Garumele Revisited: Retracing Vanished Fired-Brick Elite Constructions and New Data on Settlement Foundation

• DOI: 10.1007/s10437-017-9255-1
• Publication Date: 2017-05-29T05:46:32Z
• Authors: Carlos Magnavita; Sonja Magnavita
• Keywords: 0601 history and archaeology; 06 humanities and the arts

Some of the most notable and largely endangered archaeological remains from the Lake Chad area consist of the ruins of fired-brick elite constructions connected to the Kanem-Borno Empire (ca. eighth–nineteenth century AD). In the course of the last 200 years, several of the elite structures known west of the lake were destroyed as a consequence of war, later having their fired-bricks looted for constructions elsewhere. One of the largest and most thoroughly plundered of those structures once stood within the walled settlement of Garumele, SW Niger Republic. In the scope of an experimental field study at that location and with a view to future work at related sites, we demonstrate that it is still possible to retrace the ground plans of Kanem-Borno fired-brick structures, even if these have been already completely pillaged. In addition, we present new chronological evidence suggesting that Garumele—as a walled urban settlement—was founded sometime between the mid-fifteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, but most probably between the late sixteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries AD.