First Millennia BC/AD Fortified Settlements at Lake Chad

Abstract

Between 2004 and 2009, a programme of ground-based geophysical surveying revealed a number of large ancient fortified settlements at the south-western margins of Lake Chad. Dating to the first millennia BC/AD, these archaeological sites are amongst the oldest evidence for communal-level protection in Sub-Saharan Africa. On the one hand, settlement defences and dense populations, estimated in the low thousands, clearly indicate that security must have been a major concern for people living in the area at that time. On the other, these sites raise a series of questions that are fundamental for understanding the emergence of urban centres and state-level societies in the Lake Chad area and in Sub-Saharan Africa. This chapter introduces the archaeological evidence pertaining to those settlements and discusses their implications for the current debate on the origins of urbanisation and state formation in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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