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Tichitt-Walata and Tagant Settlements of SUDANIC AFRICA

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EARLY HISTORY

Before 2000 BC, what is today the southern Sahara was inhabited by significant numbers of herders and farmers. On the rocky promontories of the Tichitt-Walata (Birou) and Tagant Plateaus in modern day Mauritania, they built what are considered among the earliest known civilizations in western Africa. Composed of more than 400 stone masonry settlements, with clear street layouts, some settlements had massive surrounding walls while others were less fortified. In a deteriorating environment, where arable land and pasturage were at a premium, the population grew and relatively large-scale political organizations emerged - factors which no doubt explain the homogeneity of architecture, settlement patterns, and material culture (e.g., lithic and ceramic traditions). This agro-pastoral society traded in jewelry and semi-precious stones from distant parts of the Sahara and Sahel, while crafts, hunting, and fishing were also important economic pursuits. Their elites built funerary monuments for themselves over a period extending from 4000 to 1000 BC.

Beginning around 600 BC, Tichitt-Walata entered a period of crisis which continued until 300 BC, although some settlements and cultural elements survived until the 4th century AD. The decline of architectural and material culture is evident in the archaeological record and settlement pattern, as towns were abandoned and villages became concealed and fortified. Increasingly arid conditions certainly contributed to this situation, as well as military forays from the east and north - which disrupted the regional centers’ control over trade routes - and political/military upheavals internally.

In the words of one archaeologist, the abandoned sites they left behind represent “a great wealth of rather spectacular prehistoric ruins” and “perhaps the most remarkable group of Neolithic settlements in the world” (Mauny, 1971).

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REFERENCED SOURCES

Mauny, R. (1971), “The Western Sudan” in Shinnie: 66-87.

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Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Kintampo Complex

Between 4000 and 3500 BP dessication forced a southerly expansion of the Sahel, sweeping along with it the pastoral and agro-pastoral populations accustomed to living in a semi-arid landscape. In places these groups expanded further south, perhaps only seasonally, coming into contact with indigenous hunter-gatherers and incipient vegeculturalists. The best documented record of such contacts, come from the Savannah of modern Ghana and the sites of Ntereso, Kintampo, and Daboya[.]

There, ‘Saharan’ Kintampo complex projectile points, stone arm rings, beads, small stone axes and livestock appear in the midst of indigenous Punpun Phase microlithic quartz assemblages around 3500 BP. Subsequently, it would appear that instead of population replacement there was a type of population fusion, as the Kintampo complex quickly adapted to the subsistence potentials of the savanna-forest ecotone[.]

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"The Kintampo Archaeological Research Project is the first venture conducted under the auspices of the academic collaboration established between the Department of Archaeology, University of Ghana (UG) and the Institute of Archaeology, University College London (UCL). KARP is a field-based project designed around two separate areas of research, encompassing the Late Stone Age (LSA) Punpun (hunter-gatherers) and Kintampo Cultures (agro-pastoralists) and development and change within iron metallurgical technology in the region. "

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Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged |