44

This article explores the pioneer frontier situation created by gold diggers in West Africa. Since the 1980s, a wave of gold digging and panning, linked to the development of new deposits or revival of old extraction sites, has provided the opportunity to observe the emergence of a culture of itinerant gold-digger camps. Depending on the state of resources, the gold-diggers and the associated traders move from site to site, continually establishing new camps, transporting and reproducing the standards and regulations of a particular community, adapting partly to local conditions. This type of frontier is characterised by rapid changes in the local economy, high spatial and social mobility of participants and often conflict-ridden relations gold-diggers have with the central government and neighbouring rural societies. The article also discusses the specific character of these frontiers of gold-exploitation in comparison with those associated with agrarian colonisation.