Témoins africains de crises sanitaires ?

Abstract

In 2018, the idea emerged that the plague pandemic, well documented in the Mediterranean world in the fourteenth century, might also have impacted sub-Saharan Africa. Human remains from this period, exhumed in two major centers in the Gulf of Guinea (Benin City and Ile-Ife) since the 1960s, are currently being re-evaluated. To what extent do these bones testify or not to health crises in West Africa during the Middle Ages? Our reflection is based on the analysis (in progress) of the bones of some forty individuals found in a mass grave in Benin City in 1961, of the very partial bone and dental remains of a child unearthed at the site of Oduduwa College in Ile-Ife in 2019, and of descriptions from various excavation reports conducted in this city The stratigraphic position of the skeletons, the organization of the bodies and the traces observed on certain bones are all new elements taken into consideration to nourish reflection on the possible impact of the plague, but also on funerary practices and the treatment of bodies in tropical Africa before the opening of Atlantic trade.