A Yorùbá-Specified Framework for Ritual Deposition in West African Archaeology

Ritual deposition has long been recognized as an important dimension of religious practice in Yorùbá-speaking regions of southwestern Nigeria, but archaeological approaches to these deposits have relied heavily on generic models of structured deposition developed from European and Mesoamerican cases. Although these models have provided useful information, comparatively little work has examined whether their assumptions and interpretive logics adequately capture the regionally specific ritual principles through which Yorùbá practitioners generated material assemblages. This paper develops a Yorùbá specified analytic framework grounded in the concept of àṣẹ (the power-to-make-things-happen) as theorized by Abiodun, Abimbola, Olupona, Lawal, and Drewal and Mason. The framework formalizes a four process model (concentration, transfer, activation, dispersal) and integrates ethnographic insights from consultations with ritual specialists in three traditions (Ọ̀ṣun at Osogbo, Ògún at Ilé Ifẹ̀, and Ṣàngó at Ọ̀yọ́). These consultations substantively reshaped the analytic, which is presented explicitly as an author constructed synthesis rather than a Yorùbá emic taxonomy. The resulting protocol specifies both positive predictions and falsification criteria, enabling empirical differentiation between assemblages shaped by àṣẹ management practices and those predicted by alternative interpretive frameworks. Three published cases (Old Ọ̀yọ́, Obalara’s Land, and potsherd pavements) are presented as worked examples, with Old Ọ̀yọ́ serving as the lead case. Interpreted within the broader technological and ritual landscape of Yorùbá archaeology, the framework provides a baseline for future investigations of ritual practice, knowledge transmission, and regional variation in West African depositional traditions.