Paleometallurgy in the Atakora region (northwest Benin)
Archaeological research in Atakora (north-west Benin) has revealed that this region is home to an important siderurgical heritage. However, they have not yet enabled us to retrace the precise history of metallurgy and its players, as a number of questions remain unanswered: those concerning the location and chronology of the region's metallurgical sites, the stages of evolution and the impact of iron metallurgy on population movements, and its impact on the environment ; those concerning the spatial organization of ironworks, the techniques employed, their efficiency, the quantity of iron produced and the relationship between iron metallurgy in this region and that observed in neighbouring regions such as north-west Togo and south-east Burkina-Faso. These are the questions we address in our thesis, continuing our investigations by cross-referencing archaeological and historical data to better understand how Atakora societies procured iron.
Thesis co-directed by François-Xavier Fauvelle (Collège de France), Caroline Robion-Brunner (CNRS, Laboratoire TRACES, Toulouse) and Didier Ndah (University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin).
French government scholarship (French embassy in Cotonou).
1st registration in October 2019.
