Social Constellations and Settlement Practice: The Archaeology of Non-urban Complexity in Southeastern Burkina Faso

The Maadaga Archaeological Survey revealed a dynamic settlement landscape of generational mobility in a region of southeastern Burkina Faso inhabited by precolonial West African Gulmance kingdoms. By investigating shifting individual residences, this study proposes that variability in farming practices and landscape use within savanna ecosystems was not determined by the local ecology, but was Instead driven by political choices that emerged in the early second millennium ce, a dramatic shi...