Being and Becoming Hausa

Hausa society in West Africa has attracted researchers' attention for decades, and has featured in the historical record for at least 500 years. Yet, no clear picture is available of the historical trajectories that underpin Hausa ethnogenesis. This book addresses this gap, deploying interdisciplinary approaches to revisit questions to which single disciplines have given only partial answers, often due to the paucity of written sources for early periods of Hausa history. Contributors draw from the disciplines of anthropology, linguistics, archaeology, and social and economic history to enquire into how a `Hausa' identity took shape and what have been its changing material and cultural manifestations. The result is a compelling overview of one of the most iconic groups of modern West Africa.

Anne Haour is a Lecturer in the Arts & Archaeology of Africa at the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom. An archaeologist, she has written on the West African past and developed theoretical questions in several publications, including Rulers, warriors, traders, clerics: the central Sohel and the North Sea, AD 800-1500 (Oxford, 2007).
Benedetta Rossi is RCUK Fellow at the School of History of the University of Liverpool. Her work focuses on the historical anthropology of Hausa and Tuareg societies in Niger and Northern Nigeria. She has published on development, migration, and slavery, and is the editor of Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories (Liverpool, 2009).