The Stone Circles of Wassu are still all standing in 2025! They even feature in Gambia’s tourism promotion video (“The Smiling Coast of Africa”) that is shown at Banjul airport and of course on the 50 dalasi banknote. We went there at the end of a long day of driving and sightseeing, it’s right near the main northern road to Janjanbureh. Official opening hours are 8-17, but we arrived at 6 pm and the woman selling tickets and the local guide were still there (maybe my guide had phoned ahead to announce our arrival). The site clearly is more equipped for receiving tourists than when Solivagant visited in 1984. There’s a small exhibition but the main findings are at the National Museum in Banjul.

The Wassu site has 11 separate stone circles, all considered to be burial sites for individuals or groups of people. It has the tallest stone (2.59m) of all components. They are dated to 750 AD, while the dating of the Senegalese sister site Sine-Ngayene after recent archaeological research has been pushed back as far as 950 BCE. No excavations at Wassu have been done recently, but the local guide told us that they had put in a request for funding to excavate the one circle that is a bit different from the rest (pictured). It has a horizontal stone slab in the center of the circle. 

All standing stones now have a collection of small stones on top, added by visitors who see these as lucky charms.

We also walked to the Quarry site, which lingers on the Tentative List as an extension. There’s a narrow path through the elephant grass from the back of the group of stone circles that will lead you there in 5 minutes. You can see where they cut into the red rocks and some stones that were not deemed to be perfect enough are lying around. It’s part of a hill, so the stones used for the burial sites were just rolled down.