Susan Keech Mcintosh
Biographic Data
| ID | 199897 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Susan Keech Mcintosh |
| GIVEN NAMES | Susan Keech |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcintosh |
| SIGNATURE | MCINTOSH S K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Rice University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2082-7721 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 58 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 514 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 57 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Revisiting Tichitt
The stone-built sites of Dhar Tichitt, Mauritania, occupy a central place in the history and archaeology of West Africa, testifying to village growth after 2000 BC. The 1968 excavations there by Patrick Munson at a dozen sites within a 40-km-long study area produced foundational data and radiocarbon dates that shaped early interpretive frameworks of the Tichitt Tradition. The 14 AMS dates on curated charcoal samples from his excavations reported …
Chemical and isotopic analyses reconstruct multi-scalar copper circulation networks in West Africa
For the past 50 years, copper sourced from the Akjoujt region has been inferred primarily through the enrichment of arsenic in metal samples from archaeological sites in West Africa. However, arsenic is common to a variety of mineral deposit types and this signature was based on early low-resolution spectroscopic data. Here, we apply lead isotopic and bulk chemical analyses to copper metal and ore samples from the region of Akjoujt, in order to i…
Episodic settlement and mound formation context at Cubalel and Siwré sites, Middle Senegal River
Recent analysis of sediments recovered in 1991 at the sites of Cubalel and Siwré in the Middle Senegal River Valley have revealed new insights into the context of mound formation beginning ca. 1900 cal BP. In this study, we utilized stable isotopes ( δ 13 C, δ 15 N) from Soil Organic Matter (SOM) and applied a Bayesian deposition model to radiocarbon dates to understand differences in the duration and nature of settlement between the two sites co…
This blessed city
In 1999, the Direction National des Arts et de la Culture of Mali invited us to undertake excavations at the site of the planned new museum in Jenné. This paper presents details on the excavations and an overview of the results. Excavation revealed over 8 m of occupation deposits stratified above sterile floodplain. A series of AMS radiocarbon dates places the earliest occupation phase in the late thirteenth to fourteenth centuries AD, contempora…
Revisiting site history and regional interaction at the Dia settlement mound complex, Mali
Previously unpublished results of test excavations in 1986–1987 at Dia, an extensive occupation mound complex on the western margins of the Inland Niger Delta in Mali, have been augmented by a series of new AMS dates. This article explores how the excavation and radiocarbon data together provide new insights into occupation sequences and site formation processes. It presents details on the depositional contexts, chronology and associated material…
Igbo-Ukwu at 50
Igbo-Ukwu Textiles
Thurstan Shaw’s excavations at Igbo-Ukwu revealed many artifacts and technologies that remain astonishing, unique, and incompletely understood, both within Africa and more broadly, even after 50 years. Among these are the textiles recovered primarily from Igbo Isaiah, where fragments were preserved by contact with the bronze artifacts gathered in what has been interpreted as a shrine. In the 1960s, an analysis of 20 textile samples was unable to …
Long-Distance Exchange and Urban Trajectories in the First Millennium AD
It has been 40 years since the first publication of results of archaeological investigations at the massive settlement mound of Jenné-jeno challenged traditional historiography concerning towns and trade in West Africa. Prior assumptions that Arab-initiated Trans-Saharan trade provided the impetus for town growth along the Middle Niger have yielded to an explanatory model grounded in the local development of regional, inter-regional and long-dist…
Glass Beads from Medieval Gao (Mali)
Excavations at several archaeological sites in and around Gao have resulted in the recovery of thousands of glass beads presumed to have been acquired from glass bead-producing centers through trade. The bead assemblages cover the period from the eighth to the fourteenth century CE . Here we report on the results of compositional analysis by LA-ICP-MS of 100 beads, permitting comparison with the growing corpus of chemical analyses for glass from …
Two thousand years in Dendi, northern Benin
The Glass Making Crucibles from Ile-Ife, SW Nigeria
