Archaeology of the Oyo Empire (West Africa): Chivalry, Colonies, and Household Politics in the Early Modern Period. INT 100 APPROVED

Thursday, November 14, 2024
6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.
Allendale Campus
Alumni, Community, Faculty, Staff

Guest speaker Dr. Akin Ogundiran (Northwestern University) will speak about his archaeological research in West Africa.

Between ca. 1650 and 1800, the Oyo Empire was the largest political formation in West Africa, south of the River Niger. The regional and multi-sited scope and the residential contexts of Dr. Ogundiran's archaeological research allow for a fine-scale understanding of how domesticity, gender, class, labor, technology, mobility, and the landscape together fashioned the Oyo Empire. In the process, ideas about personhood, family, and sexuality were also transformed. The archaeology of the Oyo Empire contributes to a truly global understanding of the Early Modern Period.

Dr. Akin Ogundiran is the Cardiss Collins Professor of Arts and Sciences, Professor of History, and Affiliate Professor in Anthropology and Black Studies at Northwestern University. He is also the current President of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists and past Editor-in-Chief of African Archaeological Review. His research interests focus on empire, urbanism, class, gender, household formation, and landscape history over the past 2500 years in the Yoruba World (West Africa) and the Black Atlantic, from the Early Iron Age (500 BC–AD 40) to the Early Modern Period (AD 1500-1840). His research has been supported by several institutions, including AIA-NEH, National Humanities Center, National Geographic, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and American Philosophical Society. Professor Ogundiran is the author of several award-winning publications, including Materialities of Ritual in the Black Atlantic (Indiana University Press, 2014), which won Choice’s Outstanding Academic Title in 2015, and The Yoruba: A New History (Indiana University Press, 2020), recipient of the 2022 Vinson Sutlive Book Prize and the 2022 Isaac Oluwole Delano Prize for Yoruba Studies. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a Member of the Nigerian Academy of Letters.

Dr. Ogundiran's talk will be on Grand Valley State University's Allendale Campus, at 6pm on Thursday November 14.

Location Information

Lake Ontario Hall, room 164.

Download parking map for the Allendale Campus

Contact Information

For additional information, please contact Professor Morison: [email protected]

Hosting Department, Organization, or Business

Archaeological Society of GVSU and Archaeological Institute of America

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This event was added to the calendar by Melissa Morison (morisonm@gvsu.edu) on Thursday, October 24, 2024 and was last updated on Wednesday, October 30, 2024 at 9:37 a.m.