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Post by Charlie Bass on Sept 21, 2010 15:03:24 GMT -5
www.diaspora.uiuc.edu/news0309/news0309-4.pdfEarly Urban Centres In West Africa By Kolawole Adekola* Abstract This article examines the diverse research views on the history of urban centres in West Africa. I focus on the characteristics of some of the past urban centres at the time of their peak populations as revealed from the archaeological record. This article concludes that the quantum of research in West Africa is insignificant relative to the vast potentials for research to be conducted there. There is a pressing need for more research to obtain a fuller understanding of the histories of these past urban centres in West Africa.
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Post by kingscorpion on Dec 12, 2010 13:43:00 GMT -5
www.diaspora.uiuc.edu/news0309/news0309-4.pdfEarly Urban Centres In West Africa By Kolawole Adekola* Abstract This article examines the diverse research views on the history of urban centres in West Africa. I focus on the characteristics of some of the past urban centres at the time of their peak populations as revealed from the archaeological record. This article concludes that the quantum of research in West Africa is insignificant relative to the vast potentials for research to be conducted there. There is a pressing need for more research to obtain a fuller understanding of the histories of these past urban centres in West Africa. Thanks! I'll add this to my growing list of academic studies.
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Post by anansi on Dec 13, 2010 6:26:30 GMT -5
This is one of the many sites in West Africa that was contemporary with pre-dynastic, archaic, and Old Kingdom Egypt. Here's an extract from an otherwise unavailable for free article by one of the subject's main scholars covering Tichitt's last phases. Coping with uncertainty: Neolithic life in the Dhar Tichitt-Walata, Mauritania, (ca. 4000–2300 BP) Augustin F.C. Holl Abstract The sandstone escarpment of the Dhar Tichitt in South-Central Mauritania was inhabited by Neolithic agropastoral communities for approximately one and half millennium during the Late Holocene, from ca. 4000 to 2300 BP. The absence of prior evidence of human settlement points to the influx of mobile herders moving away from the “drying” Sahara towards more humid lower latitudes. These herders took advantage of the peculiarities of the local geology and environment and succeeded in domesticating bulrush millet – Pennisetum sp. The emerging agropastoral subsistence complex had conflicting and/or complementary requirements depending on circumstances. In the long run, the social adjustment to the new subsistence complex, shifting site location strategies, nested settlement patterns and the rise of more encompassing polities appear to have been used to cope with climatic hazards in this relatively circumscribed area. An intense arid spell in the middle of the first millennium BC triggered the collapse of the whole Neolithic agropastoral system and the abandonment of the areas. These regions, resettled by sparse oasis-dwellers populations and iron-using communities starting from the first half of the first millennium AD, became part of the famous Ghana “empire”, the earliest state in West African history. Read more: egyptsearchreloaded.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=hist&action=display&thread=509#ixzz17zPPMERhI am a bit surprised that the file did not mention the Dhar Tichitt complex posted earlier by Al-Takruri although it did make mention of Walata
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