The scarcity slot: excavating histories of food security in Ghana

Abstract

representation of the multiple experiences of loss to the Atlantic exchange’ (p. 235). The pantheon of deities on both side of the Atlantic preserves traces of this tumult: Orí, deity of individuality, becomes increasingly important and female-centred cults protest the decline of matricentric authority (pp. 308–309, 350). And although the ilé continued to be the basic organisational unit and to define citizenship, it was no longer rooted in place. Instead, it was dispersed within an intensely mobile and integrated regional landscape and, with the massive region-wide demographic breakup and displacement of the nineteenth century, became increasingly heterogeneous. This book is daring in scope and ambition and takes to task canonical stories of Yorùbá history. It is engaging and crosses datasets, making the case for a study of the deeper past that goes beyond the information offered by recent historical texts and the often-sober archaeological data. In this, Akin Ogundiran has written a book to be warmly welcomed by archaeologists.