggest that Togu Missiri was we have collected also speak of recent trade for kola a settlement through which kola nuts were regularly through entrepots in Côte d’Ivoire, in particular Man, traded, rather than only being a point where they were Bouaké, and even Abijan (Fig.  3). Roberts (1987, p. consumed. 62) further states that the Maraka kola trade did not If Paul Lovejoy’s interpretation of the linguistic often use the river but instead relied on overland data is correct and kola trade originated in the Sierra caravans for their journeys, which were often more 1 3 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 413 than 500  km one way. In the establishment of early Hunwick et al., 1979) and slaves and to neglect other trade from the Guinea highlands to the Middle Niger, trade items. A notable exception is Brooks (1993), prior to the last centuries of the first millennium, it whose list of traded items is considerably more var- is difficult to imagine that the river would not have ied. The archaeological focus has been on gold, salt, played some role in transport or at least in the estab- iron, stone, cowrie shells, and beads. Some of the lishment of contacts between the populations of the less frequently documented trade items include ani- two regions. As Kuba (2009) points out, for the lower mal hides (Dueppen & Gokee, 2014) and ivory (Stahl reaches of the Niger, river trade (at least downstream) & Stahl, 2004). However, the accounts collected by was considerably faster, with less need for tolls and Roberts (1987) and the Markadugu project (Gestrich negotiations, something that would be convenient & Keita, 2017) suggest that the emphasis, at least for the trade of perishable goods. For now, however, in recent centuries, was on dried fish, the fermented we must treat the question of trade routes as mostly tree-pod spice sunbala, horses, tobacco, re-exported unknown. This is because the northern edges of the desert salt, and cotton cloth. From a seventeenth- forest zone, especially the areas of Guinea and north- century source, we also know that grain was exported ern Cote d’Ivoire, have seen little archaeological from the area of Ségou to Timbuktu (Houdas, 1964, work and no archaeobotanical analyses from this area p. 406). Gold is nowhere mentioned, though we do are known to the authors. know from Mungo Park (1858) that there was a trade in gold 250  km further upstream at Kangaba in the What Was the Wider Trade Network and Who Were late eighteenth century. the Traders? On the present evidence, we assume that the popu- lation of Togu Missiri was involved in trading forest Our results suggest that kola nuts were not the only zone items further northwards, into the Niger’s Inland commodities traded north from the forest into the Delta and its margins, and to the desert edge. This savanna zone. The safou fruit remains found at Togu trade network intersects with others and feeds into a Missiri shows us two things: Firstly, those trade complex and high-volume network of exchange cen- operations were fast enough to bring tropical fruits tered on the middle reaches of the Niger. The often- northward into the savanna. Secondly, the previous cited geological and environmental differences in the archaeological and historical view on traded items West African interior appear to have been the basis in West Africa was too narrow. The Arabic historical for the development of high-volume  long-distance sources with their focus on gold are extremely limited trade in basic provisions, especially salt and tools, by in their information on trade goods in the West Afri- the mid-first millennium AD. This can be seen from can interior. Early European sources contain much growing imports and less local manufacture in met- more detail for the coastal regions, but not until the ropolitan areas such as Jenné-jeno (McIntosh, 1995) fifteenth century. Archaeological research has missed and increased evidence of large-scale, market-ori- many goods traded across the region because of pres- ented manufacturing in peripheral regions (Gestrich, ervation problems, especially for organic objects. The 2013; Gestrich & MacDonald, 2018). Long-distance fortunate finds of kola nut and safou fruits from Togu but low-volume trade in nonessential items had Missiri strongly suggest that we need to imagine early existed in the region since the Late Stone Age. That long-distance trade in West Africa as incorporating trade was fundamentally different from the high- a much more diverse range of items than the current volume trade that began in the first millennium AD. historical and archaeological evidence documents. It included cash crops, large-scale manufacture for It is usual for authors on historical trade in West export, specialist traders with established networks, Africa to focus on gold, and as we have stated above, and above all, the dependency of large populations the link