ABSTRACT
In traditional archaeological classification, the past is divided into successive sequences based on technological transformations (see Musa Muhammed, Ch. 27, this volume). These broad divisions are certainly valid, but they are very general and tend to overshadow many other changes which occurred in past societies. The purpose of this chapter is to analyse a very short temporal sequence of west African late prehistory pertaining to the appearance of a new technology and new kinds of artefacts — metallurgy and its products — and to discuss through a case study various kinds of processes attested by archaeological data. This chapter is a study of change: transition means a process of change from an earlier stage A to a later stage B. These different steps are from the ‘Neolithic’ or Late Stone Age, broadly defined as food-producing economies without knowledge of metallurgy, to the Early Iron Age, which witnessed the appearance of the first iron artefacts in the prehistoric assemblages. But the division is not so simple, because the mere presence of iron artefacts or debris does not inevitably indicate a ‘conventional’ iron age site; many other factors must be sought. According to Kense (1983c, p. 12), an iron age society can best be considered as one which has a working knowledge of iron technology and has integrated that technology within the various aspects of its social structure. An important differentiation can thus be made between iron-using communities which received their iron artefacts through exchange or trade, and iron-producing communities which have mastered iron technology. The blurring of this distinction often leads to confusion in the discussions of hypotheses concerning the emergence of iron technology in Africa.
