ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a key motif in the historiography of Atlantic encounters in Africa: the idea of centralized, state-like polities. Since the 1960s, some of the most tumultuous debates in archaeological theory have hinged on matters of political evolution, social complexity and terminology. Over the past fifteen years, archaeological research has increasingly appreciated the political nature of landscape, as the product of complex relationships between space, ideology, and regimes of order. Public rituals were staged in the landscape and anchored to Siin's sacred geography. Moreover, because Siin's settlement patterns lend themselves to a number of possible readings, more research will be necessary to determine conclusively the cultural expressions of political power in the region. Once a vibrant cultural frontier, the region became the locus of a composite polity, with a mixed record of entanglement with Atlantic political economy.
