Dogon People -- The Bandiagara Escarpment: Archaeology and Prehistory

Dogon People -- The Bandiagara Escarpment: Archaeology and Prehistory

The Long Archaeological Record

The Bandiagara Escarpment has been continuously or recurrently inhabited for thousands of years before the Dogon arrived. The archaeological record documents a layered human occupation that provides context for the Dogon's cultural position at the end of a long sequence.

Early Occupation: Palaeolithic and Neolithic

Stone tools from the Middle Stone Age (approximately 150,000-30,000 years ago) have been found in the Bandiagara region, indicating that the escarpment and surrounding area were used by early human populations during this period. Neolithic tools and pottery suggesting settled or semi-settled agricultural communities are present from approximately 3,000-2,000 BC.

These early occupations predate the Dogon by millennia and may predate even the Tellem. The escarpment's combination of defensible position, water sources from seasonal streams, and adjacent agricultural land on the plateau above and the plain below made it attractive for human settlement across multiple cultures.

The Toloy Culture

The earliest named culture specifically associated with the escarpment is the Toloy, dated to approximately 3rd-2nd century BC. Toloy sites are characterised by a specific pottery style and are found primarily in the rock shelter and cave environments of the lower escarpment. The Toloy are not directly ancestral to the Dogon but represent a pre-existing cultural stratum that the Dogon later settled over.

The Tellem

The Tellem (whose name means "we found them" in Dogon -- reflecting the Dogon discovery of the earlier culture's remains) occupied the escarpment from approximately the 10th to 14th centuries CE. They are the people who built the cliff-face granaries and burial sites whose impossibly high positions remain one of the escarpment's most discussed mysteries.

Tellem material culture includes:

• Textiles -- some of the oldest preserved woven fabric in West Africa
• Iron implements -- suggesting knowledge of iron smelting
• Wooden figurines with characteristics distinct from Dogon art
• The cliff-face burial chambers containing hundreds of human remains

The Tellem Cliff Access Problem

The Tellem granaries and burial chambers are perched in cliff-face niches at heights -- sometimes 100-200 feet above any accessible path -- that are difficult to explain using conventional climbing techniques. The proposed explanations include:

• Use of rope ladders or scaffolding that has not survived
• Gradual geological change that has removed formerly accessible ledges
• Water-carrying animals or climbing techniques now lost

None of these explanations has been definitively confirmed. The Tellem cliff access problem is one of the lesser-known but more concrete mysteries associated with the escarpment.

Transition to the Dogon

The Dogon arrived at the escarpment approximately in the 13th-15th centuries CE, finding the Tellem in residence or finding their recently abandoned sites. Oral traditions suggest the transition was not entirely peaceful, though the specific details are unclear. The Dogon absorbed some Tellem people and knowledge, including possibly some elements of the Tellem ritual system, before the Tellem as a distinct cultural entity disappeared from the record.