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Examples of shells that have been ground—aM. moneta from Tichitt (MAU68-85), with thanks to IFAN; bM. moneta from Ede-Ile, courtesy of Akin Ogundiran; c and dM. moneta ground through experimental archaeology—note the visible striations on the surface. Photos: authors
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Two species of the cowrie shell, Monetaria moneta (Linnaeus, 1758) and Monetaria annulus (Linnaeus, 1758), repeatedly occur in archaeological contexts across West Africa. Despite their archaeological and ethnographic importance, these shells remain poorly and inconsistently reported in the archaeological literature. The absence of standardized data...
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The international program « Peuplement humain et évolution paléoclimatique en Afrique de l'Ouest » has been developing since 1997 a diachronic analysis of the Man-Environment inte-ractions in the sub-Saharan zone of West Africa. The studies were initiated on the Ounjougou sites complex, on the Bandiagara plateau (dogon country, Mali). This complex...
Citations
... Moneta and M. annulus) are believed to have been sourced from the Maldives and Ma'den Ijafen in Mauritania. They were exchanged for their monetary value rather than mere aesthetic objects across West Africa especially during the post-medieval period (Hegendorn and Johnson 1986;Lovejoy 1974;Christie and Haour 2019;Ogundiran 2002). But they were also adopted as elements of divination and jewelry for body adornment. ...
... Among these marine gastropod mollusks, cowry shells are abundant in West Africa and have filtered through centuries of people's lives and histories. While Monetaria moneta and Monetaria annulus are commonly found in the lowenergy inter-tidal zone around the Indo-Pacific region, the cowries in medieval and post-medieval West Africa are believed to have originated from the Maldives and East African waters shipped mostly during the Atlantic era (Richmond 1997;Ogundiran 2002;Christie and Haour 2019). But there are cowries in West African waters. ...
Beads of all kinds are essential objects of prestige, power, trade, and aesthetics in West Africa across time periods. This article discusses the ecologies of beads in medieval and postmedieval west Africa by interrogating the complex relationships between the environment and the craftspeople. With a focus on archaeological records from across the region, we highlight the various types of beads, their manufacturing techniques, and their sources and acquisition of raw materials. We argue that beads are not only objects of personal adornment encoded in meaning and symbolism or exotica but also exemplify complex human engagement with the natural environment – from the geological components (silicious materials and stones), marine resources (Oyster and Cowry), gastropod mollusk (land snail) to reptiles (turtles and birds – Ostrich). Arnold’s ‘ecological approach to craft production’ and Ingold’s notion of ‘making as a correspondence' allow us to discuss the ‘process of making’ beads and the entanglement of nature and culture in medieval and postmedieval West Africa.
... A range of metric and diagnostic attributes were further recorded. Following Christie et al. (2019), the length, width and height of each shell were measured with digital callipers (Fig. 3). The condition of the shell, referring to unintentional/intentional breaks occurring along the vertical or horizontal axis of the shell, was also assessed and recorded. ...
... Previous studies of cowries from archaeological contexts have demonstrated the relevance of studying the dorsal perforation of cowrie shells in order to assess the methods of manufacture and the use of shells by past populations (Bar-Yosef Mayer, 1997;Heath, 2017;Alarashi et al., 2018;Christie et al., 2019). The analysis of use-wear on shells in southern African archaeology is limited, but reference was made to the usewear analysis conducted by Henshilwood et al. (2004) and d 'Errico et al. (2005) on Nassarius kraussianus shells (see also Steele et al., 2019). ...
... Previous experimental and analytical studies have established a range of methods by which the dorsal modifications on cowries were made (Alarashi et al., 2018;Christie et al., 2019;Francis, 1989;Heath, 2017;York, 1972). Prominent methods for removing the dorsum involve a combination of chipping and grinding. ...
Archaeological explorations of the meaning of ‘trade objects’, such as glass beads and cowrie shells, remain hampered by theoretical and methodological limitations in both their analyses and interpretations. In this paper, we develop a methodology for critically engaging in multi-scalar questions of the circulation, exchange, and value of cowrie shells in African archaeological contexts. Species, size, dorsal modifications, and depositional contexts were compared across five sites from South Africa dating between 750 and 1350 CE. These results were positioned within a review of cowries from archaeological sites in the region and compared to the documented distribution of cowries from wider African archaeological contexts. Monetaria annulus were the prevalent cowrie species in southern African archaeological contexts over the last 2000 years, with a notable absence of Monetaria moneta, prevalent at contemporaneous sites in West Africa, as well as a variety of endemic southern African species. Breakage patterns on the dorsal surface correspond to different modification techniques, such as chipping and grinding. Combined analyses of modification, use-wear, and depositional patterns show variation, revealing a diversity in the biographies of individual cowries. While a comparison of the distribution of cowries across the continent confirms the circulation of cowries through known trade routes, such as the trans-Saharan trade network and the European mercantile network, they also reveal new pathways for exchange that highlight the need for further exploration of intra African networks. Finally, the breadth of the results of this study demonstrates the value of a focus on a specific artefact to address a wide range of themes, from exchange to the archaeology of everyday life.
