The Early Medieval Slave Trade of the Central Sahel: Archaeological and Historical Considerations

Abstract

The trans-Atlantic trade that brought slaves from the African continent to the New World has generated such interest and controversy that it has tended to obscure another significant African slave trade, that which saw individuals sent across the Sahara to be sold in North Africa and Western Asia. This trans-Saharan trade was both longer-lived and, in terms of numbers eventually enslaved, demographically similar to the betterknown trans-Atlantic trade. This chapter summarizes current understandings of the trans-Saharan slave trade for the period ad 750-1500 approximately, and assesses the prospects for its archaeological recognition. A second topic will be to suggest the merits of a comparative approach considering the impact of slave trading on social and political frameworks: the argument here is that a consideration of wider themes can bring us closer to understanding roots and causes, invalidating the convenient assumption that the Atlantic slave trade was a historical curiosity which can be safely consigned to the annals of the past.