During phase 1 (2019-2022) of the Connecting Foodways project, our research activities concerned the study of ancient food traditions found in northern East Africa. Here the focus was upon the kitchens and houses from settlement sites recently excavated along the Middle Nile Valley in Sudan, including the Meroitic town of Hamadab, and from Tigray, northern Ethiopia, such as the pre-Aksumite village of Ziban Adi. These provided important detailed case studies for everyday foodways for people who lived as part of the kingdoms of Kush and Diamat. Further investigations included the food traditions of the people who lived beyond these central areas. For example, areas in Eastern Sudan, along the Gash delta and Blue Nile, and in Western Sudan in Darfur and Kordofan, identified as being regions of significant cultural transmission.

Study of the kitchen contexts and cooking pots from northern East Africa provided the basis for both regional and intra-regional comparisons of food technologies and foodstuffs. The degree of variation recorded within these, based on morphological, materials, and residue analysis, provided a means for defining specific cooking-sets comprised of a limited range of functional forms. Moreover, certain culinary traits were identified as significant marker-types for the study of wider inter-regional interaction and cultural transmission, having supra-regional distributions. These include traits such as 1) globular cooking vessels, 2) ceramic griddle plates, and exterior pottery treatments, like 3) mat-impressed surfaces.

Phase 2 (2022-2025) of the Connecting Foodways project utilises these marker-types for investigating similarly important regions of cultural transmission across north Central and West Africa, focussing on a number of case studies from central Chad, the Lake Chad region, central Nigeria, the Inner Niger Delta in Mali, and southeast Mauritania. Here the emphasis remains upon the study of handmade cooking pots from domestic contexts, as well as the use of different regional crops preferences in the production of meals. The relationship between the everyday food traditions of people living within early Iron Age complex societies, such as the Nok and Gajiganna archaeological cultures, and those living beyond or outside such entities remains a central focus of study in our analysis of cultural interaction.