ABSTRACT Despite the perceived importance of cowrie shells as indicators of long-distance connections in the West African past, their distribution and consumption patterns in archaeological contexts remain surprisingly underexplored, a gap that is only partly explicable by the sparse distribution of archaeological sites within the sub-continent. General writings on the timeline of importation of cowries into West Africa often fail to take into account the latest archaeological evidence and rely instead on accounts drawn from historical or ethnographic documents. This paper is based on a first-hand assessment of over 4500 shells from 78 sites across West Africa, examining chronology, shell species and processes of modification to assess what distribution patterns can tell us about the history of importation and usage of cowries. These first-hand analyses are paralleled by a consideration of published materials. We re-examine the default assumption that two distinct routes of entry existed — one overland from North Africa before the fifteenth century, another coming into use from the time sea links were established with the East African coast and becoming predominant by the middle of the nineteenth century. We focus on the eastern part of West Africa, where the importance of imported cowries to local communities in relatively recent periods is well known and from where we have a good archaeological sample. The conclusion is that on suitably large assemblages shell size can be an indication of provenance and that, while the present archaeological picture seems largely to confirm historical sources, much of this may be due to the discrepancy in archaeological data available from the Sahara/Sahel zone compared to the more forested regions of the sub-continent. Future archaeological work will clarify this matter.

中文翻译：

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西非考古中的考里斯：当前图片

摘要尽管人们认为贝壳是西非过去长距离连接的指标，但它们在考古环境中的分布和消费模式仍然出人意料地未被开发，这一差距只能通过该地区内考古地点的稀疏分布来部分解释。 -大陆。关于向西非进口军帽的时间表的一般著作常常没有考虑到最新的考古证据，而是依靠历史或人种学文献的记载。本文基于对来自西非78个地点的4500多种贝壳的第一手评估，检查了年代，贝壳种类和修饰过程，以评估哪些分布方式可以告诉我们有关奶牛进口和使​​用的历史。这些第一手分析同时考虑了已出版的材料。我们重新检查默认的假设，即存在两种截然不同的进入途径-一条进入北非的陆路是在15世纪之前，另一条是从与东非海岸建立海路连接后便开始使用，并在19世纪中叶成为主要通道世纪。我们着眼于西非东部，在相对较近的时期内，众所周知，进口奶牛对当地社区的重要性，并且从那里我们拥有良好的考古样本。结论是，在适当的大型集合体中，壳的大小可以作为出处的标志，尽管目前的考古学图像似乎在很大程度上证实了历史渊源，这可能是由于撒哈拉/萨赫勒地区的考古数据与次大陆森林较多的地区相比存在差异。未来的考古工作将澄清这一问题。