Abstract

This paper presents the final results of an excavation project at Essouk-Tadmekka, an early Islamic trans-Saharan trading town located at the southern Saharan fringe, in the Republic of Mali. Essouk-Tadmekka is recorded in early Arabic texts as one of the major West African trading centres that enabled the flourishing of trans-Saharan commerce during the early Islamic era, and was strongly associated in particular with the early gold trade. From 2005, excavations and survey were followed by a sustained programme of analysis on the material collected. This was also combined with careful remote-sensing recording of the well-preserved stone town ruins, as well as archival work, including on the site’s important corpus of early Arabic inscriptions. The 5-metre excavated urban sequence (ca. 9^th/10th-14th/15th centuries AD) documents the life of the town throughout almost the entire early Islamic period. Amongst the most notable remains are very rare finds of gold processing, including evidence for a locally-produced pure gold coinage. Other noteworthy finds include silver coinage, crucible-steel working remains, and silk from China. More broadly, the study provides a representative sample of the commodities that moved north and south across the Sahara, as well as evidence of the town’s urban fabric and architecture, local craft-working industries, and diet. In addition to helping explain the life of one town, the results provide various insights into the bigger picture of trans-Saharan networks. This includes not only new thinking about the early gold trade and other commodity exchange networks, but also wider thinking about the timing and geography of early commerce across the Sahara, and the nature of socio-cultural practices within the trans-Saharan world.

The monograph ‘Essouk-Tadmekka: an early Islamic trans-Saharan market town’, edited by Sam Nixon, is published by Brill and is due out next month (Nov 2017).