between kola and gold trades has been made on the availability of traded items such as iron tools by Levtzion and R. McIntosh. It is, however, also and grinding stones (for a description of this system the case that the early written sources for the area of growing specialization and regional interdepend- have the gold trade as their main concern. It is per- ency, see R. McIntosh, 1998). Societies along the haps these sources that lead many historians to place Niger were already used to buying and selling things a disproportionate emphasis on gold (Green, 2019; regularly by the mid-first millennium AD, probably 1 3 414 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 with a socioeconomic system that was sufficiently In fact, many local populations regard it as received monetarized to cope with the large scale and high wisdom that all Soninké are traders. Due to this, it frequency of transactions. The earliest known cow- has become usual for authors on the past of Sahelian rie shells from the region also date from the mid- West Africa to associate all trade with the Soninké, first millennium and were clearly used as currency and with the Empire of Ghana, a desert-edge pol- by the beginning of the second millennium (Haour ity engaged in Saharan trade. Both R. McIntosh & Christie, 2019). The regular trade in basic items (1998) and Lovejoy (1980), for example, assume and the concurrent development of specialist trad- that Soninké networks must be behind the early kola ers and long-distance routes will have opened up trade. At first glance, our results would support this the possibility for any item to be traded in any vol- identification. Togu is, and is claimed to always have ume along the same routes. The fact that forest zone been, a settlement of the Maraka population group, safou fruits were brought to Togu Missiri, appar- and maraka is the Bambara word for those who call ently regularly during three centuries, may therefore themselves Soninké. This has led to the assumption act as an example of how economically connected that the Maraka settlements of the Ségu area were the entire interior of West Africa was in the late first founded as part of the Wagadu polity or as part of its and early second millennium AD. dissolution and the scattering of its population (e.g., It is, therefore, interesting to note the absence of Pageard, 1961). However, a closer look reveals that kola nut and safou remains in the pre-tenth-cen- the term Maraka nowadays describes people of very tury layers at Togu, although midden deposits were varied ethnic backgrounds. They share a certain num- equally abundant there. Of course, this is not evi- ber of cultural practices, by which their identity is dence that the trade in kola nuts did not exist during defined in opposition to the Bamana who also settle this period, but it might not have had the same vol- in this area (Bazin, 1985). A Maraka is supposed to ume, or it might not have used Togu Missiri as a reg- be Muslim, engage in trade, and not take part in wars. ular stop. In any case, we must suppose other items For the Maraka of the Ségu area, this is not overtly to have traveled along the same routes until a market a profound cultural difference, and becoming Maraka for kola nuts was established. By then, specialized often simply denotes the addition of Islamic reli- traders had well-established relationships along their gious practices or a change of clothing style (Bazin, trading routes. 1972). Anyone could and can become Maraka, but It remains to discuss the sociocultural and eco- men engaging in these activities would have been nomic contexts within which such specialized traders excluded from their communities of origin to a cer- operated. A large number of historical and archaeo- tain degree. They would no longer have been part of logical writings have focused on the structure of trade initiation societies, the family farming enterprise, or in West Africa, emphasizing the establishment of the strict scheme of succession within the family unit. trade diasporas, the importance of shared cults, or a A male Maraka’s work and life are incompatible with shared and exclusive Muslim identity as key factors male identity in most agricultural societies of Sahe- in the establishment of trade links (Brooks, 1993; lian West Africa, including the Soninké. While the Wilks, 1961). Following Levtzion (1973), these trade Maraka are known far and wide as traders, engaging diasporas are often linked to the Empire of Ghana in this activity means leaving behind the ties of the and its downfall. This link has become cemented in sedentary agricultural lineages. The word maraka, for the historical literature of the area due to the identi- us, thus equates with a set of practices that include, fication of the Ghana of the medieval Arabic sources but are not limited to, trade. It has become attached with the Wagadu polity of Soninké