This is an important archaeological study of the formation and long-term development of Kirikongo, an abandoned village located in the bend of the river Mouhoun in the north-west of Burkina Faso and presented as ancestral to present-day Bwa societies. Building on the author's doctoral thesis, it focuses on deposits of the period c.100 to 1,450 CE. Its core objective is to document the alleged trajectory of an African society experimenting with different types of social contracts, from one defined by growing inequalities and a descent-based exclusionary elite to one based on an ‘ethos of egalitarianism’. Central to the model is the proposition that the transition from one model to the other took the form of an egalitarian revolution during the twelfth century CE.

The book is divided into fifteen chapters and includes ninety-three figures. Chapters 1 to 3 outline the objectives of the project and discuss contemporary socio-political organizational diversity and previous archaeological work in the Mouhoun Bend. This is followed by a description of the techniques deployed at Kirikongo and its environmental setting in Chapters 4 and 5. Chapters 6 and 7 form the core of the volume and discuss the stratigraphy of the different units, which can be reduced to two broad phases based on the dominant colours of the deposits: ‘Yellow’ (predating mud brick) and ‘Red’ (contemporary with mud-brick structures). Chapter 7 proposes divisions of these phases into two Yellow (I and II) and three Red (I to III) sub-phases or ‘periods' on the basis of detailed descriptions of ceramic production. The definition of five pottery-based periods allows the author to reconstruct the relative chronology of the settlement's development in Chapter 8. A series of nine calibrated radiocarbon dates suggests a foundation of the earliest mound during Yellow I before 120–320 CE. There followed a transition to Yellow II from c.450 to 640 CE, and then to the Red phase in the eighth to tenth centuries CE.

Chapters 10 to 12 focus on the interpretation of the rich data collected at Kirikongo. Using the distribution of slag and potsherds at different periods and the location of furnaces associated with specific mounds, Dueppen documents a long-term, non-linear process of change from ‘individual household activities to specialized practices restricted to a single household’. He establishes that people living in the earliest established mound were able, from the end of Yellow II to the beginning of Red II, to monopolize the production of iron. By the middle of Red II (perhaps in the twelfth century), however, this elite lost control over iron smelting and smithing, which shifted to a different mound located a short distance from the rest of the settlement. In the same period, pottery, which had previously been produced in each household or mound, became a specialized craft produced in newly introduced kilns. Dueppen suggests that this shift points to the formation of specialized, endogamous groups, such as the well-documented alliances between iron-smith husbands and potter wives found in present-day Bwa societies.

Transformation during Red II also affected local economic practices. Particularly interesting is the diachronic analysis of the faunal material, showing a shift from a local economy dominated by domesticated livestock to one more reliant on hunting and poultry rearing, despite the fact that increasing aridity contributed to a ‘better general habitat for cattle’. This, according to Dueppen, can be interpreted as evidence of increased egalitarianism. Chapter 12 focuses on relatively limited mortuary evidence and is less convincing.

The remainder of the volume translates the archaeological evidence into a narrative of social change at Kirikongo and beyond. The five periods discussed in Chapters 5 to 12 are transformed into a ‘preliminary’ model of a proposed socio-political evolution: a ‘homestead period’ (100–500 CE), a transitional period to village life (c.500 CE), the ‘emergence of a village based on common descent’ (500–700 CE) evolving into ‘social ranking and centralized authority’ (700–c.1100 CE), and finally a ‘reinvention’ during a ‘twelfth-century political revolution’ that established a new order lasting from c.1100 to 1450 CE. In addition to the archaeological evidence, the argument is anchored in an impressive range of anthropological theoretical perspectives, including those developed by Susan and Roderick McIntosh about heterarchy in the Inland Niger Delta and at Jenne-Jeno. The resulting narrative stands as a unique and intriguing reconstruction of the complex trajectory of a rural community in the West African savannah over the last two millennia.

However, can we really take Kirikongo as an instance of the revolutionary triumph of egalitarianism in the savannah? A close look at the archaeological records published here shows clear evidence of deep changes at the level of a small rural community, something that is not unexpected over a period of 1,500 years. The nature of these changes suggests that communities explored, experimented with, and made choices between different models of governance, belief systems and subsistence over time. However, the revolutionary nature of such a change, although a valuable and thought-provoking working hypothesis, can hardly be demonstrated solely on the basis of the Kirikongo evidence. Too many parts are missing from the picture – for instance, evidence on the webs of alliances within the settlement, the regional historical context, and the ritual practices and beliefs – for us to surmise that change resulted from a forcible, short-term event such as the word ‘revolution’ implies.

More archaeological research into medieval communities of the Mouhoun Bend will be required – as is recognized by the author – to clarify the chronology and the nature of socio-political change in the area. Firstly, the chronology of change proposed here will need to be validated. Secondly, in the absence of a comparative dataset, the proposed projection onto a regional scale of the model developed for Kirikongo, a ‘regional egalitarian movement’, is daring. But this does not detract from the book's qualities, and I recommend it to archaeologists and historians interested in long-term socio-political developments in the Voltaic area. Although the author sometimes stretches the interpretation of available evidence, he also contributes much solid new data and stimulates fresh avenues of thought on pre-1500 West African village life.