Experimental archaeology in the Tropics

Abstract

When at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria in the 1970s, Professor Thurstan Shaw established an experimental archaeological reserve on the territory of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) on the outskirts of the city. It enclosed among other things what had been the small but flourishing village of Adesina Oja. Various experiments were devised, including a bank and ditch experiment on the model of one originally established at Overton Down, U.K., as well as differential vertical transport and decay experiments using buried organic and inorganic materials. In another experiment, beads were set in a house structure, so that the way in which this house fell into decay over the years could be examined. In the 1980s the house was excavated, as a training exercise for students of the University, and notes were made of the way in which it had collapsed using the beads which had been planted within it. This report summarises the progress made so far with the experiments at IITA, and in particular describes the results of the excavation of the abandoned house. Some experiments relating to the excavation of house structures have likewise been carried out in Ghana, but so far as the author is aware, the experimental regime set up at IITA is the only one of its kind as yet in the West African region.