Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Feet of Clay: An Archaeology of Huedan Elite Anxiety in the Era of Atlantic Trade

  • Chapter
The Archaeology of Anxiety

Abstract

In archaeological accounts of the Dahomey Gap region, elite West Africans are often characterized as bellicose regional administrators and iron-fisted military commanders. Previous studies focus on the role of artifacts and architectural features in projecting and bolstering their authority. In essence, “materiality” of the Dahomey Gap world emerges from the narrative history of the region as items intersecting with political economies and things that referenced the prominence of merchant/warrior kings. This chapter addresses a more subjective state of elite African existence, the anxiousness inherent to a region rocked by slaving raids and wholesale warfare. It argues that archaeologically recovered earthenware offerings, originally placed under living surfaces and in household shrines, played an active role in mitigating such anxiety by providing concealed sources of protection and private points of reflection. It further argues that we need a more holistic understanding of the Dahomey Gap emotional communities during the middle Atlantic period (ca. 1700 AD).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    For a comprehensive, and evolving, account of the number of captives departing from the Dahomey gap region into the middle passage, see Eltis et al. (2009).

  2. 2.

    It is beyond the scope of this paper to present an atlas of the historiography of the region or Hueda. For reviews, see Akinjogbin (1967), Bay (1998), and Law (1990a, 1990b, 1991). This paper builds on efforts (e.g., Bay, 2008; Blier, 1995) to explore and foreground the material culture of Vodun and specifically describe the active role that such objects played in mediating and producing cultural processes.

  3. 3.

    See Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) paramount pictures and “The Voodoo of Superman” (1972) DC Comics Vol. 1 No. 413.

  4. 4.

    For broader critiques, see Pauketat (2001).

  5. 5.

    During this period, Ouidah dwarfed all other trading ports for captives on the African coast. For the same period, 91,672 captives departed from the infamous port of Luanda. Both figures are drawn from Eltis’ website.

  6. 6.

    Bullfinch Lamb in William Smith’s A New Voyage to Guinea [London, 1793(1967), p. 186] estimates that after this raid the skulls of approximately 4000 Huedans were piled in heaps within the Dahomean palace complex at Abomey. Law (1989a, 1989b, p. 402) suggests that this figure represents the totality of skulls taken in the battle along with those from sacrificial victims.

  7. 7.

    David (1983, p. 174) notes that large cooking vessels are used by the Gun in southern Bénin to contain the skulls of family members.

  8. 8.

    Gozin vessels are used as modern ritual ceramics; see Norman (2009a).

  9. 9.

    Phillips (1732, p. 224) claims to have shot a “wooden” figure, presumably the Agoye, after waiting several hours for it to speak and give a pronouncement.

References

  • Akinjogbin, I. A. (1967). Dahomey and its neighbors 1708-1818. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aniakor, C. (1996). Household objects and the philosophy of Igbo social space. In M. J. Arnoldi, C. M. Geary, & K. L. Hardin (Eds.), African material culture (pp. 214–242). Bloomington, IA: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Argyle, W. J. (1966). The Fon of Dahomey: A history and ethnography of the old kingdom. Oxford, England: Clarendon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ashforth, A. (2005). Witchcraft, violence, and democracy in Southern Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Astley, T. (ed.) (1745-7). A new general collection of voyages and travels: Consisting of the most esteemed relations, which have been hitherto published in any language. Vol. 3. London. Retrieved from http:/galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/ECCO. Gale Document Number CW103160831.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baum, R. (1999). Shrines of the slave trade: Diola religion and society in precolonial Senegambia. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bay, E. (2008). Asen, ancestors, and vodun: Tracing change in African art. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blake, E. C. (1999). Identity mapping in the Sardinian bronze age. European Journal of Archaeology, 2(1), 55–75.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blier, S. (1995). African vodun: Art, psychology, and power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bosman, W. (1705) A new and accurate description of the coast of Guinea, divided into the gold, the slave, and the Ivory Coasts. London. Retrieved from http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/ECCO. Gale Document Number CW101007353.

  • Cowgill, G. (2000). Rationality and contexts in agency theory. In D. Marcia-Anne & R. John (Eds.), Agency in archeology (pp. 51–60). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cudjoe, D. (1971). The Du-Legba-cult among the Ewe of Ghana. Baessler-Archiv, 19(2), 187–206.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dalzel, A. (1967). The history of Dahomey, an inland Kingdom of Africa. London: Frank Cass and Company (Original work published 1793).

    Google Scholar 

  • Darwin, C. (1872). Expression of emotion in man and animals. London: John Murray.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • David, M. (1983) Poterie Domestique et Rituelle du Sud-Benin: Etude Ethnoarcheologique: Archives Suisses d’Anthropologie Generale. 47(2),121–84..