Crucibles to melt glass are very rare in archaeological contexts in sub-Saharan Africa. Recent archaeological excavations at Igbo Olokun, Ile-Ife (Southwest Nigeria) revealed abundant fragments of glass crucibles from 11th-15th century AD deposits, matching the complete and near complete examples earlier reported from Ile-Ife. This paper provides an in-depth examination of these crucible fragments in order to understand the material quality of th…
Chemical analysis of glass beads from Igbo Olokun, Ile-Ife (SW Nigeria)
The site of Igbo Olokun on the northern periphery of Ile-Ife has been recognized as a glass-working workshop for over a century. Its glass-encrusted crucibles and beads were viewed as evidence of secondary processing of imported glass until the high lime, high alumina (HLHA) composition of the glass was recognized as unique to the region. Archaeological excavations conducted at Igbo Olokun recovered more than twelve thousand glass beads and sever…
Re-dating the Ingombe Ilede burials
Several burials excavated during 1960 at Ingombe Ilede in southern Africa were accompanied by exceptional quantities of gold and glass beads, bronze trade wire and bangles. The burials were indirectly dated to the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries AD, prior to the arrival of the Portuguese on the East Coast of Africa. New AMS dates on cotton fabric from two of the burials now relocate them in the sixteenth century. This was a dynamic period when …
Ile-Ife and Igbo Olokun in the history of glass in West Africa
Relocating Ingombe Ilede in the history of south-central Africa
We thank the four commentators for adding new dimensions and important data relevant to interpreting the new Ingombe Ilede dates. These contribute to the recent wave of reassessments and critiques of earlier interpretations and frameworks for the development of trade and complexity in southern Africa. Such reconsiderations are made possible by more sophisticated and precise radiocarbon dating, expanded investigation of both new and previously exc…
Le roi et le potier
Susan Keech McIntoshDepartment of Anthropology, Rice University, Houston, Texas, United States of [email protected]© 2015, Susan Keech McIntosh
Ndèye Sokhna Guèye (1967–2014)
Excavations at Gao Saney
Along with Ghana, Gawgaw (Gao) was an important regional trading polity mentioned by Arab chroniclers in the later first millennium CE. In the later tenth century, al-Muhallabi wrote of the dual towns of Gawgaw, one the residence of the king and the other a market and trading town called Sarneh. The large settlement mound of Gao Saney, located seven kilometers east of Gao, has long been thought to be the site of Sarneh. Excavations in 2001-2 and …
It’s Getting Better All the Time
Thinking Across the African Past
Beyond Chiefdoms
Reconceptualizing Early Ghana
At the time of his death, Nehemia Levtzion had initiated a project to revise Ancient Ghana and Mali in the light of new scholarship since its original publication in 1973. He proposed that the question of origins and early development of Sudanic polities such as Ghana should be thoroughly reconsidered with regard to findings from research in archaeology and related disciplines. In this article, I discuss four topics (climate variability, sedentar…
The Holocene Prehistory of West Africa
Excavations at Walaldé
Excavation of the five hectare site of Walaldé revealed an occupation by iron-using agropastoralists that began [800–550] cal BC, and continued until [400–200] cal BC. The earliest occupation phase appears to document a period of transitional iron use, with some worked stone in evidence. Smelting and forging slags and tuyeres are present in considerable quantities in the later phase. Copper with the distinctive chemical signature of the Akjoujt m…
Augustin F.C. Holl The land of Houlouf
Augustin F.C. Holl The land of Houlouf: genesis of a Chadic polity, 1900 BC – AD 1800 (Memoirs of the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology No. 38). 272 pages, illustrations. 2002. Ann Arbor (MI): University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology; 0-915703-52-1 paperback $30. - Volume 79 Issue 304
Excavations at Jenne-Jeno, Hambarketolo, and Kaniana (Inland Niger Delta, Mali), the 1981 Season
Since the first scientific excavations were conducted at Jenne-jeno in 1977, this huge Iron Age occupation mound located in the floodplain of the Inland Niger Delta has produced a classic archaeological sequence spanning 1500 years. Jenne-jeno is widely recognized as one of the most carefully documented cases demonstrating the rise of indigenous urbanism in Africa, and its archaeology has contributed significantly to a major paradigm shift in exp…
Excavations at Gao Saney
