Intra-African relations between rain forest and Mediterranean, ca. 6000 – 500 BP
The DFG Priority Programme “Entangled Africa: Inner African relations between the rainforest and the Mediterranean, around 6000 – 500 years ago” (SPP 2143) was established by the Senate of the German Research Foundation (DFG) in April 2017 for a period of 6 years.
The aim of the programme is to explore intra-African relations and networks of the last 6,000 years up to the beginning of the colonial period. The focus is on the transfer of objects and knowledge as well as the mobility of people and the mechanisms and motivations behind these processes. In close cooperation with our African partner institutions, we try to critically question national research traditions and European perspectives and to develop new perspectives for joint archaeological research in Africa.
At Frankfurt University and the Frobenius Institute there are four subprojects:
Teilprojekte im DFG Schwerpunktprogramm 2143: Entangeld Africa:
- Cultivated Landscapes. Land-use and cultural landscape development in north-hemispheric African savannas (2019-2025)
- Borrowed words and shared objects .Connecting the lower middle Niger through borrowed words and shared objects: Archaeo-linguistic network analysis and modelling of cultural entanglements between the Malian Sahara and the Nigerian forests (AD 700–1500) (2019-2025)
- The Lake Chad Region as a Crossroads: first archaeological and oral historical investigations into early Kanem-Borno and its intra-African connections (2019-2025)
- Tracing Connections. Chemical analysis of archaeological pottery as indicator of interregional contacts in Western and Saharan Africa before AD 1300 (2019-2025)
