The oldest textiles from sub-Saharan West Africa

Woolen facts from Kissi, Burkina Faso

Bibliographic Data

ID8100389
AuthorsSonja Magnavita (Goethe University Frankfurt, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume6
Issue2
Pages243-257
Publication date2008-12-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of African Archaeology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1612-1651 • E-ISSN: 2191-5784
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.3213/1612-1651-10118
OpenAlexW1989288464
LanguageEN
Citations received19

The textile evidence for the archaeological site of Kissi, Burkina Faso, is presented and the implications for the history of weaving in West Africa are discussed. Woolen textiles have been preserved in Iron Age graves of the first millennium AD due to the corrosion of metal objects in the graves. This lucky circumstance adds further examples to the very small corpus of first millennium AD textile finds, pushing back in time the evidence for the demand and use of cloth in sub-Saharan Africa

Ancient history · Archaeology · Geography · Textile · Weaving · African Studies and Ethnography · African Studies and Geopolitics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Engineering · History

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