The role of mobility in Saharan archaeological research (1960-present)

ABSTRACT

Mobility is a key theme in Saharan archaeology. From early human dispersal to the spread of the ‘Neolithic’ up to trade in the historical period, the Saharan regions have been crossed throughout the ages by people, artefacts and ideas on a uniquely large scale. In this area, archaeological research has evolved over time, but climatic and environmental variability has played a major role in the interpretation of past Saharan mobility. This article offers a review of papers on the mobility issue in African archaeology, comparing data from the Sahara and the rest of Africa from 1960 to the present. The main aim is to analyse the development of research on mobility in the Sahara, highlighting its main characteristics and peculiarities and suggesting the adoption of more nuanced approaches to the study of past mobility that may pave the way for ‘alternative’— or simply more refined — reconstructions of cultural trajectories.

ABSTRAIT

La mobilité est un thème clé dans l’archéologie saharienne. Que ce soit au début de la dispersion humaine, avec la propagation du ‘Néolithique’, ou par les échanges de la période historique, les régions sahariennes ont été croisées à travers les époques par les personnes, les artefacts et les idées, et ce à une grande échelle. Dans ce domaine, la recherche archéologique a évolué au cours du temps, mais la question de la variabilité climatique et environnementale a joué un rôle majeur dans les interprétations de la mobilité saharienne de par le passé. Cette contribution passe en revue divers articles concernant la question de la mobilité en archéologie africaine, comparant les données du Sahara et du reste de l'Afrique depuis 1960 et jusqu’à présent. Le but principal est d'analyser comment s’est développée la recherche sur la mobilité au Sahara, mettant en évidence ses caractères principaux et ses particularités et appelant à l'adoption d’approches plus nuancées pour l'étude de la mobilité passée, qui pourraient ouvrir la voie à des reconstructions de trajectoires culturelles ‘alternatives’, ou tout simplement plus raffinées.

KEYWORDS:

• Sahara
• mobility
• archaeological research
• human-environment interactions

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Ceri Ashley, Alexander Antonites and Per Ditlef Fredriksen for inviting us to contribute to this special issue, as well as the two anonymous referees for their insightful suggestions for improvements. We are grateful to Alessandro Vanzetti and Carla Lancelotti for their suggestions on a previous version of this manuscript. Marina Gallinaro acknowledges the support of the Master & Back program (Regione Sardegna) and Stefano Biagetti acknowledges the support of FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF, proposal 622344 PastoralMod. MG designed the research, but the authors contributed equally to the paper.

Notes on contributors

Marina Gallinaro (PhD in African Studies 2008, Università di Napoli ‘L’Orientale’) is a Research Fellow at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’. She has conducted fieldwork activities in the central and eastern Sahara and in East Africa. Her research focuses on the emergence of herding in Africa through the analyses of the archaeological landscape in terms of settlement patterns and the density and quality of artefacts, as well as the connections between geomorphological features and different sets of archaeological data, including symbolic and ceremonial evidence.

Stefano Biagetti (PhD in African Archaeology, University College London 2012) holds a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship from the Department of Humanities, University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, where he is conducting research on the resilience of central Saharan pastoralists from historical to current times. He has participated in several research projects in the central Sahara, focused on the development of pastoralism.