Along with Ghana, Gawgaw (Gao) was an important regional trading polity mentioned by Arab chroniclers in the later first millennium CE. In the later tenth century, al-Muhallabi wrote of the dual towns of Gawgaw, one the residence of the king and the other a market and trading town called Sarneh. The large settlement mound of Gao Saney, located seven kilometers east of Gao, has long been thought to be the site of Sarneh. Excavations in 2001-2 and …
Current Directions in West African Prehistory
The tempo of prehistoric research in Africa has quickened remarkably during the past decade, necessitating important revisions in our understanding of the archaeological record. Africa's past in general is emerging as more complex, and more instructive from a comparative point of view, than earlier believed. With the more routine application of radiometric dating, old assumptions about chronology have fallen. Earlier it had seemed that Middle and…
The Inland Niger Delta before the Empire of Mali
The dates and circumstances of early references to Jenne have led historians to conclude that the city originated relatively late in time. It is widely believed that the city developed simultaneously with Timbuktu in the mid-thirteenth century as an artifact of trans-Saharan trade. Persistent oral traditions of the foundation of Jenne in the eighth century are generally discounted. Recent archaeological excavations at the ancestral site of Jenne-…
Ancient DNA analysis of 101 cattle remains
Thinking Across the African Past
Beyond Chiefdoms
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From stone to metal
Excavations at Walaldé
Excavation of the five hectare site of Walaldé revealed an occupation by iron-using agropastoralists that began [800–550] cal BC, and continued until [400–200] cal BC. The earliest occupation phase appears to document a period of transitional iron use, with some worked stone in evidence. Smelting and forging slags and tuyeres are present in considerable quantities in the later phase. Copper with the distinctive chemical signature of the Akjoujt m…
FromSiècles Obscursto revolutionary centuries on the Middle Niger
In a period of little over a decade, excavations have transformed our characterization of Middle Niger prehistory from hidden and humble to one of the world's most original theatres of change. After situating the Middle Niger evidence for geomorphology, domestication, organization of society and production, and belief systems against a backdrop of current concerns in West African prehistory, we suggest future research directions of particular pot…
Ile-Ife and Igbo Olokun in the history of glass in West Africa
Recent Archaeological Research and Dates from West Africa
This article reports over 250 new radiocarbon dates relevant to recent archaeological research in West Africa. Thanks to the continuing trend towards series of dates from either single sites or groups of related sites, some major blanks on the archaeological map of West Africa have been replaced by well-dated regional sequences. An example is the Malian Sahara, where palaeoenvironmental and archaeological investigations at a large number of sites…
A Reconsideration of Wangara/Palolus, Island of Gold
There is a general consensus among West African historians that the Island of Gold, known to Arab geographers as Wangara and to European cartographers as Palolus, refers to the Bambuk/Bure goldfields. This article examines the evidence for an alternative identification of the Island of Gold with the Inland Niger Delta, where the place name Wangara would be derived from Soninke long-distance traders (Wangara). Many of the details on the Island of …
Changing perceptions of West Africa's past
Chemical analysis of glass beads from Igbo Olokun, Ile-Ife (SW Nigeria)
The site of Igbo Olokun on the northern periphery of Ile-Ife has been recognized as a glass-working workshop for over a century. Its glass-encrusted crucibles and beads were viewed as evidence of secondary processing of imported glass until the high lime, high alumina (HLHA) composition of the glass was recognized as unique to the region. Archaeological excavations conducted at Igbo Olokun recovered more than twelve thousand glass beads and sever…
The early city in West Africa
Glass Beads from Medieval Gao (Mali)
Excavations at several archaeological sites in and around Gao have resulted in the recovery of thousands of glass beads presumed to have been acquired from glass bead-producing centers through trade. The bead assemblages cover the period from the eighth to the fourteenth century CE . Here we report on the results of compositional analysis by LA-ICP-MS of 100 beads, permitting comparison with the growing corpus of chemical analyses for glass from …
Field survey in the tumulus zone of Senegal
Tobacco Pipes From Excavations at the Museum Site, Jenne, Mali