    Google Scholar 

  • Demarrais, E., Castillo, L. J., & Earle, T. (1996). Ideology, materialization, and power strategies. Current Anthropology, 37(1), 15–31.

    Google Scholar 

  • DuBois, W. E. B. 1915 (1975). The Negro. New York: Kraus-Thomson Organization.

    Google Scholar 

  • Earle, T. (1997). How chiefs came to power: The political economy in prehistory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, S., & ter Haar, G. (2004). Worlds of power: Religious thought and political practice in Africa. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eltis, D. et al. (2009). Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. Retrieved March 11, 2009, from http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/database/search.faces.

  • Feinberg, H. M. (1974). New data on european mortality in west Africa: The Dutch on the gold coast, 1719-60. Journal of African History, 15(3), 357–371.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fleisher, J. B., & LaViolette, A. (2007). The changing power of Swahili Houses, fourteenth to nineteenth centuries AD. In R. A. Beck (ed.). Durable house society models in archaeology. Occasional Paper No. 35, Center for Archaeological Investigation. Carbondale: SIU Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (2005). The archaeology of knowledge. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Geertz, C. (1980). Negara: The theatre state in nineteenth-century Bali. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilchrist, R. (2003). Introduction: Towards a social archaeology of warfare. World Archaeology, 35(1), 1–6.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guyer, J. I., & Belinga, S. E. (1995). Wealth in people as wealth in knowledge: Accumulation and composition in equatorial Africa. Journal of African History, 36, 91–120.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hair, P. E., Jones, A., & Law, R. (Eds.). (1992). Barbot on Guinea: The writings of Jean Barbot on west Africa 1678-1712, volume II of II. London: The Hakluyt Society.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamblet, W. C. (2008). Savage construction: The myth of African savagery. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harré, R. (1986). The social construction of emotion. Oxford, England: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hazoumé, P. (1956). Le Pact de Sang du Dahomey. Travaux et Mémoires de l’Institut d’Ethnologie. 25. Paris: Institute d’Ethnologie.

    Google Scholar 

  • Herskovits, M. (1967). Dahomey: An ancient west African kingdom (Vol. I). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hodder, I. (2006). The Leopard’s tale : Revealing the mysteries of Chatalhoyuk. London: Thames & Hudson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Insoll, T. (2004). Archaeology, ritual, religion. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Insoll, T. (2007). The archaeology of identities: A reader. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones, S. (1997). The archaeology of ethnicity: Constructing identities in the past and present. New York: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kelly, K. G., Brunache, P., & Norman, N. L. (1999). Archaeological fieldwork at savi, Republic of Bénin: The 1999 season. Nyame Akuma, 52, 2–10.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelly, K. G., Brunache, P., & Norman, N. L. (2001). Change and continuity in coastal Bénin. In C. R. DeCorse (Ed.), West Africa during the Atlantic slave trade: Archaeological perspectives (pp. 1–100). London: Leicester University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kus, S. (1989). Sensuous human activity and the state: Towards an archaeology of bread and circuses. In D. Miller, M. Rowlands, & C. Tilley (Eds.), Domination and resistance (pp. 140–154). London: Unwin Hyman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Labat, J. B. (1730). Voyage du Chevalier Des Marchais en Guinée, Isles Voisines, et à Cayenne, fait en 1725, 1726 & 1727…. Paris: Chez Saugrain.

    Google Scholar 

  • Law, R. (1989a). Slave-raiders and middlemen, monopolists and free-traders: The supply of Slaves for the Atlantic trade in Dahomey, c. 1715-1850. Journal of African History, 30, 45–68.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Law, R. (1989b). ‘My Head Belongs to the King’: On the political and ritual significance of decapitation in pre-colonial Dahomey. Journal of African History, 30, 399–415.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Law, R. (1990a). Further Light on Bulfinch Lambe and the “Emperor of Pawpaw”: King Agaja of Dahomey’s Letter to King George I of England, 1726. History in Africa, 17, 211–226.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Law, R. (1990b). “The common people were divided”: Monarchy, aristocracy, and political factionalism in the kingdom of whydah, 1671-1727. International Journal of African Historical Studies, 23(2), 201–229.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Law, R. (1991). The slave coast of West Africa, 1550–1750: The impact of the Atlantic slave trade on an African society. Oxford, England: Clarendon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lutz. (1988). Unnatural emotion: Everyday sentiments on a Micronesian atoll and their challenge to western theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meskell, L. (1998). Intimate archaeologies: The case of Kha and merit. World Archaeology, 29(3), 363–379.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meskell, L. (1999). Archaeologies of social life: Age, sex, class, etc. In ancient Egypt. Oxford, England: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meskell, L. (2001). Archaeologies of identity. In I. Hodder (Ed.), Archaeological theory today (pp. 187–213). Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, J. (2004). Slaving and colonialism. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 5(3), 1–62.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Norman, N. L. (2009a). Powerful pots, humbling holes, and regional ritual processes: Towards an archaeology of Huedan Vodun. African Archaeological Review, 26(3), 187–218.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Norman, N. L. (2009b). Hueda (Whydah) Country and Town: Archaeological perspectives on the rise and collapse of an African Atlantic Kingdom. International Journal of African Historical Studies, 43(3), 387–410.

