Cattle in the West African savanna: evidence from 1st millennium CE Kirikongo, Burkina Faso

Abstract

The West African sahel and savanna are today home to diverse cattle breeds derived from complex social, political and environmental processes over at least the past four thousand years. Current evidence from the sahel and its floodplains indicates multiple sizes of cattle over time that may correspond to modern breeds. However, little is known about the cattle further south in the savanna, such as the West African Shorthorn. These humpless cattle are well adapted to the environmental conditions of more humid zones, including their significant resistance to trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness. In this paper I present new archaeozoological data from the Iron Age village of Kirikongo, Burkina Faso (100–1700 CE) that indicate the presence of small cattle in the 1st millennium CE similar in size to West African Shorthorn. These results are contextualized through comparisons with other archaeological sites and environmental data in Central West Africa, suggesting that small cattle are generally associated with the savanna environment over time, and their distributions may have oscillated with climatic changes. Lastly, interregional processes are assessed given Kirikongo’s evidence for small savanna cattle in western Burkina Faso and their subsequent adoption in the Inland Niger Delta of Mali.