Material Culture in West Africa

The challenges for the archaeologist are many. It seems almost impossible at times not to impose ones understanding of their own society in order to build a model of the past. What is left behind is just so limited and I find it so frustrating to try and seem so few pieces into a comprehensive reality as we can never know the whole truth.

I’ve recently become fascinated with ethnomusicology (which is rather far from archaeology, I know) but I am going to share some connections and learning that sprung from both. Specifically I read a very interesting article about West African culture that made me look at material objects in an entirely different way. From the perspective of an archaeologist, what would it mean if the culture in question did not have any form of written language? Presumably, the material artifacts discovered would take on an entirely new and much deeper meaning.

Constructing the music history of West Africa is a unique challenge as few written records exist and those that do only cover short spans of time. The history of this region cannot be found or maintained through written records, but is imprinted on every aspect of the material culture; it is woven into every pattern of fabric, etched into clay, and sculpted into art. Primarily though, music and song play the biggest role in maintaining this rich culture. People are reminded of their past by oral traditions and pop singers, which often honour political leaders and praise family names. In West Africa this diverse tapestry of stories is essential in constructing the national identities of Malian and Guinean people.

This is where my interests lie, in these oral histories. Merely peering into a burial would give us little to no sense of this as the life the person had lived and the songs they had sung will have already returned with them to the earth. Still, I try and search for some assemblage of this within archaeology but the coffin seems always empty.

In West Africa, music imbues vital symbols for illuminating the past and developing a deeper understanding of these symbols helps us to better appreciate the importance of these traditions. For Mande people music is inseparable from many other activities. The rich variety of stories and songs passed on through generations not only mark special occasions and rituals but contain the loaded histories that otherwise would remain hidden in the past.

E, Cherry. 2000. The Mande. Mande Music: Traditional and Modern Music of the Maninka and Mandinka of Western Africa. University of Chicago Press. p. 29-63