“Our Ancestors Were Material Scientists”

Ogundiran, Akinwumi; Ige, O. Akinlolu

doi:10.1177/0021934715600964

Cited by 39 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…The glass produced there had a very specific composition, i.e. high lime high alumina glass (HLHA), which is not produced anywhere else in the world [5][6][7][8]. In sub-Saharan Africa, glass beads were therefore mostly exotic items, traded in various quantities through diverse longdistance exchange routes.…”

Section: Background: the Production And Trade Of Glassmentioning

confidence: 99%

Compositional and provenance study of glass beads from archaeological sites in Mali and Senegal at the time of the first Sahelian states

et al. 2020

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The presence of glass beads in West African archaeological sites provides important evidence of long-distance trade between this part of the continent and the rest of the world. Until recently, most of these items came from historical Sub-Saharan urban centers, well known for their role in the medieval trans-Saharan trade. We present here the chemical analysis by Laser Ablation-Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) of 16 glass beads found in three rural sites excavated during the past decade: the funerary site of Dourou-Boro and settlement sites of Sadia, in central Mali, as well as the settlement site of Djoutoubaya, in eastern Senegal, in contexts dated between the 7th-9th and the 11th-13th centuries CE. Results show that the raw materials used to manufacture the majority of the glass most probably originated in Egypt, the Levantine coast and the Middle East. One bead is of uncertain provenance and shows similarities with glass found in the Iberian Peninsula and in South Africa. One bead fragment found inside a tomb is a modern production, probably linked to recent plundering. All of these ancient beads were exchanged along the trans-Saharan trade routes active during the rise of the first Sahelian states, such as the Ghana and the Gao kingdoms, and show strong similarities with the other West African bead assemblages that have been analysed. Despite the remoteness of their location in the Dogon Country and in the Falémé River valley, the beads studied were therefore included in the long-distance trade network, via contacts with the urban commercial centers located at the edge of the Sahara along the Niger River and in current southern Mauretania. These results bring a new light on the relationships between international and regional trade in Africa and highlight the complementarity between centres of political and economic power and their peripheries, important because of resources like gold for eastern Senegal.

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Section: Background: the Production And Trade Of Glassmentioning

confidence: 99%

Compositional and provenance study of glass beads from archaeological sites in Mali and Senegal at the time of the first Sahelian states

et al. 2020

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show abstract

“…Our data are also consistent with the result of Ige's (2012: 489) experimental work, which demonstrated that a mixture of feldspar-rich sand and snail shell, when melted in small crucibles at temperatures above approximately 700°C, indeed produces glass with a composition similar to the Ile-Ife HLHA. Archaeological work at Osogbo has uncovered a feldspar-rich substance suggested to have been used in glassmaking during the early period in Osogbo in the seventeenth century AD (Ogundiran & Ige 2015), demonstrating the longevity and geographic spread of this technology and perhaps its disappearance and reinvention. This feldspar-lime glass has no parallel in pre-modern glassmaking, decisively confirming the autonomous origin of the Ile-Ife glassmaking technology.…”

Section: Implications and Concluding Remarksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It has also been demonstrated that HLHA glass beads were manufactured on a large scale, suggesting access to a ready market and high demand for the product during the classical era of Ile-Ife (Babalola 2019). Recent work has identified very similar bead-making evidence from early Osogbo, some 45km north of Ile-Ife and dating to a few centuries later (Ogundiran & Ige 2015). While significant work has been undertaken on the production of glass beads in classical Ile-Ife and seventeenth-century AD Osogbo, it is nowhere near complete, and further investigations are needed, especially in the wake of the discovery of what appeared to be semi-finished glass.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%