A ritual geology : gold and subterranean knowledge in Savannah West Africa

Set against the ongoing corporate enclosure of West Africa’s goldfields, A Ritual Geology tells the untold history of one of the world’s oldest indigenous gold mining industries: Francophone West Africa’s orpaillage . Establishing African miners as producers of subterranean knowledge, Robyn d’Avignon uncovers a dynamic “ritual geology” of techniques and cosmological engagements with the earth developed by agrarian residents of gold-bearing rocks in savanna West Africa. Colonial and corporate exploration geology in the region was built upon the ritual knowledge, gold discoveries, and skilled labor of African miners even as states racialized African mining as archaic, criminal, and pagan. Spanning the medieval and imperial past to the postcolonial present, d’Avignon weaves together long-term ethnographic and oral historical work in southeastern Senegal with archival and archeological evidence from Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, and Mali. A Ritual Geology introduces transnational geological formations as a new regional framework for African studies, environmental history, and anthropology. "One of the first accounts of the politics of geological research in colonial and post-colonial Africa, Ritual Geology models a new regional approach to African history and ethnography centered on geology. Rooted in the goldfields of Senegal, A Ritual Geology carries the reader across the goldfields of Guinea, Mali, Cote d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso from the medieval past into the present-day. Weaving together archival and ethnographic work among geologists, bureaucrats, artisanal miners, politicians, and ritual authorities, Robyn d'Avignon centers African orpailleurs as intellectual actors, upending narratives that treat miners in the global south as workers and victims of land alienation. Across these periods, A Ritual Geology presents sustained accounts of the central role of African mining expertise in geological exploration in colonial and post-colonial Africa and importantly shows the dependence of industrial mining on practices and knowledge developed by African orpailleurs"-- Provided by publisher Cover Contents Acknowledgments Orthographic Notes Abbreviations Introduction. Geology and West African History 1. A Tale of Two Miners in Tinkoto, Senegal, 2014 2. West Africa’s Ritual Geology, 800–1900 3. Making Customary Mining in French West Africa 4. Colonial Geology and African Gold Discoveries 5. Mineral Mapping and the Global Cold War in Sénégal Oriental 6. A West African Language of Subterranean Rights 7. Race, Islam, and Ethnicity in the Pits Conclusion. Subterranean Granaries Glossary Notes Bibliography Index A B C E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z Robyn d'Avignon tells the history of West Africa's centuries-old indigenous gold mining industries and its shared practices, prohibitions, and cosmological engagements.