With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Scott MacEachern will conduct two ten-week seasons of archaeological research in the northern Mandara Mountains of Cameroon. This research will focus on the so-called DGB sites, massive complexes of dry-stone terraces and platforms that are the most striking examples of indigenous African dry-stone architecture between Ethiopia and Great Zimbabwe. "DGB" stands for "diy-gid-biy", or "place of chiefly residence" in the local Mafa language, and this research will examine how these sites functioned in their social, political and ritual contexts. The DGB sites are the earliest-known archaeological remains in one of the most densely settled human landscapes in sub-Saharan Africa, an area now home to dozens of different ethnic groups. Historical sources show that, over the last four centuries, groups living in this area were involved in complex political interchanges with Islamic states in the Lake Chad Basin to the north, while simultaneously serving as a source area for the trans-Saharan slave trade.
Through this period, groups in the Mandara Mountains remained culturally quite distinct, even as they developed on the frontiers of the Islamic world. The dynamics of this long period of contact are of great anthropological and archaeological interest. Small-scale chiefdoms and even more egalitarian societies dominate the Mandara political landscape today, and seem to have done so in the past. Anthropologists usually think of such societies as inevitable stepping-stones toward larger and more-centralized states, but the Mandara case suggests that under certain circumstances these societies can function as independent sociopolitical units over the long term, even when interacting with state-level societies.
This project will examine the development of these sociopolitical systems through archaeological fieldwork on the DGB sites. The function of these sites is unclear. They do not appear to have been residences, despite their local name: no traces of houses or domestic remains have been found on their platforms and terraces. They are not really suited to be fortifications: they have no defensive features or water supply. If anything, their main purpose seems to have been providing a dramatic platform for ritual or political performances - but performances of what kind, and by whom?
Archaeological survey and excavation is essential to any detailed understanding of how the DGB sites were used in ancient social systems. Fieldwork on this project will thus include, first, excavation on two of the DGB sites themselves. This will provide basic information on site chronologies, construction sequences, detailed internal layout and activities carried out on-site. Second, systematic survey and test excavation in midden and terrace areas immediately adjacent to the two chosen sites will provide information on how these sites functioned in the wider human landscapes of which they were a part. This project will provide intensive archaeological field training and research opportunities for American, Cameroonian and Canadian graduate and undergraduate students. In addition, the project will form the basis for doctoral research by a Cameroonian graduate student who will develop a cultural heritage management plan for these important sites.
