432 ray a. kea
interconnections extended northwards to Saharan centers and to Mediterranean
Africa, eastwards to the Egyptian and Nubian Nile valleys, and southwards to iron-
and gold-producing fields. Can it be accounted an urban and commercial hinterland
of Mediterranean Africa?
Between the ninth and twelfth centuries the Kawkaw/Gao Kingdom was a major
power, competing with Ghana for control over the inland Niger Delta. The first cap-
ital of the kingdom, Kukiya, was founded at the eastern edge of the middle Niger
floodplain in the late first millennium ce. It might be identified with one of Ptolemy’s
cities of “Interior Libya” (Nigira metropolis, Cuphe, or Geva). A nearby cemetery
site, dated between 200 and 1000 ce, revealed graves marked by funerary stelae and
rich burial goods consisting of local and imported utilitarian and luxury pottery, large
terracotta statues (several of armed horsemen), copper and bronze jewelry, and a
second century ce bronze female Janus statuette from Cyrenaica. Luxury grave
goods were symbols of power, status, and wealth; through the Roman, Byzantine,
and Islamic periods the Kawkaw/Gao upper classes depended on regular access
to Mediterranean markets for these goods. In this regard one can refer to a pan-
Mediterranean elite consumption culture.
The second capital was a double city, located at the confluence of the Niger River
and the Tilemsi valley, probably founded in the early first millennium ce: Gao Ancien,
the royal city and a political-administrative seat, and, seven kilometers to the east, the
trading and craft center of Gao-Saney. In the early tenth century, for reasons relating
to the politics of Saharan and trans-Saharan commerce, the Kawkaw/Gao ruler moved
his royal residence from Kukiya about 140 kilometers upstream to Gao Ancien. There,
between 908 and 938, a royal palace was built, protected by a large stone castle and
surrounded by an enclosing wall with gateways. Outside the walls, archaeological
fieldwork has located the ruins of mosques, merchants’ houses, and several immense
buildings of unknown function. One tenth-century wealthy merchant’s residence was
a large stone and brick structure with glass windows; among the finds were copper
and cowry currencies, copper and iron artifacts, beads or glass, gold, semi-precious
stones, and a diverse range of goods from the Mediterranean world and beyond.
Beneath the floor of the residence was a large cache of hippopotamus ivory—ivory
being a much sought-after luxury in Egypt, North Africa, Sicily, and al-Andalus, and
one of Kawkaw/Gao’s major exports to the Mediterranean world. It is known that
ivory carvers, identified as abid (“slaves”), working in the palatine city of Madinat al-
Zahra (936–1018) outside of Cordoba, came from bilad al-Sudan. The kings of
Kawkaw/Gao maintained diplomatic and political relations with north-African and
Andalusian dynasts and it is plausible that a Kawkaw/Gao ruler sent ivory carvers to
the Umayyad caliph of Cordoba as a royal gift.
The political economy of Gao-Saney was based on a trans-regional production and
distribution network. It imported raw materials such as cullet and copper bars, turned
them into artifacts, and exported the finished product throughout the middle Niger
basin. The acquisition of these goods enhanced wealth but prized commodities were
also carriers of esoteric knowledge. Gao-Saney’s copper exports realized their recon-
dite value and social potential through local (pre-Islamic) symbolic economies. In the
1080s or 1090s a pro-Almoravid dynasty usurped power and established its royal
residence in Gao-Saney. It made Sunni Malikism the state religion. A cemetery out-
side the city contained Arabic-inscribed tombstones dating from the early-eleventh to