This entry details what cowries are, which species are commonly found on sites in Africa, and why they are an important class of material culture that should be recovered and recorded.
A sustained relationship between Cairo, Egypt more broadly, and eastern Ethiopia appears to have existed, particularly in the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods. In the general absence of historical sources, it is archaeology that provides primary insight into how and why this relationship was maintained, particularly over the twelfth to thirteenth centuries. This is considered through archaeological data from the trading entrepot of Harlaa with particular reference to coins, glass wares, ceramics, bread/ textile stamps, marine shell, and jewellery moulds. The inferences that can be drawn from these regarding trade routes and markets are assessed. Finally, the Egyptian role in the decline of Harlaa and its replacement by Harar in the late fifteenth century are considered.
The episcopal seat of Meshmahig or Mašmahig is referred to in various historical sources, such as the synods of the Church of the East of 410 and 576. These sources have been extensively explored, and it is suggested that Mašmahig can be linked to the village of Samahij in north‐east Muharraq Island, Bahrain. However, archaeological evidence for a Christian presence in Samahij, or elsewhere in Bahrain, was lacking. Excavations completed within the village cemetery at Samahij uncovered part of a large building complex. Based on the architecture, associated material culture and chronology, it is suggested this building was occupied by a Christian community, perhaps as part of a monastery or even the episcopal palace itself. This was abandoned after Islamisation, seemingly in the eighth century. The results of the first season of excavations are described, and the implications for Christianity, Islamisation and settlement in Bahrain are considered.
Twelve species of marine shell were transported in significant quantities from the Red Sea to the trade centre of Harlaa in eastern Ethiopia between the eleventh and early fifteenth centuries AD . Initially, it was thought that species such as the cowries were imported from the Indian Ocean. Subsequent research has found that all were available from the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, c. 120 km east of Harlaa. This suggests that a hitherto largely unrecognised source of marine shells was available, and the Red Sea might have supplied not only the Horn of Africa, but other markets, potentially including Egypt, and from there, elsewhere in North Africa and ultimately West Africa via trans-Saharan routes, as well as Nubia and further south on the Nile in the Sudan, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Arabian/Persian Gulf. This is explored with reference to the shell assemblage from Harlaa, and selected shell assemblages from elsewhere in the Horn of Africa, and trading centres on the Red Sea.
A collection of money cowries (Monetaria moneta) was discovered in the early 1980s inside a bronze cannon salvaged from the wreck site of the São Bento (1554), at the mouth of the Mzikaba River, Eastern Cape, South Africa. Using an approach inspired by ‘object biography’, I consider the presence of these cowries in a museum, their possible Maldivian origin, their interrupted West African future and their wider social, economic and ecological entanglements as a global trade item circulating in a pre-industrial world. This exploration sheds some light on the slave trade linking the Indian Ocean and Atlantic in the sixteenth century and the intertwined itineraries of cowries and slaves.
Despite the perceived importance of cowrie shells as indicators of long-distance connections in the West African past, their distribution and consumption patterns in archaeological contexts remain surprisingly underexplored, a gap that is only partly explicable by the sparse distribution of archaeological sites within the sub-continent. General writings on the timeline of importation of cowries into West Africa often fail to take into account the latest archaeological evidence and rely instead on accounts drawn from historical or ethnographic documents. This paper is based on a first-hand assessment of over 4500 shells from 78 sites across West Africa, examining chronology, shell species and processes of modification to assess what distribution patterns can tell us about the history of importation and usage of cowries. These first-hand analyses are paralleled by a consideration of published materials. We re-examine the default assumption that two distinct routes of entry existed — one overland from North Africa before the fifteenth century, another coming into use from the time sea links were established with the East African coast and becoming predominant by the middle of the nineteenth century. We focus on the eastern part of West Africa, where the importance of imported cowries to local communities in relatively recent periods is well known and from where we have a good archaeological sample. The conclusion is that on suitably large assemblages shell size can be an indication of provenance and that, while the present archaeological picture seems largely to confirm historical sources, much of this may be due to the discrepancy in archaeological data available from the Sahara/Sahel zone compared to the more forested regions of the sub-continent. Future archaeological work will clarify this matter.
