Collective and interpretive openings: perforated Gbe ritual ceramics at local, regional and Diasporic spheres of interpretation

Abstract

Archaeologists use hand-built, low-fired, earthenware ceramics to build analogies connecting Africa to diasporic locales. Yet, the degree of specificity with which the individualising technologies, formal characteristics and decoration of excavated diasporic ceramics relate to particular African cultural groups, regions or sites is a matter of debate. This paper uses one class of perforated ceramics recovered from sites in coastal Bénin, West Africa, to explore the local and regional scales at which this class of ceramics holds cultural saliency in religious life. In so doing, it argues that archaeologists of Atlantic Africa must more thoroughly address regional trends in materiality and, in turn, proceed cautiously when using material culture to make point-to-point analogies that span the Atlantic.