ABSTRACT
Archaeologists increasingly recognise the significance of non-centralised forms of complexity and employ diverse theoretical frameworks to understand their origins and dynamics, including explorations of cooperation, communalism and egalitarian strategies in political systems. This chapter focuses on the practices and institutions by which more horizontally organised political systems were integrated in Iron Age West Africa, and in doing so, considers the material indicators of strategies employed by these communities. Kirikongo, Burkina Faso (ca. 100–1700 AD) provides an excellent case study, as the community rejected a centralised political system in the twelfth century AD and constructed a new society based upon more egalitarian principles, enabling comparison of the different political strategies in use at different times. The egalitarian socio-political structure at Kirikongo was created through the division of power rooted in ritually potent sources among multiple social groups (including new craft specialist groups) coupled with the creation of diverse cross-cutting integrative mechanisms, including economic interdependency, collective actions, shared practices, and open spatial syntax. Data from Kirikongo indicate that like the exclusionary strategies of centralised systems, non-centralised polities are actively constructed, constantly legitimised, intricately structured to avoid inequalities, and result in positive indicators of human actions that are materially identifiable in the archaeological record.
