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National Geographic : 1982 Sep
Contents
dwellings. In this reenactment, braziersflame in ancient hearths. Finding West Africa's Oldest City compound, sheltering separately two or more wives and the man who was husband of all. Other compounds crowded close. Mr. Sao's analysis was persuasive. As he talked and gestured, Jenne-jeno of A.D. 800 came alive for us. His words evoked narrow alleys, barely wide enough for a donkey or a woman bearing on her head a day's wood supply, twisting among the compounds. By late February, Jenne-jeno heated up at noonday to 43°C (110°F). The harmattan, a desiccating wind from the Sahara, swept across the floodplain daily. The relentless pummeling frayed everyone's nerves. Gusts swirled into the pits, flinging loose dirt in our faces. At the suggestion of our Fulani friend Hama Bocoum, we quickly adopted the headgear of the local herders of his tribe three meters of cotton cloth wrapped several times around the head, nose, and mouth. Unavoidably, the eyes still suffered. Jenne-jeno kept on yielding quantities of artifacts and data. Rich finds included iron spears and harpoons, and ceramic cows and sheep that were children's toys. It took Rod and me and our three assistants more than four hours every afternoon to number and catalog everything found earlier in the day. Most tedious was describing and analyzing the more than 100,000 pottery sherds. Prop erly studied, pottery can elucidate the ad vancement and social organization of its makers, as well as furnish chronology. Pottery Dates Advance New Idea One March afternoon I studied some pot tery brought in the day before. On a table I laid out several large pieces of exquisitely made pottery with geometric designs paint ed in white over a glowing deep red slip. "We just got these out of the LX pit," I said to Rod. "Our 1977 pottery data, you re member, and the radiocarbon dates told us that white-on-red pottery like this was made only between A.D. 400 and 800. Well, I've been examining the pottery from our other five pits. They all produced this pottery." Rod's interest sharpened. "But those pits are scattered all over Jenne-jeno," he said, "two of them at the edge of the mound. We have to walk nearly a kilometer just to get from one pit to another. Are you saying that the mound, all 80 acres of it, was already in existence as early as 1,500 years ago?" 413
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