Kirikongo is an archaeological site composed of thirteen remarkably
well-preserved discrete mounds occupied continually from the early first
to the mid second millennium AD. It spans a dynamic era that saw the
growth of large settlement communities and regional socio-political
formations, development of economic specializations, intensification in
interregional commercial networks, and the effects of the Black Death
pandemic. The extraordinary preservation of architectural units,
activity areas and industrial zones provides a unique opportunity to
discern the cultural practices that created stratified mounds (tells) in
this part of West Africa. Building from a new detailed zooarchaeological
analysis and refinements in stratigraphic precision, this book argues
that repeated ritual activity was a significant factor in the
accumulation of stratified archaeological deposits. The book details
consistencies in form and content of discrete loci containing animal
bones, food remains, and broken and unbroken objects and suggests that
these are the remnants of sequential ancestor shrines created when
domestic spaces were converted to tombs or dedicated mortuary monuments
were constructed. Continuities and transformations in ancestral rituals
at Kirikongo inform on earlier West African ritual practices from the
second millennium BC as well as political and social transformations at
the site. More broadly, this case study provides new insights on
anthropogenic mound (tell) formation processes, social zooarchaeology,
material culture theory, historical ontology, and the analysis of ritual
and religion in the archaeological record.
