Peer-Reviewed Article November 30, 2008
The oldest textiles from sub-Saharan West Africa: woolen facts from Kissi, Burkina Faso
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Published in: Journal of African Archaeology
Publisher: Brill • South Africa • 1612-1651 • 2191-5784
Abstract
The textile evidence for the archaeological site of Kissi, Burkina Faso, is presented and the implications for the history of weaving in West Africa are discussed. Woolen textiles have been preserved in Iron Age graves of the first millennium AD due to the corrosion of metal objects in the graves. This lucky circumstance adds further examples to the very small corpus of first millennium AD textile finds, pushing back in time the evidence for the demand and use of cloth in sub-Saharan Africa.