Finding the ephemeral: Herding strategies and socio-economic organization in an urban West African context

In this paper, I use zooarchaeological data to investigate the relationship between food production strategies, particularly herding practices, and socioeconomic configurations in the ancient city of Jenné-jeno (occupied ca. 250 BCE to 1400 CE) and in archaeological contexts (ca. 1400–1900 CE) from the modern city of Djenné, both located in Mali's Inland Niger Delta (IND). IND populations are notable for their system of subsistence specialization, wherein self-ascribed ethnic groups identify strongly with specific subsistence regimes. This organization is a successful response to the area's unpredictability and, as such, exerts strong influence on interpretations of many IND archaeological contexts. In particular, scholars have invoked subsistence specialization as a possible underlying explanation for the distinctive social and political organization found at Jenné-jeno, most notably in Rod McIntosh's Pulse Model. Data from osteometric and isotopic (87Sr/86Sr) analysis of domestic herd animals, however, suggest that subsistence regimes were much more diversified at Jenné-jeno and neighboring sites, and that ethnically-linked subsistence specialization may have emerged in this area only as part of a broad social, political, and settlement pattern reorganization coincident with Jenné-jeno's abandonment. I argue that despite facing broadly similar climatic uncertainty over the past two millennia, populations in and around Jenné-jeno adopted shifting social and economic strategies, with new approaches emerging in the face of specific environmental challenges and changing social contexts. This study joins others in showing the extent to which ancient urban centers are the product of their local environmental and sociopolitical settings, rather than conforming to expected models of urban configurations.