    Google Scholar 

  • Norman, N. L. (2010). Feasts in motion: Archaeological views of parades, ancestral pageants, and socio-political process in the Hueda Kingdom, 1650-1727 AD. Journal of World Prehistory, 23, 239–254.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Norman, N. L., & Kelly, K. G. (2004). Landscape politics: The serpent ditch and the rainbow in West Africa. American Anthropologist, 106(1), 98–110.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Norris, R. (1791). Memoirs of the reign of Bossa Ahdee, King of Dahomey…. London: W. Lowndes.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ogundiran, A. (2002). Of small things remembered: Beads, Cowries, and cultural translations of the Atlantic experience in Yorubaland. The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 36(2), 427–457.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pauketat, T. (2001). Practice and theory in archaeology: An emerging paradigm. Anthropological Theory, 1(1), 73–97.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Phillips, T. (1732). A journal of a voyage made in the Hannibal of London, Ann. 1693, 1694…. In C. John (Ed.), A collection of voyages and travels 6 vols (pp. 173–239). London: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reddy, William (1997). The Invisible Code: Honor and Sentiment in Postrevolutionary France, 1814-1848. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reddy, W. (2001). The navigation of feelings: A framework for the history of emotion. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Rosenwein, B. (2006). Emotional communities in the early middle ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shanks, M., & McGuire, R. (1996). The craft of archaeology. American Antiquity, 61(1), 75–88.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shaw, R. (2008). Memories of the slave trade: Ritual and the historical imagination in Sierra Leone. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sinou, A. (1994). Architectural and urban heritage: The example of the city of Ouidah, Benin. In World Bank (Ed.), Culture and development in Africa (Proceedings of an International Conference Held at the World Bank, pp. 289–312). Washington, DC: World Bank.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, A. (2003). The political landscape: Constellations of authority in early complex polities. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Snelgrave, W. (1734). A new account of some parts of Guinea and the Slave Trade. London: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stark, M. (Ed.). (1997). The archaeology of social boundaries. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tarlow, S. (1999). Bereavement and commemoration: An archaeology of mortality. London: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tarlow, S. (2000). Emotion in archaeology. Current Anthropology, 41(5), 713–746.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, R. F. (1973). An aesthetic of the cool. African Arts, 7(1), 41–91.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tilley, C. (2004). Mind and body in landscape research. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 14(2), 185–203.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • White, L. (2000). Speaking with vampires: Rumors and history in colonial Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Adria LaViolette, Kenneth Kelly, J. Cameron Monroe, Jeffrey Hantman, Grey Gundaker, E. Kofi Agorsah, Suzanne Blier, and Joseph C. Miller for comments on earlier versions of this paper and/or the dissertation project from which it was drawn. Jeff Fleisher offered extensive and insightful comments to earlier versions of this chapter and hours of spirited conversation on archaeologies of emotion. Alexis Adandé served as the local coordinator of my project and offered his considerable knowledge of the archaeology of southern Benin. Joseph Adandé, Obaré Bagodo, Souayibou Varissou, Bienvenue Olory, Didier N’dah, and Elisée Soumoni deserve special thanks for their kind encouragement and local logistical assistance. Early field efforts in 2003–2004 were supported by The Explorers Club Washington Group; the Graduate School of Arts and Science, University of Virginia (UVa); the Department of Anthropology, UVa; and the Center for Academic Excellence, UVa. The longer field season in 2005–2006 was funded by a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant (#0432893), a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship (#P022A0500), and a special grant by the Embassy of the Netherlands to Cotonou.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA

    Neil L. Norman

Authors
  1. Neil L. Norman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Neil L. Norman .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA

    Jeffrey Fleisher

  2. College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA

    Neil Norman

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media New York

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Norman, N.L. (2016). Feet of Clay: An Archaeology of Huedan Elite Anxiety in the Era of Atlantic Trade. In: Fleisher, J., Norman, N. (eds) The Archaeology of Anxiety. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3231-3_5

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3231-3_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-3230-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-3231-3

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation