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Hi Chris, It would not have occurred to me to associate the Dogon Culture (although it is in Mali) with the archaeological situations that cluster near the Niger River, that reportedly span ca. CE 500 to "1400"--that were essentially (or they became) areas of Arabian contact and the establishment of enclaves, near such places as Jenne, Timbuktu, and Gao. I have thought of the Dogons as being distinctly different. And I would not expect the Niger River digs to include Dogon material culture (except possibly in micro amounts). In other words, I would not look for Dogon beads among those we know from Jenne and other Niger River (NR) sites. However, I know next to nothing about how/where Dogon beads are/have been acquired. I have seen one exposition on the NR sites, purporting that stone beads (those imported from India, that became well-known from 1983, when all these beads first appeared in the Western marketplaces) were recovered at the earlier levels--suggesting these predated many or most of the glass beads, that would have been parallel with Arabian pursuits and within the somewhat later Islamic Period. [As I recall, the short article I viewed was in National Geographic. But I would have to verify this.] In addition, my take on the idea that the period of occupation spanned ca. CE 500 to 1400, can be challenged by my observation that included in the corpus of beads, are Venetian specimens that would date from as late as the 16th and 17th Cs. Of course, I am not an archaeologist, and I can only report my observations, from having viewed a lot of "Jenne beads"--as these appeared in the American marketplace. More, shortly. All rights reserved by Bead Collector Network and its users |
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