Tobacco pipes are among the most frequently recorded artifacts from historic period sites in West Africa, and can be used to both establish tight chronologies and address issues of social and economic change.This paper is a discussion of the 300-year sequence of tobacco pipes recovered from excavations at Jenne, Mali in 1999. The assemblage, which includes over 300 fragments, is first placed in its historical and archaeological context. The pipes…
New Perspectives on Sincu Bara, a First Millennium Site in the Senegal Valley
Terracotta Statuettes from Mali
The Glass Making Crucibles from Ile-Ife, SW Nigeria
Crucibles to melt glass are very rare in archaeological contexts in sub-Saharan Africa. Recent archaeological excavations at Igbo Olokun, Ile-Ife (Southwest Nigeria) revealed abundant fragments of glass crucibles from 11th-15th century AD deposits, matching the complete and near complete examples earlier reported from Ile-Ife. This paper provides an in-depth examination of these crucible fragments in order to understand the material quality of th…
Re-dating the Ingombe Ilede burials
Several burials excavated during 1960 at Ingombe Ilede in southern Africa were accompanied by exceptional quantities of gold and glass beads, bronze trade wire and bangles. The burials were indirectly dated to the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries AD, prior to the arrival of the Portuguese on the East Coast of Africa. New AMS dates on cotton fabric from two of the burials now relocate them in the sixteenth century. This was a dynamic period when …
Archaeological Heritage Management and Site Inventory Systems in Africa
Archaeological Heritage Management in West Africa is hampered by lack of adequately trained personnel, lack of funds, and lack of appropriate equipment such as computers. It is suggested that organizations such as the World Bank should consider supporting training programs for Third World archaeologists, with internships at U.S. universities with appropriate expertise, and in areas where the World Bank has development projects, providing equipmen…
Initial perspectives on prehistoric subsistence in the Inland Niger Delta (Mali)
Information is presented about changes in subsistence resources and utilization from the beginning of permanent occupation to the present in the Inland Niger Delta of West Africa, a region long believed to be a centre of plant domestication. Excavations in 1977 at the western Delta site of Jenne‐jeno provided the first direct archaeological evidence of African rice and of the establishment of the remarkably stable Inland Delta subsistence complex…
Rejoinder to Leon Siroto
Terracotta Statuettes from Mali
Initial perspectives on prehistoric subsistence in the Inland Niger Delta (Mali)
Information is presented about changes in subsistence resources and utilization from the beginning of permanent occupation to the present in the Inland Niger Delta of West Africa, a region long believed to be a centre of plant domestication. Excavations in 1977 at the western Delta site of Jenne‐jeno provided the first direct archaeological evidence of African rice and of the establishment of the remarkably stable Inland Delta subsistence complex…
A Reconsideration of Wangara/Palolus, Island of Gold
There is a general consensus among West African historians that the Island of Gold, known to Arab geographers as Wangara and to European cartographers as Palolus, refers to the Bambuk/Bure goldfields. This article examines the evidence for an alternative identification of the Island of Gold with the Inland Niger Delta, where the place name Wangara would be derived from Soninke long-distance traders (Wangara). Many of the details on the Island of …
The Inland Niger Delta before the Empire of Mali
The dates and circumstances of early references to Jenne have led historians to conclude that the city originated relatively late in time. It is widely believed that the city developed simultaneously with Timbuktu in the mid-thirteenth century as an artifact of trans-Saharan trade. Persistent oral traditions of the foundation of Jenne in the eighth century are generally discounted. Recent archaeological excavations at the ancestral site of Jenne-…
Current Directions in West African Prehistory
The tempo of prehistoric research in Africa has quickened remarkably during the past decade, necessitating important revisions in our understanding of the archaeological record. Africa's past in general is emerging as more complex, and more instructive from a comparative point of view, than earlier believed. With the more routine application of radiometric dating, old assumptions about chronology have fallen. Earlier it had seemed that Middle and…
Early Iron Age Economy in the Inland Niger Delta (Mali)
