Credited to Mali. Ounjougou has the earliest dated pottery in sub-Saharan Africa, but researchers have not agreed whether ceramics in Saharan Africa arose once or in several independent places. A statistical study of radiocarbon dates supported two or three separate origin points.
How it began
At the Ounjougou site complex on the Bandiagara Plateau, in present-day Mali, archaeologists found pottery attested from the first half of the 10th millennium BCE. The project team describes it as the earliest evidence for pottery in sub-Saharan Africa. The sherds came from the base of unit HA1 at the Ravin de la Mouche site, alongside a small bifacial stone industry. The upper layers of that sequence were placed between 9,400 and 8,400 cal BCE by 12 radiocarbon dates and 3 OSL dates.
Before it existed
The region had been abandoned for several thousand years. An extremely arid episode, the Ogolian, began in West Africa around 23,000 years ago and is marked at Ounjougou by a long gap in the sediments and the archaeology. People returned only when humid conditions came back at the beginning of the Holocene, in a setting of heavy rains and returning plant cover.
How it works
Three sherds are linked to the early industry. They are 4.5 to 7 millimeters thick, and the only recognizable form is a hemispherical bowl 21 centimeters in diameter with a simple rim. One sherd carries a roulette decoration. Microscopic analysis showed a silicate paste with 20 to 30 percent non-plastic inclusions, mainly rounded quartz like that in local sandstone and clays, which points to local manufacture.
What lasted
The finds placed West Africa among the early centers of ceramic technology. Stone milling equipment follows at the same site complex from the 8th millennium BCE, shown by a millstone and a grinder. Later research linked the emergence of ceramics in Saharan Africa to hunter-gatherer-fisher groups adapting to the more productive environments of the African Humid Period.
