Mapping and Documenting Slave Raiding Routes in the Middle Belt Region, Plateau State

The history of slave raiding across Nigeria's Middle Belt during the nineteenth century represents one of the most traumatic chapters in the region's pre-colonial past, with consequences for demography, settlement geography, and material culture that remain visible in the archaeological and landscape record. This study maps and documents landscape features associated with slave raiding routes in Plateau State, drawing on oral historical testimony, colonial-era administrative reports, and field survey of defensive and refuge site features. Community interviews in six Angas and Berom villages collected accounts identifying specific escape routes, hiding places, and ritual sites associated with raiding, several of which were subsequently visited and described archaeologically. Field evidence at three localities includes rock refuge chambers with evidence of habitation including ceramics and grinding stones, defensive rock-piling along path approaches, and abandoned village sites consistent with flight-related settlement abandonment. Colonial reports from the 1900s to 1920s reference several of these features explicitly, providing a valuable historical anchor for the archaeological observations. The study frames these findings within the growing literature on memory, landscape, and trauma in African historical archaeology, arguing that slave raiding routes constitute a significant but under-recognized category of cultural heritage. It recommends that the Plateau State government incorporate this heritage into regional history education and develop a commemorative heritage trail linked to existing ecotourism infrastructure. Keywords: slave raiding, Middle Belt, landscape archaeology, Plateau State, oral history.