historical tradi- to the Soninké by virtue of the high number of them tions (see Gestrich 2018). Across many parts of West engaged in commerce. Africa, Soninké individuals and communities have We have focused on this argument to make explicit functioned as long-distance traders and have set up that there is no dependable link of the early kola trade diaspora communities over a remarkably wide geo- to either the Soninké ethnicity or the Wagadu polity/ graphic area. Many of them link their existence in the Empire of Ghana. Secondly, we want to stress the diasporic communities to the “scattering” (saanxi) extent to which traders in Sahelian West Africa were event that marks the fall of Wagadu in oral traditions. a professional group, yet one with such pronounced 1 3 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 415 social distance from others that they could be consid- in turn, aided specialized production when coupled ered almost like an ethnic group. In contrast to some with long-distance trade. While the four contribu- other West African occupational specialists, member- tions that discussed Lovejoy’s and Roberts’ papers ship is open, and there are no strict rules regarding mainly focused on the role of polities and slavery as endogamy. The degree to which individuals in such depending on or creating trade links, several impor- groups engaged in commerce, however, could be tant further points were raised which continue to be highly variable. There were surely those who plied topical now. Amselle (1980), for instance, pointed long-distance trade routes several times a year, as out the uncertain causality between trade, polity, and well as those for whom joining a trading caravan was slavery and that ecological factors alone were some- a one-off when they found themselves in a position to what too weak to explain the development of long- do so and those who engaged only in resale. We can- distance trade. According to him, the growers in kola- not be certain how far back in time Maraka identity producing areas needed to make a conscious decision existed and whether the inhabitants of Togu Missiri to plant and tend to the plants, harvest and pack them, would have understood themselves as being Maraka and thereby make a seasonally abundant crop of lim- or even belonging to a trading group, separate from ited sale value into a product for export. At the time, the surrounding population. For the moment, the Amselle came to the rather vague conclusion that the integration of traders into local society in this area is West African subcontinental economy was a globaliz- still an open question, but one we hope to address in ing system in which everyone had their role to play. future studies. Based on the archaeological work of the intervening 40  years and with the arguments presented here, we might add some precision to this debate. Conclusions: Early Kola Trade Into the Middle By the end of the first millennium AD, the West Niger African interior was connected by trade routes. These occasionally transported luxury goods but Lovejoy’s history of the West African kola trade regularly moved all sorts of materials between the appeared in a themed issue of the Cahiers d’études different geological and ecological zones. Some of africaines, alongside an article by Roberts (1980) these materials were moved in high volumes. It is which criticized some fundamental points of Hop- now apparent that the environmental differences kins’ Economic History of West Africa. Hopkins that Roberts underlined did more than just present had seen African societies as largely self-sufficient opportunities for trade. Rather, they made trade before the nineteenth century, a view that is fre- inevitable: there are strong indicators that the large quently repeated to this day (e.g., Eltis, 2013), often population living in and around the Inland Niger in the first chapter of historical overviews focused Delta from the mid-first millennium AD would not on later periods. For Hopkins, local exchange was have covered its needs without a medium- to long- limited because everyone was producing the same distance, high-volume movement of nonluxury goods under the same conditions. Long-distance items. The archaeological data indicates that the trade, for him, was limited to luxury items destined populations of such ecological and economic niche to individuals with high buying power. In addition areas drove high-volume exchange and regional to criticizing Hopkins’ static picture of the pre-nine- economic specialization and the development of teenth-century past, Roberts pointed out that several internally differentiated specialized traders and important long-distance trade goods, such as salt and craftspeople. Over time, this had an integrating kola, were accessible to ordinary buyers because the effect on the broader region and, from the mid-first quantities required were small. People