The early city in West Africa
Recent Archaeological Research and Dates from West Africa
This article reports over 250 new radiocarbon dates relevant to recent archaeological research in West Africa. Thanks to the continuing trend towards series of dates from either single sites or groups of related sites, some major blanks on the archaeological map of West Africa have been replaced by well-dated regional sequences. An example is the Malian Sahara, where palaeoenvironmental and archaeological investigations at a large number of sites…
From stone to metal
FromSiècles Obscursto revolutionary centuries on the Middle Niger
In a period of little over a decade, excavations have transformed our characterization of Middle Niger prehistory from hidden and humble to one of the world's most original theatres of change. After situating the Middle Niger evidence for geomorphology, domestication, organization of society and production, and belief systems against a backdrop of current concerns in West African prehistory, we suggest future research directions of particular pot…
Archeology
Sponge Spicules in Pottery
Until recently, the presence of sponge spicules in ancient ceramics has only been reported from South America. Current technological studies of Neolithic pottery from Sudan and Iron Age pottery from Mali provide evidence that sponge spicules are also a distinctive inclusion of some African ceramics. In this study, new data concerning the presence and quantitative variability of sponge spicules in West African Iron Age pottery from sites along the…
News and Short Contributions
Kathryn A. Bard, Richard L. Burger, William J. Folan, Susan Keech McIntosh, Kevin C. MacDonald, Richard Ekman, News and Short Contributions, Journal of Field Archaeology, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter, 1989), pp. 475-496
Field survey in the tumulus zone of Senegal
Archaeological Heritage Management and Site Inventory Systems in Africa
Archaeological Heritage Management in West Africa is hampered by lack of adequately trained personnel, lack of funds, and lack of appropriate equipment such as computers. It is suggested that organizations such as the World Bank should consider supporting training programs for Third World archaeologists, with internships at U.S. universities with appropriate expertise, and in areas where the World Bank has development projects, providing equipmen…
Changing perceptions of West Africa's past
La region d'In Gall-Tegidda-n-Tesemt (Niger)
The Good Collector and the Premise of Mutual Respect among Nations
Roderick J. McIntosh, , Susan Keech McIntosh, The Good Collector and the Premise of Mutual Respect among Nations, African Arts, Vol. 28, No. 4, Special Issue: Protecting Mali's Cultural Heritage (Autumn, 1995), pp. 60-69+110-112
Excavations at Jenne-Jeno, Hambarketolo, and Kaniana (Inland Niger Delta, Mali), the 1981 Season
Since the first scientific excavations were conducted at Jenne-jeno in 1977, this huge Iron Age occupation mound located in the floodplain of the Inland Niger Delta has produced a classic archaeological sequence spanning 1500 years. Jenne-jeno is widely recognized as one of the most carefully documented cases demonstrating the rise of indigenous urbanism in Africa, and its archaeology has contributed significantly to a major paradigm shift in exp…
Modeling political organization in large-scale settlement clusters
In the Western popular imagination, sub-Saharan Africa has long been the domain of small-scale, dispersed, mobile, swidden agriculturalists. Yet within the Inland Niger Delta in the Sudanic zone of West Africa, some of the earliest documented agricultural communities display quite the opposite pattern: rapid population growth over the course of centuries-long occupation of high density settlement clusters. Commonly, a cluster comprises a large, c…
Pathways to complexity
Over the past decade, sub-Saharan Africa has virtually disappeared from the screen of archaeologists engaged in broadly comparative, theoretical discussions on the emergence of complex society. Prior to the 1980s, the subcontinent was represented with some regularity at important archaeological conferences and discussions on these issues (e.g., Cohen and Service 1978; Friedman and Rowlands 1978; Moore 1974) even while the actual archaeology of su…
Beyond Chiefdoms
New Perspectives on Sincu Bara, a First Millennium Site in the Senegal Valley
Beyond Chiefdoms
Geography (43 works) · Archaeology (41 works) · History (36 works) · History (25 works) · Ancient history (17 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (17 works) · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies (17 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories (15 works) · African Studies and Geopolitics (14 works)