The Yoruba: A New History is the first transdisciplinary study of the two-thousand-year journey of the Yoruba people, from their origins in a small corner of the Niger-Benue Confluence in present-day Nigeria to becoming one of the most populous cultural groups on the African continent.Weaving together archaeology with linguistics, environmental science with oral traditions, and material culture with mythology, Ogundiran examines the local, regional, and even global dimensions of Yoruba history. The Yoruba: A New History offers an intriguing cultural, political, economic, intellectual, and social history from ca. 300 BC to 1840. It accounts for the events, peoples, and practices, as well as the theories of knowledge, ways of being, and social valuations that shaped the Yoruba experience at different junctures of time. The result is a new framework for understanding the Yoruba past and present.

DedicationList of IllustrationsList of TablesList of AppendicesGlossary of Yorùbá wordsPrefaceAcknowledgmentI. Introduction1. Writing a New HistoryII. Birth of the Yorùbá Community of Practice, ca. 300 BC-AD 14202. The Emergence of a House Society3. Knowledge Capital and ReferentialityIII. Atrophy and Regeneration, 1400-16504. Atrophy5. Regeneration and RestorationIV. Atlantic Entanglements, 1630-18406. Merchant Capital Revolution7. Sociality of Merchant Capital8. Perennial Inequality9. A House DividedV. Conclusion10. The Past in the PresentBibliographyAppendicesIndex