Abstract
Despite recent emphases on both environmental archaeology and practice theory in archaeology, the two are rarely combined. In this paper, we illustrate a genealogies of environmental practice approach that seeks to understand how human actions grounded in familiar repertoires make sense of environmental and political economic change. Employing archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological data, we first examine taxon-specific genealogies of practice and then compare them to one another as well as to broader climatic, political, and economic contexts of the last millennium in Banda, west central Ghana. In focusing on the interactivities between different kinds of data, we coax out the strategies used by Banda’s inhabitants to cope with fluctuating environmental and political conditions. We argue that during a several centuries long drought in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries ad, Banda villagers took advantage of a diverse set of economic activities to cope with turbulence, but by the late nineteenth century, these opportunities had dwindled, diminishing the villagers’ practical options.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1356-1399 |
| Number of pages | 44 |
| Journal | Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 1 2017 |
Funding
Research reported was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation to Stahl (BCS 0751350, BCS 9410726, BCS 9911690) and Logan (BCS 1041948), as well as the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research to Stahl (5133) and Logan (N013044). All research was conducted with permission from the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board as well as the Banda Traditional Council and we are grateful for their support. Faunal remains were identified by Peter Stahl using comparative collections of the Archaeological Analytical Research Facility at Binghamton University and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. We extend grateful thanks to him and to the museum colleagues who facilitated his work at the AMNH. We also thank the many members of the Banda Research Project over the last three decades, whose fastidious excavation and collection efforts made this research possible. Acknowledgements Research reported was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation to Stahl (BCS 0751350, BCS 9410726, BCS 9911690) and Logan (BCS 1041948), as well as the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research to Stahl (5133) and Logan (N013044). All research was conducted with permission from the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board as well as the Banda Traditional Council and we are grateful for their support. Faunal remains were identified by Peter Stahl using comparative collections of the Archaeological Analytical Research Facility at Binghamton University and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. We extend grateful thanks to him and to the museum colleagues who facilitated his work at the AMNH. We also thank the many members of the Banda Research Project over the last three decades, whose fastidious excavation and collection efforts made this research possible.
Keywords
- Africa
- Archaeobotany
- Environmental archaeology
- Ghana
- Practice theory
- Zooarchaeology
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Archaeology
- Archaeology