1980s revealed that Jenné-jeno was founded ca. 250 b.c. by iron-using peoples who cultivated rice, millet, and sorghum; herded stock; and engaged in fishing and hunting (S. K. McIntosh 1995; S.K. McIntosh and R. McIntosh 1980). The deposits dating to this early period are almost six meters down from the highest part of the mound.

Careful evaluation of deposits from numerous other excavation units at Jenné-jeno and two other nearby sites provided evidence for the rapid growth of the mounds throughout the first millennium a.d. Jenné-jeno itself reached its maximum extent of over seventy-five acres by a.d. 850. Intensive surface survey of the mounds located within a four-kilometer radius of Jenné (sixty-nine in all) indicated that the majority were occupied by at least a.d. 800–1000, creating a remarkable concentration of population (10,000–27,000 people) within the integrated multisite system known as the Jenné-jeno urban complex.

Those discoveries marked the end of assumptions that urban settlements and long-distance trade in West Africa were secondary to the development of the trans-Saharan trade by North African Arabs after the ninth century. Settlement at Jenné-jeno declined after a.d. 1200, and the settlement was completely abandoned by a.d. 1400. Most of the nearby mounds followed the same pattern. Their demise was concomitant with the period of early settlement documented at Jenné, but the reasons for this shift in settlement location are not yet understood.

Susan McIntosh

See also

Africa, Sahara; Africa, Sudanic Kingdoms

References

Africanus, Leo. 1896. The History and Description of Africa. Ed. R. Brown; trans. J. Pory. 3 vols. London.

Bovill, E.W. 1968. The Golden Trade of the Moors. 2d ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Caillié, R. 1830. Travels through Central Africa to Timbuktu and across the Great Desert to Morocco: Performed in the Years 1824–1828. 2 vols. London.

Levtzion, N. 1973. Ancient Ghana and Mali. London: Methuen.

McIntosh, R., P. Sinclair, T. Togola, M. Petrén, S.K. McIntosh. 1996. “Exploratory Archaeology at Jenné and Jenné-jeno, Mali.” Sahara 8: 19–28.

McIntosh, S. K., ed. 1995. Excavations at Jenné-jeno, Hambarketolo, and Kaniana: The 1981 Season. University of California Monographs in Anthropology no. 20. Berkeley: University of California Press.

McIntosh, S. K., and R.J. McIntosh. 1980. Prehistoric Investigations in the Region of Jenné, Mali. Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology no. 2. 2 vols. Oxford: B.A.R.

Jericho

See Israel; Jordan; Kenyon, Kathleen Mary; Syro-Palestinian and Biblical Archaeology

Jerusalem

See Israel; Kenyon, Kathleen Mary; Syro-Palestinian and Biblical Archaeology

Johnny Ward’s Ranch

In late 1959 and early 1960, volunteer members of the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society carried out excavations on eleven Sundays in a period site in southern Arizona designated Ariz. EE: 5:6 in the Arizona State Museum survey system. The efforts were directed by archaeologists bernard l. fontana and J. Cameron Greenleaf, but of the fifty-eight people who volunteered their efforts, only four or five had had previous archaeological experience.

Fontana had chosen the site because he mistakenly believed it represented the adobe ruins of San Ignacio de Sonoitac, a mid-eighteenth-century mission visiting station built and administered by Jesuit missionaries before their expulsion from New Spain in 1767. Excavations and subsequent documentary research indicated the site was instead one that had been occupied between 1859 and 1903 and had served variously as a ranch for the family of Johnny Ward and other English-speaking settlers, headquarters for a mining and milling company, a house and store, and a dwelling for Chinese gardeners.

Not wanting to disappoint the volunteers