I like this paper firstly for it attempts to redress, forcefully, the biased perceptions of Africa often still held by usually external observers, and secondly for it engages directly with materiality through an object-based perspective in indicating the complexities that existed in the Siin (Senegal), primarily in the 18th and 19th centuries. Richard is to be congratulated on providing us with a thoughtful and thought-provoking paper indicating that, like other recent research on African and external entanglements and connections (e.g. Croucher 2006), research framed broadly under the remit of ‘historical archaeology’ is some of the most stimulating currently being undertaken in the continent (e.g. Gavua 2008; Schmidt 2006).
Richard places emphasis upon the concept of history, historical silences, and the ‘production of alternative historical imaginations and subjectivities’ (p. 1). The ridiculous remarks of Nicolas Sarkozy in his speech in Dakar are rightly criticized, but perhaps it should be remembered that Sarkozy (and his speechwriters) would make such remarks for political capital, in an attempt to make an impact for the then new French president, and to obtain the requisite column inches. Richard reminds us, in relation to Sarkozy's un-erudite points, that such a perspective often entails a shifting of the supposed historical vacuum in which African ‘man’ (sic) is trapped, following such thinking, onto the ‘Africans’ themselves. Richard notes (and with which I wholly agree), that this is something to which he takes a ‘severe exception’ (p. 2). Richard indicates that in relation to the Atlantic world this is, of course, untrue – Africans, as represented by the people of the Siin settlements, steered history in alternative and indigenous directions through utilizing the objects such as liquor bottles in new ways and contexts, and in so doing imbuing them with new meanings.
None the less, perhaps more of a break from the concept of history as, albeit inadvertently, defined here through the contextualization of the paper within the framework of ‘Atlantic encounters’ (i.e. an onus being placed upon Euro-American history) could be made. This is not a major criticism and perhaps Richard already does this elsewhere (e.g. Richard 2007), but to provide these trajectories of cultural and historical subjectivity this also needs to be undertaken looking east to the broad sweep of savanna and semi-desert running ultimately to the Red Sea, as well as north to the Arab and Arabized polities of North Africa. This would allow the examination of the construction of history in Islamized and semi-Islamized contexts as well – Islamic history – in which one assumes Siin was also entangled. This is alluded to, again in the discussion of alcohol usage, but the other categories of objects recovered might allow greater engagement with the interplay of different historical narratives and traditions that existed, and in so doing give greater weight to the historical complexity Richard is so effectively beginning to tease out.
Beyond the objects, the glass bottles, spindle whorls and beads, the potency of ‘fields’ of ritual and magical power (of protection, subversion, syncretism and fusion, of different efficacious agents) might also be evident if these different histories are woven together. Belief can obviously be a powerful agent in how people relate to materials, and to other people, and of significance where the construction of difference in, for instance, creating the concept of ‘other’ in the process of enslavement, and the interaction with ‘others’ in the context of Atlantic encounters, might be key. This might be derived from looking out to the ocean, as well as within the immediate local environment, but might also have been constructed through interaction beyond into the African interior. Hence, certainly by the 18th and 19th centuries, the influence of Islamic beliefs, practices, ‘powers’ and material culture, often reworked to suit different world views and requirements, was substantial, stretching from coast to rainforest, from mosque to power-drenched amulet. This was not a simple rendering of an all-powerful faceless ‘Islam’ supplanting all that went before, but rather a variable syncretic and multiply reworked phenomenon (Insoll 2003) that by its nature would engage within the entangled historicities and materialities Richard explores. In Senegal, for instance, Cantone (2006) has in part indicated how mosques are utilized in the negotiation of power and in the construction of gender, kin, ethnic and religious identities.
Richard also draws attention to the role of oral traditions in, for example, illuminating narratives as to what was a secondary royal residence near the village of Ndiongolor, and its sometime assumption of the role of ‘primary capital in times of political instability or succession crisis’ (p. 15). Again, the inclusion of oral history, tradition, myth – sometimes blurred in form, sometimes more clearly separated – speaks to the complexity of the African historical subject, collectively, or where perhaps a biographical prominence survives, as an individual agent. Vansina (1985) problematized this over two decades ago, whilst the empirical database and the practical application of ‘oral tradition as history’ (ibid.) has been subsequently enriched by the UNESCO General History of Africa project (e.g. Ki-Zerbo 1990).
