Anyang

Yin Ruins Museum of Anyang, Henan Province

The later Shang capitals at Anyang and Shangqiu are better known archaeologically. Anyang is thought to have been the sixth and final capital of the Shang dynasty. By around 1200 BC, the city comprised a metropolitan area of some 15km2, consisting of multiple occupation clusters spread along a 6km stretch of the Yellow River. Anyang was not merely a conglomeration of villages - large-scale residential foundations thought to be palaces have been found at Xiaotun, and tombs of a scale indicative of royal burial are present at Xibeigang, where a large number of inscribed oracle bones attest to a qualitative change in social organization. Three clusters of hangtu foundations have been identified at Xiaotun, a total of 53 individual foundations of which the largest is 2800m2. Storage pits containing the remains of grain, bronze weapons, oracle bones, and fine pottery have been identified around the palatial foundations. Craft workshops and commoner residences are also present, indicating that bronze casting and jade, shell, bone, and stone working were conducted in the area around the palaces. The Xiaotun sector is thought to be the administrative-ceremonial core of Anyang, administering a web of surrounding settlement clusters. 

One of the outlying sites that constitute the Anyang urban web is Xibeigang, where 13 monumental tombs have been excavated. All of these consist of a primary pit accessed by ramps that share the same orientation and have evidence of extensive sacrificial burials (including humans, dogs, horses, and other animals) associated with the burials of prominent individuals. Although these have been extensively looted, the FuHao tomb excavated at Xiaotun offers us a sense of the wealth of grave goods placed with prominent individuals. This tomb belonged to a wife of the ruler Wu Ting and contained 16 human sacrificial victims, six dogs, 7000 cowrie shells, and more than 1600 other items (bronzes, jades, oracle bones, stone objects, ivory carvings, pottery, and shell objects). 

More research is needed to clarify patterns of urban development in China, but it is clear that cities with populations exceeding 100 000 had developed by Eastern Zhou times (771-221 BC), when urban settlements exhibit a more nucleated character and a more consistent layout. By this time, the urban form included a walled inner city (wangcheng) that contained a palace, an outer city (guo), and a surrounding hinterland of suburbs (jiao) and farming hamlets (yie). Zhou cities were commercial centers with thriving craft industries and well-developed administrative hierarchies. 

It is undeniable that these cities developed out of millennia-long traditions of settlement organization. Longshan social development saw the appearance of walled compounds of a few hectares, possibly areas of elite residence and craft production that were surrounded by commoner settlement. By the mid-second millennium BC, China's largest sites covered several square kilometers and had sizeable precincts (sometimes walled) in which monumental architecture, palatial residences, ritual spaces, and storage facilities were located. Craft production appears to have become more specialized and was carried out on a larger scale in workshops outside of the inner city. Farmers lived in rural communities outside of the cities. It appears that the inner parts of these early cities were planned to a degree not seen at the urban periphery, which grew more organically in a number of linked settlement clusters.

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Excavation of Jenne-Jeno (1974–1998)

The markets in Jenne-jeno c.1000 AD by Charles Santore.

American archaeologists Rod and Susan McIntosh significantly advanced our understanding of the archaeology of Iron Age Africa through their excavation of the mound at Jenne-Jeno, located on the upper Niger River Delta, in the modern African state of Mali. During the 1970s and 1980s, the impact of African political independence on archaeology was demonstrated by the initiation of numerous regional studies, which focused on local origins and developments. The sites of Jenne-Jeno (ancient Jenne) and Jenne itself spanned 2,000 years of occupation and, because of the archaeological work at the site, were subsequently inscribed on the World Heritage List. 

It was well known, and described in detail by Arab chroniclers, that between AD 800 and 1500 the wealthy and sophisticated Sudanese kingdoms of Ghana, Gao, Takrur, Tegdauost, and Mali dominated the western Sudan, between Lake Chad and the Atlantic Ocean, and the resources and trade routes farther south, and across central and west Africa. During the nineteenth century these Sudanic kingdoms became French colonies, and during the early twentieth century they were part of French West Sudan. Before the 1960s their historical significance was determined by their relationship with North Africa. 

This "Arabist perspective" meant that the cultural and political achievements of these Sudanic people were seen to be the direct result of their contact and trade with North Africa. French archaeologists and historians who worked in the region were responsible for this colonial attitude, but this does not diminish their contributions to its history and archaeology. The French identified, surveyed, and protected many of the major sites and compiled a detailed history of the region and its long relationship with the Arab/Berber world. They also began the rediscovery of the protohistory of western Africa and the Sudanic kingdoms and began to educate local African archaeologists after World War II. During the 1970s French archaeologist Raymond Mauny excavated the Sudanic kingdom sites of Koumbi Saleh and Gao. 

