2000–1000 BCE: (The Reassessment of Women’s Roles in History — Women Able to Prosper as Independent Economic Actors in West Africa Because Marriage Did Not E…

2000–1000 BCE: (The Reassessment of Women’s Roles in History — Women Able to Prosper as Independent Economic Actors in West Africa Because Marriage Did Not Entail Becoming an Economic Dependent of the Husband, the Need to Reassess Women’s Roles in History Around the World Especially in Ancient Periods, Asking How Women Acted as Innovators and Agents of Major Transitions in Material Culture Including as Primary Movers in Technological and Agricultural Innovation, Africa’s Varied Courses of Social and Economic History Offering Essential Testimony): Women were able to prosper as independent entrepreneurs in those parts of Africa because marriage, far back in history it appears, did not entail becoming an economic dependent of the husband. We need to reassess women’s roles in history around the world and, especially, to the extent possible, in ancient historical periods. How have women acted as innovators and agents of major transitions in the history of material culture? Earlier chapters of Ancient Africa provide examples of women as primary movers in technological and agricultural innovation — the inventors of ceramics, the creators of agricultural ways of life. What have been the customs and institutions in different ages in different parts of the world through which women have exerted authority and taken initiative in their societies and in their own lives? The varied courses of social and economic history across Africa offer a wide array of essential testimony on just these issues. The call to reassess is not merely academic. It is an indictment of a discipline that has treated women’s history as a subcategory, a special interest, a niche within the larger narrative of “real” history — which is to say, the history of men. Ehret insists that women’s agency is not peripheral to the main story. It is the main story, in at least half of its telling. The women who invented ceramics, who created agriculture, who controlled marriage through sororal gatekeeping, who served as queens and chiefs and independent entrepreneurs — these women are not footnotes. They are protagonists, and the history of the ancient world cannot be told without them.