Power and permanence in precolonial Africa: a case study from the central Sahel

This paper draws on a long-standing area of academic debate – archaeological manifestations of social complexity – with reference to the specific case of the Tsotsebaki Hausa of Niger. Tsotsebaki dynastic lists record a bewildering array of locations for early rulers of the polity, a situation which find parallels in oral and historical records of many parts of Africa. The present discussion links observations made through archaeological and oral tradition research in Niger with European and African parallels and with recent theoretical reconsiderations of the nature of power and of urbanism.