Nonetheless, until the 1970s the whole sub-Saharan nature of the Sudanic kingdoms was ignored. Instead, historians concentrated on its architecture, inscriptions, trans-Sahara trade, and imports, but rarely investigated the local context and content of these sites. Indeed, a rereading of Arab chronicles during this period reveals detailed descriptions of local pagan cults, fetishes, shrines, and sorcery, which were distinctly West African in provenance, but had neither been noticed nor investigated. It became obvious that if historical sources contained such different perspectives, then a scientific and thorough archaeological investigation and analysis of these sites was bound to come up with neglected evidence about the origins and development of complex societies in the Sudanic kingdoms before Arab contact. During the 1980s the consolidation of political independence in Africa impelled archaeological investigations to answer some important questions about the African past. 

Jenne-Jeno (or Djenne) was an important staging post on one of the wealthiest and most famous trade routes that operated across Africa over the past 500 years. Gold, mined to the south of Jenne, was transported to this river town, and then shipped in canoes to Timbuktu. From there it was sent via camel trains to North Africa, and then on to Europe. Jenne-Jeno also supplied the arid inland town of Timbuktu with most of its food in the form of cereals and dried fish. 

The excavation of the large, six-meter-deep occupation mound, and the analyis of data by the McIntoshes, revealed that the city of Jenne-Jeno was founded 2,250 years ago (ca. 250 BC) by iron-using people who herded stock; fished and hunted; grew rice, millet, and sorghum; and were also craftspeople and traders. The excavation of another two sites at Jenne-Jeno provided evidence that the city had grown rapidly throughout the first millennium AD until it covered, at its greatest extent, 76 acres in AD 850, when its population was estimated to be around 27,000 people. During this period Jenne-Jeno was surrounded by a 4-meter-high and 2-kilometer-long, mud brick defense wall. After AD 1200 Jenne-Jeno's population declined, and it was abandoned 200 years later. 

The excavation of Jenne-Jeno proved that urban settlement and a complex society (based on the creation of enough food surplus to trade for raw materials, such as iron and copper, via long distance and east-west trade in West Africa) had developed long before the trans-Saharan trade with the North African Arabs, which was documented as beginning after the ninth century AD. The idea that the Sudanic kingdoms were the result of contact with northern Africa was disproved, as was the idea that Black Africa was incapable of "civilization" without northern influences. Here was an indigenous, wealthy, Iron Age culture of great social, cultural, and political sophistication, in contact with and influencing the rest of West Africa a long time before the arrival of Arabs or Europeans.

Further Reading Connah, G. 2004. Forgotten Africa: an introduction to its archaeology. London: Routledge. MacIntosh, R. J. 2001. Africa, Francophone. In Encyclopedia of archaeology: History and discoveries, ed. T. Murray, 21-35. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. MacIntosh, S. K. 2001. Africa, Sudanic Kingdoms. In Encyclopedia of archaeology: History and discoveries, ed. T. Murray, 71-78. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. McIntosh, S. K., and R. J. McIntosh. 1980. Prehistoric investigations in the region of Jenne, Mali: A study in the development of urbanism in the Sahel. Oxford: BAR. Muzzolini, A. 2001. Africa, Sahara. In Encyclopedia of archaeology: History and discoveries, ed. T. Murray, 71-78. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

Hunter, gatherer… architect? Civilisation's true dawn

• 03 October 2013 by David Robson
• Magazine issue 2937. Subscribe and save
• For similar stories, visit the The Human Brain and Human Evolution Topic Guides

WHEN Steven Mithen's team began to dig through the desert soil, his expectations were low. "We thought it was just a big rubbish dump," he says.

Still, even the prospect of rifling through trash was cause for some satisfaction. Mithen, an archaeologist at the University of Reading, UK, initially raised a few eyebrows when he told colleagues of his plans to dig for Stone Age ruins in south Jordan. "They said we'd never find anything there – it was a backwater," says Mithen. He proved them wrong by finding the remains of a primitive village. By sifting through its rubbish, he hoped to gain a glimpse of day-to-day life more than 11,000 years ago.

But as they dug through the detritus, one of his students came upon a polished, solid floor – hardly the kind of craftsmanship to waste on a communal tip. Then came a series of platforms engraved ...

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