The Trans-Atlantic slave trade and local traditions of slavery in the West African Hinterlands

This study is a re-evaluation of a portion of a larger field research project undertaken on the Benue River Valley of Nigeria. In addition to historic Tiv settlements, this project also investigated the thesis that the Bantu-speaking peoples had their origins somewhere around the Nigerian-Cameroonian border. In the course of this work, sites of Late Stone Age, Early Iron Age, and the Historic period were identified and studied (Andah 1983, Folorunso 1989).