First excavations at Kansala, last capital of the Kaabu Kingdom (Guinea-Bissau)

Kansala is a large and complex site, whose study has only begun. While the results of this first excavation season are still preliminary, some important elements can already be discerned. Firstly, the elder identifications of the different parts of the site (gunpowder house, royal area, noble fort) appear to be correct and consistent with the archaeological evidence. Secondly, the site is much larger in size than any other Kaabu town studied so far. Thirdly, Kansala presents a very unusual form of urbanism, reminiscent in some ways of Jenne-Jeno's 'cluster city' (McIntosh 1999), but in a highly stratified state society. Kansala's centre (of power, if not necessarily its geographical one) was Muñiniƞ, the royal fortress, which was surrounded by other forts, each representing a different province, all separated by empty buffer areas. This physical separation of the different regional powers could be a reflection of Kaabu's federal structure, in which the provinces preserved a substantial degree of independence, and three of them took turns to rule. Finally, we don't know if this rotational system preceded the transfer of power to Kansala or whether it was established simultaneously as the new capital, but the site's structure documented so far suggests a planned establishment resulting from a conscious political act, rather than an organic gradual development. While thanks to this project Kansala has finally left the land of myth and become a documented historical reality, our understanding of its past is still blurry. We hope the full analysis of this season's results as well as further future work will provide more certainties and details about this extraordinary site.