bought when millennium onward, led to societies in which spe- they could. He further showed how the market limi- cialization and the buying and selling of goods were tations identified by Hopkins were overcome by commonplace. The end product is the situation that transporting surpluses into areas beyond the limits Amselle described, a globalized economy in which of local markets where that product was in demand. everyone had their place — that is, everyone pro- He argued that ecological differences strongly influ - duced something to sell. Although some communi- enced precolonial West African trade and that this, ties may have been able to cover their basic needs 1 3 416 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 the Institut des Sciences Humaines de Mali and the Université for food, clothing, and shelter, almost all would des Sciences Sociales et Gestion in Bamako. have also been able, and were willing, to produce something that traders would buy from them on a Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Com- regular basis. mons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits The find of Cola sp. and Dacryodes edulis remains use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the at Togu Missiri shows that the regional trading net- original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Crea- works that included the Middle Niger region were tive Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The well-organized by the early second millennium and images or other third party material in this article are included ran from the West African forest zone through the in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not Savanna and Sahara to North Africa. Much research included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your has concentrated on the trans-Saharan portion of this intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds trade, to the detriment of the sub-Saharan portion, the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly though the latter is likely to have been economically from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http:// creat iveco mmons. org/ licen ses/ by/4. 0/. far more important. That kola nuts reached Arab trad- ers in Walata in the mid-thirteenth century is a testa- ment to how efficient these networks were (Levtzion References & Hopkins 2000, p. 307). Even more impressive is that fresh tropical fruit appears to have been brought ANOM 51 PA 1. Notice sur le cercle de Ségou (vers from the forest to at least the southern margins of the 1893/1894). Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en- Inland Niger Delta. Provence. 51 PA 1, ark:/61561/vl918kfz. Previous research on early sub-Saharan trade in Amselle, J.-L. (1980). Autosubsistance, petite production marchande et chaînes de sociétés. Cahiers D’études Afric- West Africa tends to concentrate on archaeologi- aines, 20(77–78), 155–160. cally more visible items such as iron, and on gold Bazin, J. (1972). Commerce et predation. L’Etat Bambara de destined for North Africa. Other goods are often Segou et ses Communautés Marka. Conference on Man- assumed to have also been part of long-distance ding Studies. Royal Anthropological Institute MS415/9. Manuscript. trade, such as salt, sandstone, wood, clothing, and Bazin, J. (1985). À chacun son Bambara. In J.-L. Amselle & slaves. Yet our results show that we must in the E. M’Bokolo (Eds.), Au coeur de l’ethnie: Ethnies, trib- future envisage this trade to have incorporated a alisme et état en Afrique (pp. 87–128). Ed. la Découverte. much larger pallet of perishable items, especially Bazin, J. (1988). Princes désarmés, corps dangereux: Les “Rois-Femmes” de La région de Segu. Cahiers D’études foodstuffs. And in the face of such a regular, high- Africaines, 28(111/112), 375–441. volume trade, we must also consider the entire sub- Bertaux, C. (1984). La technique des prescriptions sacrifi - continent to have been closely and regularly con- cielles dans la géomancie bambara (région de Ségou, nected, at least from the late first millennium AD. Mali). Systèmes De Pensée En Afrique Noire, 6, 117–130. Blench, R. M. (2006). Archaeology, language, and the African past. AltaMira. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the peo- Bostoen, K. (2014). Wild trees in the subsistence economy ple of Togu for their enthusiastic support for this research. In of early Bantu speech communities. In C. J. Stevens, S. particular, we thank Seydna Oumar Dembele and his family Nixon, M. A. Murray, & D. Q. Fuller (Eds.), Archaeology for being our hosts while in Togu, as well as those who par- of African plant use (pp. 129–140). Left Coast Press. ticipated in the excavations: Bafing Djiré, Zoumana dit Bagui Boujou, J. (2000). Clientélisme, corruption et gouvernance Djiré, Baba Koita, Ladji Kanouté, Madou dit Fa Dembélé, locale à Mopti (Mali). Autrepart, 14, 143–163. Bassa Dembélé. We thank David Glauser for his help with the Brooks, G. E. (1980). Kola trade and state-building: Upper photographs of the archaeobotanical remains. We thank the th th Guinea coast and Senegambia, 15 -17 centuries. Work- students of the HOPE lab in Bamako for their help with the ing Papers in African Studies, No. 38. Boston: Afri- flotation of the soil samples. can Studies Center. https:// hdl. handle. net/ 2144/ 40581. Accessed 20 June 2021. Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by Brooks, G. E. (1993). Landlords and strangers. Westview Projekt DEAL. The research for this article was carried out Press. as part of the Markadugu Project, funded by the Volkswagen Burdock, G. A., Carabin, I. G., & Crincoli, C. M. (2009). Foundation. The archaeobotanical analyses were carried out at Safety assessment of kola nut extract as a food ingredient. the UCL Institute of Archaeology in London and Goethe Uni- Food and Chemical Toxicology, 47, 1725–1732. versity in Frankfurt am Main. The fieldwork was supported by Burkill, H. M. (2000). Useful plants of West Tropical Africa (2nd ed.). Kew Publishing. 1 3 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 417 Hopkins, A. G. (2016). An economic history of West Africa. Champion, L. (2019). The evolution of agriculture, food and 2nd edition. Routledge. drink in the ancient Niger River basin: Archaeobotanical Hunwick, J. O. (1973). The mid-fourteenth century capital of studies from Mali and Benin. Ph.D. thesis, University Col- Mali. The Journal of African History, 14, 195–206. lege London, London. Hunwick, J. O., Meillassoux, C., & Triaud, J.-L. (1979). Champion, L., & Fuller, D.Q. (2019). Archaeobotany: Meth- La géographie du Soudan d’après al-Bakri Trois Lec- ods. In Spear, T. (Ed.),  The Oxford encyclopedia of Afri- tures.  Revue Française D’histoire D’outre-Mer, 66, can historiography: Methods and sources. Vol 1. Oxford: 111–138. Oxford University Press. Interviews Markadugu Project (2016). Group interview with Dah-Nouvlessounon, D., Adoukonou-Sagbadja, H., Nafan, D., village council at Togu, 13/12/2016. Group interview Adjanohoun, A., Noumavo, P. A., Sina, H., et  al. (2016). with village council at Marakaduguba, 14/12/2016. Inter- Morpho-agronomic variability of three kola trees acces- views conducted by Seydou Camara, Soumaila Coulibaly, sions [Cola nitida (Vent.) Schott et Endl., Cola acuminata Daouda Keita and Nikolas Gestrich. (P. Beauv.) Schott et Endl., and Garcinia kola Heckel] Kirikoshi, H. (2019). Migrants’ participation in cocoa produc- from Southern Benin. Genetic resources and crop evolu- tion: Trust-building among multi-ethnic groups in West tion, 63(3), 561–579. Africa. In H. Kirikoshi, Y. Matsunami, & S. Takeuchi Drucker-Brown, S. (1995). The court and the kola nut: Woo- (Eds.),  Development, migration, and resources in Africa ing and witnessing in Northern Ghana. The Journal of the (pp. 45–59). ASC-TUFS Working Papers. Royal Anthropological Institute, 1(1), 129–143. Köhler, H. A. (1890). Medizinal-Pflanzen, Vol. 2. Franz Eugen Dueppen, S. A., & Gokee, C. (2014). Hunting on the margins Köhler. of medieval West African states: A preliminary study of Kuba, R. (2009). Cultural contacts between the savannah and the zooarchaeological record at Diouboye, Senegal. Aza- the forest: Trade along the Eastern Niger. In S. Mag- nia: Archaeological Research in Africa, 49(3), 354–385. navita, L. Koté, P. Breunig, & O. A. Idé (Eds.), Cross- Eltis, D. (2013). The slave trade and commercial agriculture in roads/Carrefour Sahel: Cultural and technological an African context. In R. Law, S. Schwarz, & S. Strickrodt developments in first millennium BC West Africa (pp. (Eds.), Commercial agriculture, the slave trade and slav- 147–156). Journal of African Archaeology Monograph ery in Atlantic Africa (pp. 28–53). Boydell & Brewer. Series 2. Africa Magna. Houdas, O. (Ed.) (1964). Tarikh es-Soudan: Par Abder- Kwame, A. (2019). An ethnographic sketch of social inter- rahman b. Abdallah b. ’Imran b. ’Amir es-Sa’di. actions in Dagbon society: The case of greeting, shar- Adrien-Maisonneuve. ing drinks and kola nut. Journal of Multidisciplinary Genequand, D., Apoh, W., Gavua, K., Canetti, M., Champion, Research at Trent, 2(1), 1–20. L., Gyam, S., Hajdas, I., Maret, F., de Reynier, C., & Levtzion, N. (1973). Ancient Ghana and Mali. Methuen. Ruben, I. (2020). Preliminary report on the 2019 season Levtzion, N., & Hopkins, J. F. P. (Eds.) (2000). Corpus of of the Gonja Project, Ghana. SLSA Jahresbericht, 2019, early Arabic sources for West African history. Markus 225–289. Wiener. Gestrich, N. (2013). The archaeology of social organisation Lovejoy, P. E. (1980). Kola in the history of West Africa. at Tongo Maaré Diabal. Ph.D. thesis. University College Cahiers D’études Africaines, 20(77–78), 97–134. London, London.  