Holl/Archaeology of Urban Bondage, 1. Archaeology of the Atlantic Enslavement Systems

Chapter 1 – Archaeology of the Atlantic Enslavement Systems maps the global origins and lows of enslaved Africans. The Cameroons that sits at the junction of West and Central Africa, stretching from the Equatorial forest to the Sahara margins is used as a microcosm of the combined impact of continental-oriental and Atlantic enslavement systems. Cases studies from each of the major environmental zones feature the disruptions but also adjustment and creative adaptations of local societies. Archaeological data, historical and ethnohistorical sources are relied upon to access the social history of five selected areas: the southern forested zone along the shores of the Sanaga river in the south, the western grassfields highland, the Western Adamawa plateau basin in the north, the Upper Benue and the Fali region, and the mounds from the Chadian plain at the northern end For example labor shortage resulted in the invention of natural draft furnaces for the production of iron in two distinct regions. Ethnohistory also provides very interesting data on the internal workings of the pervasive enslavement systems.