century and shows frequent building up and tearing down processes. This could be correlated to the extensive settlement of this area maybe by domestic slaves beginning in the eighteenth century. Quartier Bambara was a segregated settlement, which suggests domestic slavery rather than exportation. The maps of this settlement has segregated boundary lines that eventually, by the mid-eighteenth century, were shown to be reduced. Found in the center of the island, Bambara was inhabited by the Bambara people. The Bambara people had an unfavorable stereotype; found in the mainland of Senegal and Mali, the Bambara were known for being excellent slaves. Brought to Gorée by the French, the Bambara people were set to build roads, forts and houses. These buildings (, , and ), made of stone or brick, contrasted with the structures built by the Africans made of straw and mud. This contrast aided in the segregation and status separation between the Africans and the European inhabitants and followed the common association that masonry was a European influence. However, the construction of these architectural buildings were most likely built by the slaves, and without floor plans, as indicated by the haphazard city layout and irregular angles in the rooms. Settlement analysis demonstrates the possibility that with time, the masters' and the enslaved peoples' statuses evened out enough to work and live side by side on the island by the second half of the eighteenth century. Disputing Gorée as a major trading post for slaves In the 1990s a debate ensued on the veracity of the Gorée slave trade as narrated by the conservator . In an article, published in the French newspaper Le Monde, Emmanuel de Roux challenged Ndiaye's repeated claims that Gorée, at the so-called "Maison des Esclaves", was an important slave depot (which was largely based on the false interpretations of French visitors in the 18–19th century and afterwards). De Roux based his critique on the works of the researchers Abdoulaye Camara and Father Joseph-Roger de Benoist. According to historical accounts, no more than 500 slaves per year were traded there, a trickle in comparison to the scale of the slave trade along the coasts of modern-day Benin, Guinee and Angola: in total 4–5% (or around 500 000) of the slaves were shipped from Senegal to the Americas, whereas the remaining 11.5 million enslaved Africans came from the other (West) African shores. Ndiaye's graphic descriptions of the conditions