Material Biographies

Saharan Trade and the Lives of Objects in Fourteenth and Fifteenth-Century West Africa

Bibliographic Data

ID9341815
AuthorsRaymond A Silverman (University of Michigan, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume42
Pages375-395
Publication date2015-03-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory in Africa (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0361-5413 • E-ISSN: 1558-2744
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/hia.2015.4
OpenAlexW2084174890
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited20

This article explores the lives of several copper alloy vessels (bowls, basins, and ewers), made in Egypt and England, that were carried across the Sahara just before the dawn of the European age of exploration, and that eventually found their way to central Ghana. It considers how and why prestige metal goods, some of them produced for specific individuals, became trade commodities that traveled thousands of kilometers, ending up in Akan communities where they were given new meanings. In thinking about material things and the mutability of meaning, the article attempts to address how we might understand these trade items as discursive “objects of knowledge” connecting peoples living in different times and different places

Ancient history · Fifteenth · Geography · Linguistics · Meaning (existential · Prestige · African Studies and Geopolitics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Philosophy