traditions of the earlier Nok culture. Mouhoun Bend At Mouhoun Bend, Burkina Faso, people dwelled in a community of residences that housed multiple families in the second quarter of the 1st millennium BCE, which may have also been part of a pre-existing marketplace system of trade (e.g., salt) and technology transfer between agricultural communities (e.g., Jenne-Jeno, Kintampo, Rim) throughout West Africa that persisted from the 2nd millennium BCE to the early 1st millennium CE. In addition to farming undomesticated crops and maintaining domesticated animals, the people of Mouhoun Bend engaged in hunting and fishing as well as iron, salt, and pottery production. The funerary culture of the Mouhoun Bend people included ceremonial placement of food and material goods in pits and concave surfaces as well as the development of earth structures. Djenné-Djenno The civilization of Djenné-Djenno was located in the Niger River valley in Mali and is considered to be among the oldest urbanized centres and the best-known archaeological sites in Sub-Saharan Africa. The site is located about away from the modern town of Djenné and is believed to have been involved in long-distance trade and possibly the domestication of African rice. The site is believed to exceed , but this is yet to be confirmed from extensive survey work. With the help of archaeological excavations, mainly led by Susan and Roderick McIntosh, the site is known to have been occupied from 250 BCE to 900 CE. The city is believed to have been abandoned and moved to its current location due to the spread of Islam and the building of the Great Mosque of Djenné. Previously, it was assumed that advanced trade networks and complex societies did not exist in the region until the arrival of traders from Southwest Asia. However, sites such as Djenné-Djenno disprove this, showing that these traditions flourished in West Africa long before then. Towns similar to Djenné-Jeno also developed at the site of Dia, also in Mali along the Niger River, from around 900 BC. Considerable commonalities, absent in modern North African cultures, are present and able to be found between Round Head paintings and modern Sub-Saharan African cultures. Modern Saharan ceramics are viewed as having clear likenesses with the oldest ceramics found in Djenné-Djenno, which have been dated to 250 BCE. The egalitarian civilization of Djenné-Djenno was likely established by the Mande progenitors of the Bozo people, which spanned from 3rd century BCE