The excavation units at Jenné-jeno are growing deeper as we continue to unearth more material. One unit in particular gave us quite an unexpected surprise. This unit, designated as Susan's Bomujere (the local djennenké word for hope), was placed in the southern portion of the site to uncover information about the date of the large city wall which once encircled the site of Jenné-jeno.

After carefully surveying the surface material, we found row after row of large mud bricks eroing from the surface - an exposed portion of the city wall. We established a 4 meter by 2 meter excavation unit over the exposed bricks and perpendicular to the axis of the wall. This allowed us not only to expose the wall in cross-section but also permitted us to investigate the types of activities going on inside the city wall. We began digging by removing what we believed would be the top of several rows of bricks making up the foundation of the city wall. Based on previous excavations of the city wall in the northern portion of the site, we expected the city wall to extend more than a meter below the surface. However, after removing the surface layer of brick, it soon became apparent that there was no more city wall present underneath. In fact, to our surprise, resting underneath the city wall brick was the remains of a circular-shaped house with an adjoining cooking pit!

The house was filled with loose soil and fragments of mud bricks. After removing the fill we found a smooth, prepared floor and a thin layer of crépi, or plaster, still lining the interior wall. It looked like it had been applied yesterday, with the marks of fingers smoothing still present. One of the brickmakers over a thousand years ago left the imprints of his first three fingers in one of the bricks in the house wall. A cooking pit abuts against the outside of the house. It is enclosed within two small fired brick walls. The pit extends approximately 40 cm deep and was filled with charcoal, animal dung, charred fish bone, and plant material. The bright red color of the walls surrounding the pit and the abundance of charred plant and dietary remains inside attest to its function. The animal dung is used as a source of fuel.

From the inside of the pit we recovered many samples of the charred material to bring back to the U.S. for further analysis. A careful study of the organic material can give us useful information about the occupants diet and possibly the time of year, or season, the cooking pit was last used. Charcoal and other carbonized organic material can provide temporal information through radiocarbon analysis. In addition, the burned mud brick lining the cooking pit is perfect for archaeomagnetic dating, a technique which in conjunction with radiocarbon dating may tell us when the cooking pit was last used with a certainty of about 25 years!

Needless to say, though we didn't find what we expected, we uncovered some very useful information. We now know the city wall in the southern portion of the site is very poorly preserved - rather than the eight to ten stacked rows of bricks like in the northern portion of the site, what is left in the southern portion is the bottom course only! The rest of the wall appears to have toppled and eroded away. In addition, with chronological information from the cooking pit and house lying underneath, we will have a better understanding of when the wall was built.

We are looking forward to more excavation in Susan's Bomujere to discover what other interesting and unexpected things lie further beneath the city wall!