To this can also be added the recent historical archaeological scholarship emanating from Africa itself. For example, the Department of Archaeology at the University of Ghana, Legon, has deliberately repositioned itself so that its disciplinary identity encompasses also the concept of cultural heritage. Not, however, cultural heritage as might be defined from a Euro-American perspective that revolves around gift ‘shoppes’, historical re-enactments and neatly mown lawns, but rather one that seeks to embed the archaeological and architectural legacy, as with the forts and castles linked with the slave trade on Ghana's Atlantic coast, within the requirements of the local communities and ultimately the nation itself (Insoll 2008). To help achieve this, archaeology theses, especially at the research master's (M.Phil.) level, now incorporate exactly the types of approach Richard demands in their fusion of archaeology, material-culture studies, what might be termed ethnohistory drawing upon oral narratives and written history where available, and ethnography (e.g. Eyifa 2007). This example is provided to indicate that positive historicity is occurring inside Africa – not the continent without history at all.
On the contrary, in my experience the perception of history, not only what is sometimes vaguely referred to as ‘tradition’, is frequently vivid and embedded in the present, be it in Ghana, Mali or Burkina Faso, admittedly countries only in West Africa rather than representative of the whole continent but which I know best. This history – within linear frameworks of people and events – often serves to run coterminous with ancestral narratives that are perhaps cyclical. Two mechanisms for appropriating the past within the present that are sometimes materialized – the extant mosque of Askia Muhammad in Gao or the subsurface remains of the mosque and town associated with Kankan Musa in Gao, Mali, for instance – constitute ‘concrete’ architecture and archaeology locked into indigenous Songhay historical narratives.
Similarly, outside the domain of indigenous historical chronicles with which the Songhay past is associated and within which it is recorded (e.g. es-Sa'di 1898–1900; Kati 1913), history can be even more fully materialized and objectified, perhaps through being linked to place and object as in northern Ghana. And Richard is right: the disruptions, abrupt junctures, and impact of the outward ripples of the Atlantic slave trade were felt here, so that some areas became wholly depopulated, stripped of people, history and tradition, whilst others were historically restructured whereby the slave shackle, or slave camp, might become the prominent focal point of new or altered narratives encompassing and reconciling this with existing histories. The dialogue that Richard initiates would be made even more fruitful and relevant to the African context through reconciling these different histories and materialities so as to attempt to piece together the ‘rich text’ of the past that we should all ultimately seek.
A further strength of Richard's argument, and one that can be given supplementary evidential support, is with regard to his indicating ‘how Atlantic objects and forces unevenly rippled across the area’ (p. 4). This links back again to the earlier point made with regard to the variable impact of Islam in the West African context, but is equally applicable to more specific historical circumstances as, for example, with the Fulani jihads or holy wars of the 19th century. Outside the literate or semiliterate context of the historicity of world religions, similar evidence for differential impact can be found – Richard's ‘ripple’ effect. Hence, for instance, the franchised Talensi shrine forms of the boarbii, ‘shrine's child’, and boarchii, ‘shrine gourd’, vary in how embedded they are in consciousness and history dependent upon their perceived power. In one area, a shrine hotspot might occur, drawing in clients and generating traffic back to the ‘mother’ shrine of Tongnaab Yaane, whilst close by the shrine might have no impact at all – its place supplanted perhaps by another form of shrine, or one linked into other webs of belief and other historicities (Insoll 2006; in preparation). The dismantling by Richard of ‘historical tableaux’ (p. 5) and his stressing their replacement by more dynamic and variable historical reconstructions provides a useful addition and impetus to further research on these processes.
In summary, this paper is to be welcomed as a nuanced reading of complexity, materiality and historicity in the African continent. I hope that Richard publishes his thesis as it will be interesting to see at greater length how these entanglements and material histories are disentangled.
