Ceramic Technology and Social Identity in the Niger-Benue Confluence Zone: A Technological Style Approach

The Niger-Benue confluence zone of central Nigeria represents one of the most culturally complex regions of the country, where the territories of dozens of ethnolinguistic communities intersect and where archaeological evidence for long-term cultural interaction, population movement, and technological exchange is potentially rich but analytically underexplored. This dissertation applies a technological style framework to ceramic assemblages from fourteen sites in the confluence zone, developing an original model of the relationship between ceramic technological choices, social identity, and inter-community interaction that contributes to theoretical debates in the archaeology of style, ethnicity, and social boundaries. The study combines low-power use-wear microscopy, petrographic thin-section analysis, portable XRF elemental characterization, and attribute-based typological classification to characterize the full chaîne opératoire of ceramic production at each site, generating a technology-style matrix that captures both shared and site-specific technological practices. Statistical analysis of the matrix using hierarchical cluster analysis and principal components analysis reveals groupings that partially, but imperfectly, align with ethnolinguistic community boundaries documented in the ethnographic record, supporting a model in which ceramic technological tradition is socially inherited but permeable to inter-community learning and innovation. The analytical results are theoretically interpreted using practice theory, arguing that ceramic technology constitutes a domain of habitual practice in which social identity is reproduced and negotiated through daily productive choices rather than consciously indexed. The dissertation makes an original empirical contribution to confluence zone archaeology and an original theoretical contribution to style theory in the archaeology of complex mosaic societies. Keywords: ceramic technology, social identity, Niger-Benue confluence, technological style, practice theory.