Bringing research to a wider audience, and having an impact on the young, is easier when there is a meeting of the minds

Sparking the imagination of teenagers is never easy, so Anne Haour was initially stumped when she was faced with writing plans for ‘youth impact’ into her research bid. Here she writes how seemingly arcane research made an exciting impact on young people in the UK

Global Connections and Connected Communities in the African Past: Stories from Cowrie Shells

Through the stories of four people who carried or traded cowrie shells, this article examines the connections between various parts of the world from a thousand years ago to the present. These connections spanned great distances, linking communities in West Africa and the Indian Ocean islands of the Maldives, and they bring to light the vast land and sea links that connected different regions of the African continent to the wider world in this period. We use cowrie shells to explore how objects participate in creating social relations, shaping senses of self and identity. When viewed in relation to the theme of connections, this offers a springboard for thinking about how things and their biographies fit within our lives today

Survey and excavations in Ilorin, Nigeria: A first archaeological insight

Ilorin, in the northern part of the Yoruba-speaking area of Nigeria today, remains one of the historically best-documented towns in the recent history of West Africa, long reported as a significant frontier city of the Oyo empire. Situated at the transition of forest and savanna regions, Ilorin was known for its craft industries, especially stone bead making and pottery, and a place of convergence of various peoples, traditions, and knowledge systems after the Oyo empire collapsed in the first half of the nineteenth century. However, since no archaeological work had been undertaken in the city, little could be said of events prior to the past three centuries. This article presents the first archaeological contribution to the question

The Cowrie in East Africa

Cowrie shells present a fascinating story as a key economic and social product of the Medieval world, taking on major importance in places such as West Africa, China, Bengal, and Northern Europe. Their widespread popularity and exchange, and the range of uses to which they were put, make these shells a key theme in global history. They were used, loose or strung, as currency; combined with other elements to form charms, added onto clothing and other materials as decorative elements, grouped for use as vehicles of divination, or deposited as grave goods or votive offerings. Tracing the exchange of cowries brings to light the expansive networks that linked different regions across the Medieval world, while similarities and differences in their use provide critical insights into past economies and social lives. This contribution sits within the wider thematic section 'Work' of the Encyclopedia, under the heading 'Trade and exchange'. Agriculture and Fishing Core Case Study Agrarian Maya Culture and Civilization Fish Farming and the Carp in Medieval Europe Trade and Exchange Thematic Overviews Trade Systems, 600–900: Tang China and the Abbasid Caliphate Core Case Study The Cowrie in East Africa Technologie

Cataloguing cowries: a standardised strategy to record six key species of cowrie shell from the West African archaeological record

Two species of cowrie shell, Monetaria moneta (Linnaeus 1758) and Monetaria annulus (Linnaeus 1758), occur repeatedly 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 standardised data on species composition, size and condition of cowrie assemblages, and whether and how the shells were modified, make it difficult to examine their significance in a regional and/or chronological framework. To address this, we propose a standardisation of the criteria and coding used to systematically record cowrie assemblages – in particular species, size, condition and state of modification. We aim to enable non-shell specialists within the wider archaeological community to securely identify intact or intact but modified specimens of M. annulus and M. moneta, showing how these can be distinguished from four cowries native to West Africa (specifically Luria lurida (Linnaeus 1758), Zonaria zonaria (Gmelin 1791), Zonaria sanguinolenta (Gmelin 1791) and Trona stercoraria (Linnaeus 1758)) that occur in assemblages from West African sites. We demonstrate how accurate species identification and the assessment of proportions of different sizes of shells within suitably large assemblages can provide insight into their provenance, and through this enhance our appreciation of the exchange networks within which these shells moved. We also identify five different strategies documented in the archaeological record that were used to modify cowries, detailing how these can be differentiated and classified. The aim here is to suggest a recording strategy that will enable comparisons of the use and value of cowries in West Africa and more widely

Ethnoichthyology of Fishing Communities in the Lower Valley of Ouémé in Benin, West Africa

Ethno-ichthyological knowledge can improve fisheries management. This study covers interactions between ecological, morphological, and sociocultural aspects pertaining to the fish of the Tovè River, which is located in the largest fishing area in the Republic of Benin (Ouémé Valley), West Africa. In particular, data were collected on fishing methods and techniques, fishing equipment, and ichthyofauna by noting vernacular names followed by identification traits, taste and dietary value, medicinal use, and related knowledge of different species. Through data related to names given locally to fish, this paper highlights the manner in which physical or behavioral traits are coded in terminology. Most of these species have a high market value, either because they are considered to be delicacies and/or for their medicinal uses. The results suggest that ethno-ichthyological information can successfully be applied to improve fish conservation and fisheries management

Cowries in the archaeology of West Africa: the present picture

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