Tracking the Cowrie Shell: Excavations in the Maldives, 2016
Anne Haour* Annalisa Christie, Shiura Jaufar Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas University of East Anglia, Norwich NR47TJ, United Kingdom. *corresponding author: a.haour@uea.ac.uk The importance of cowries in the West African past is well known. They are inevitably mentioned as markers of Africa's global connections (e.g. Johnson 1970; Mitchell 2005; York 1972) and their role within the West African social fabric suggests a deep history. Cowries in West Africa are first mentioned in the mid 10th century, as ornaments in women's hair (Hopkins and Levtzion 2000: 35) In the 11th century al Bakri states (in Hopkins and Levtzion 2000: 83) that cowries are among the most sought after commodities in Kugha (seemingly an early capital of the Songhai Empire, in present day Mali or Niger) by the 14th century, cowries are described as currency, and an import on which vast profits were made (al Umari, in Hopkins and Levtzion 2000: 260, 269) In the 14th century, ibn Battuta saw 1150 cowries sold for one gold dinar in Mali. Simon Lucas, in the late 18th century, explicitly writes that sub Saharan consumers valued cowries for both ritual and currency usage. Oral traditions today evidence the centrality of cowries to West African thought (see especially Iroko 1987) while archaeology confirms the antiquity of cowrie usage. They are routinely recovered, some well known instances being the first millennium necropolis of Kissi, Burkina Faso (Magnavita 2009) a 10th century burial at Akumbu, Mali (Togola 2008) the 11th century 'lost caravan' from the Mauritanian Sahara (Monod 1969) the mound of Yohongou in the Atakora mountains of Benin (Petit 2005, 9th/10th century) and the 15th/16th century site of Durbi Takusheyi, Nigeria (Gronenborn 2011)