Gestrich, N. (2019). The empire of Ghana. In Spear, T. (Ed.), Lovejoy, P. E. (1995). Kola Nuts. The ‘coffee’ of the central Oxford research encyclopedia of African history. Oxford Sudan. In Goodman, J., Lovejoy, P. E., & Sherratt, A. University Press. https:// doi. org/ 10. 1093/ acref ore/ 97801 (Eds.), Consuming habits. Drugs in history and anthro- 90277 734. 013. 396. pology (pp.103–125). Routledge. Gestrich, N., & Keita, D. (2017). Report on a season of MacDonald, K. C., & Camara, S. (2011). Segou: Warfare and prospection and excavation near Ségu, Mali. Nyame the origins of a state of slavery. In P. Lane & K. C. Mac- Akuma, 88, 48–55. Donald (Eds.), Slavery in Africa. Archaeology and mem- Gestrich, N., & MacDonald, K. C. (2018). On the margins of ory (pp. 25–46). Proceedings of the British Academy 168. Ghana and Kawkaw: Four seasons of excavation at Tongo MacDonald, K. C., Camara, S., Canós-Donnay, S., Gestrich, Maaré Diabal (AD 500–1150), Mali. Journal of African N., & Keita, D. (2011). Sorotomo: A forgotten Malian Archaeology, 16, 1–30. capital? Archaeology International, 13(14), 52–64. Green, T. (2019). A fistful of shells . University of Chicago MacDonald, K. C., Gestrich, N. , Camara, S., & Keita, D. Press. (2018). The ‘Pays Dô’ and the origins of the empire of Håland, R. (1980). Man’s role in the changing habitat of Méma Mali. In T. Green & B. Rossi (Eds.), Landscapes, sources during the old Kingdom of Ghana. Norwegian Archaeo- and intellectual projects of the West African past: Essays logical Review, 13, 31–46. in honour of Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias (pp. Haour, A., & Christie, A. (2019). Cowries in the archaeology 63–87). Brill. of West Africa: The present picture. Azania: Archaeologi- McIntosh, R. J. (1998). The peoples of the Middle Niger. cal Research in Africa, 54, 287–321. Blackwell Publishers. Hauenstein, A. (1974). La noix de cola. Coutumes et rites de McIntosh, S. K. (Ed.). (1995). Excavations at Jenne-Jeno, quelques ethnies de Côte d’lvoire. Anthropos, 69(3/4), Hambarketolo and Kaniana (Inland Niger Delta, Mali), 457–493. the 1981 Season. University of California Press. Hooker, W. J. (1899). Icones Plantarum, Vol. 26. Dulau and Co. 1 3 418 Afr Archaeol Rev (2021) 38:403–418 Meillassoux, C. (1973). Etat et conditions des esclaves a Roberts, R. (1980). Linkages and multiplier effects in the eco - Gumbu (Mali) au XIXe Siecle. The Journal of African logically specialized trade of precolonial West Africa. History, 14(3), 429–452. Cahiers D’études Africaines, 20(77–78), 135–148. Ndingwan, M. A., Tsobeng, A., Asaah, E., Degrande, A., & Roberts, R. (1987). Warriors, merchants, and slaves: The state Tchoundjeu, Z. (2013). Best practices on kola nut conser- and the economy in the Middle Niger Valley, 1700–1914. vation and storage. Handbook for Kola producers. World Stanford University Press. Agroforestry Centre. Serneels, V., & Perret, S. (2003). Quantification of smith - Niemenak, N., Onomo, P. E., Lieberei, R., & Ndoumou, D. O. ing activities based on the investigation of slag and other (2008). Purine alkaloids and phenolic compounds in three material remains. In Archaeometallurgy in Europe. Pro- Cola species and Garcinia kola grown in Cameroon. South ceedings of the International Conference (Milano, Sep- African Journal of Botany, 74(4), 629–638. tember 24–26, 2003), 469–478. Nixon, S. (2017). Trans-Saharan gold trade in pre-modern Stahl, A. B., & Stahl, P. (2004). Ivory production & consump- tion in Ghana in the early second millennium AD. Antiq- times: Available evidence and research agendas. In D. J. uity, 78, 86–101. Mattingly, V. Leitch, C. N. Duckworth, A. Cuénod, M. Sundström, L. (1966). The cola nut: Functions in West Afri- Sterry, & F. Cole (Eds.), Trade in the ancient Sahara and can social life. Studia Ethnographica Uppsaliensia XXVI, beyond (pp. 156–188). Cambridge University Press. Varia, II, 135–149. Nyadanu, D., Lowor, S. T., Akpertey, A., Tchokponhoué, D. Tridge, n.d. https:// www. tridge. com/ intel ligen ces/ kola- nut/ A., Pobee, P., Dogbatse J. A., et al. (2020). Genetic vari- produ ction. Accessed 09 Mar 2020. ability of bioactive compounds and selection for nutraceu- Wilks, I. (1961). The northern factor in Ashanti History: tical quality in kola [Cola nitida (Vent) Schott. and Endl.]. Begho and the Mande. The Journal of African History, PLoS ONE, 15(12): e0242972 2(1), 25–34. Park, M. (1858). Travels in the interior of Africa. A. and C. Black. Pageard, R. (1961). Note sur le peuplement du pays de Ségou. Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard Journal De La Société Des Africanistes, 31, 83–90. to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional Person, Y. (1986). Samori: Une révolution dyula. Vol. 1. affiliations. Dakar: IFAN. 1 3

Journal

African Archaeological Review – Springer Journals

Published: Sep 1, 2021

Keywords: Kola nut; African plum; Stimulants; West African archaeology; Archaeobotany; Mali

There are no references for this article.