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Jeremiah McCall

, help gratefully appreciated. Tl;dr I'm working on a first pass at learning a few things about Medieval Mali social organization. Reading a Gale Database source that talks about "clans" in society. Says clans often had an assigned/traditional occupation. I can't do more research using "clan" so I'm guessing that's not a standard term. Can anyone point me to some more useful terminology (ad even sources?!?!?) for these , maybe, occupational social groups ?????

hey #ancientHistory and #medievalHistory and #archaeology folks, can any of you help @gamingthepast with a question about social organization and terminology in #medieval #Mali

@gamingthepast Are these clans as in family units à la Scotland, or more like guilds in Continental Europe?

(I don't have a background in history, I'm just curious.)

@kechpaja So I haven't gotten any hits from experts but continued research suggests that Mali and SOnghai empires had caste-like systems of groups with assigned occupations. Whether English writing experts have a term for that I still do not know. So more like a guild, though the particular source I was looking at seemed to use "clan" to describe both kinds you mention