The Daima Sequence and the Prehistoric Chronology of the Lake Chad Region of Nigeria

1976 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Connah
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Lake Area ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Lake Chad ◽  
Late Stone Age ◽  
Chronological Sequence

An intensive archaeological field research programme conducted between 1963 and 1969 in the Lake Chad region of Nigeria has established the outlines of a prehistoric chronological sequence for the area. The excavations at Daima form the key to this sequence which also includes excavated evidence from Bornu 38, Kursakata, Shilma, Yau, Ajere and Birnin Gazargamo together with surface information from 70 other sites. Twenty radiocarbon dates indicate settlement of the area from the end of the second millennium B.C. (or the last quarter of the second millennium if the dates are corrected to calendar years) to the sixteenth or seventeenth century A.D. Evidence of occupation earlier than the second millennium B.C. may have to be sought in the highlands south of the lake area.In the firki clay plains, south of the lake, it may be possible to trace the evolution of a Late Stone Age pastoralist economy into an Iron Age cereal cultivator economy. In the undulating sandy country, west of the lake, village settlements focused around the Yobe River seem to have developed, in response to external stimulus, the urban civilization which historical sources indicate at Birnin Gazargamo by the sixteenth century A.D. The contrasting environments designated ‘Firki’ and ‘Yobe’ had an important influence on the character of human settlement indicated by the archaeological evidence.It is suggested that the prehistory of this region merits far greater attention than it has yet received and that the presence in this area of settlement mounds, with substantial depths of deposit, offers a wonderful opportunity for large-scale excavation programmes. Further surface investigations would also be justified, however, as the writer suspects that more prehistoric sites remain to be located in the area.

Bottlenecks in the Implementation of On-Site Wastewater Treatment Plants on a Large Scale in The Netherlands

1990 ◽  
Vol 22 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 291-298
Author(s):  
Frits A. Fastenau ◽  
Jaap H. J. M. van der Graaf ◽  
Gerard Martijnse
Keyword(s):  
Wastewater Treatment ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Wastewater Treatment Plants ◽  
Housing Stock ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Domestic Wastewater ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Definition Of

More than 95 % of the total housing stock in the Netherlands is connected to central sewerage systems and in most cases the wastewater is treated biologically. As connection to central sewerage systems has reached its economic limits, interest in on-site treatment of the domestic wastewater of the remaining premises is increasing. A large scale research programme into on-site wastewater treatment up to population equivalents of 200 persons has therefore been initiated by the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Physical Planning and Environment. Intensive field-research work did establish that the technological features of most on-site biological treatment systems were satisfactory. A large scale implementation of these systems is however obstructed in different extents by problems of an organisational, financial and/or juridical nature and management difficulties. At present research is carried out to identify these bottlenecks and to analyse possible solutions. Some preliminary results are given which involve the following ‘bottlenecks':-legislation: absence of co-ordination and absence of a definition of ‘surface water';-absence of subsidies;-ownership: divisions in task-setting of Municipalities and Waterboards; divisions involved with cost-sharing;-inspection; operational control and maintenance; organisation of management;-discharge permits;-pollution levy;-sludge disposal. Final decisions and practical elaboration of policies towards on-site treatment will have to be formulated in a broad discussion with all the authorities and interest groups involved.

scholarly journals Mixture model of pottery decorations from Lake Chad Basin archaeological sites reveals ancient segregation patterns

2016 ◽  
Vol 283 (1827) ◽  
pp. 20152824
Author(s):  
John D. O'Brien ◽  
Kathryn Lin ◽  
Scott MacEachern
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Data Types ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Lake Chad ◽  
Chad Basin ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Lake Chad Basin ◽  
The Many

We present a new statistical approach to analysing an extremely common archaeological data type—potsherds—that infers the structure of cultural relationships across a set of excavation units (EUs). This method, applied to data from a set of complex, culturally heterogeneous sites around the Mandara mountains in the Lake Chad Basin, helps elucidate cultural succession through the Neolithic and Iron Age. We show how the approach can be integrated with radiocarbon dates to provide detailed portraits of cultural dynamics and deposition patterns within single EUs. In this context, the analysis supports ancient cultural segregation analogous to historical ethnolinguistic patterning in the region. We conclude with a discussion of the many possible model extensions using other archaeological data types.

scholarly journals Radiocarbon Dated Trends and Central Mediterranean Prehistory

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eóin W. Parkinson ◽  
T. Rowan McLaughlin ◽  
Carmen Esposito ◽  
Simon Stoddart ◽  
Caroline Malone
Keyword(s):  
Population Dynamics ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Anthropogenic Activity ◽  
Activity Levels ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Central Mediterranean ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates

AbstractThis paper reviews the evidence for long term trends in anthropogenic activity and population dynamics across the Holocene in the central Mediterranean and the chronology of cultural events. The evidence for this has been constituted in a database of 4608 radiocarbon dates (of which 4515 were retained for analysis following initial screening) from 1195 archaeological sites in southern France, Italy and Malta, spanning the Mesolithic to Early Iron Age periods, c. 8000 to 500 BC. We provide an overview of the settlement record for central Mediterranean prehistory and add to this an assessment of the available archaeological radiocarbon evidence in order to review the traditional narratives on the prehistory of the region. This new chronology has enabled us to identify the most significant points in time where activity levels, population dynamics and cultural change have together caused strong temporal patterning in the archaeological record. Some of these episodes were localized to one region, whereas others were part of pan-regional trends and cultural trajectories that took many centuries to play out fully, revealing prehistoric societies subject to collapse, recovery, and continuing instability over the long-term. Using the radiocarbon evidence, we model growth rates in the various regions so that the tempo of change at certain points in space and time can be identified, compared, and discussed in the context of demographic change. Using other published databases of radiocarbon data, we have drawn comparisons across the central Mediterranean to wider prehistoric Europe, and northern Africa. Finally, we include a brief response to the synchronously published but independently developed paper (Palmisano et al. in J World Prehist 34(3), 2021). While there are differences in our respective approaches, we share the general conclusions that large-scale trends can been identified through meta-analyses of the archaeological record, and these offer new perspectives on how society functioned.

Archaeology in West Africa: A Review of Recent Work and a further list of Radiocarbon Dates

1982 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. G. Sutton
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Copper Smelting ◽  
Northern Ghana ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Late Stone Age ◽  
South Central ◽  
African Populations ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Millennium

This article surveys the latest archaeological research and dating results for West Africa. For the Iron Age, recent fieldwork has been spread widely: especially noteworthy is that bearing on the history of ancient Ghana and Mali. Work on the Late Stone Age appears by contrast to have been rather patchy lately, although various palaeoecological researches continue to improve our understanding of the changing environments affecting West African populations over the last 10,000 years. In south-central Niger, moreover, remains of copper-smelting by a stone-using community are dated to around 2000 B.C. From the same region, as also from northern Ghana, comes further evidence for the inception of the Iron Age during the first millennium b.c.The article is prefaced by some critical comments on the citing and interpretation of radiocarbon datings in historical discussions, and on the meaning of ‘corrected’ and ‘calendar dates’.

New Radiocarbon Dates for Northern and Western Africa

1976 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merrick Posnansky ◽  
Roderick McIntosh
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Emotional Problem ◽  
Nile Valley ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Western Africa ◽  
Late Stone Age ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
State Of Research ◽  
Iron Working

Several significant trends are noted in the recent radiocarbon dates from North and West Africa. The early Khartoum Neolithic dates from Nabta Playa of the seventh millennium B.C. and the thermoluminescence dates from the Badarian of the sixth millennium, would appear to have redressed the balance for the time being in favour of the Nile Valley in the argument as to whether agriculture in the Nile Valley predates that in the Sahara. A more cautious approach might be to say that these dates emphasize the need for far more securely dated evidence before conclusions are drawn on this complicated, and often emotional, problem. The presence of sorghum in the first quarter of the first millennium A.D. at Jebel et Tomat provides the earliest direct evidence for this key African agricultural staple. Many interesting very late Stone Age dates have come from West Africa and indicate the contemporaneity of stone and iron using communities throughout the first millennium A.D. in certain remote areas. The dates of the Senegambia megaliths are clearly falling within the first millennium A.D. Dates for iron working in both Nigeria and Ghana are confirming that iron technology was well established by the first half of the first millennium A.D. The dates from Ife and elsewhere in Nigeria are clearly indicating that the ‘classic’ terracotta period, and also the pottery pavements, belong to the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. The state of research in North and West Africa reflects the well-known, but too often neglected, archaeological truism that researchers find what they are looking for and rarely more; the Iron Age emphasis in West Africa, and the Paleolithic-Epipaleolithic concentration in the francophone lands. Presumed general trends in these areas, particularly conclusions comparing development in North and West Africa, should be examined carefully for underlying sampling biases of an ideological as well as of a geographical nature.

scholarly journals The Fields that Outlived the Celts: The Use-histories of Later Prehistoric Field Systems (Celtic Fields orRaatakkers) in the Netherlands

2018 ◽  
Vol 84 ◽  
pp. 303-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stijn Arnoldussen
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Stable Form ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Show Evidence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Field Plots

The Celtic field research programme of Groningen University involves research excavations of Dutch Celtic fields or raatakkers: embanked field plots thought to date to the Iron Age (c. 800 calbc–12bc). In this paper, detailed attention is given to (a) the palaeoecology of raatakkers; (b) the relationship between habitation and agriculture in such systems; and (c) their dating and use-life. Counter-intuitively, it is argued that the macro-remains from crops such as barley, wheat, millet, and flax recovered from Celtic field banks represent a non-local (settlement) signal rather than document local agricultural regimes. Palynological approaches, in which a more local signal can be preserved but which also show evidence for details of the agricultural regime such as manuring strategies and fallow cycles, are argued to be more appropriate avenues to study local agricultural strategies. A discussion of the relations between habitation and agriculture shows that house sites uncovered within Dutch Celtic fields are almost invariably placed in positions partly overlapping banks. Moreover, in most cases such settlement traces appear to date to the Middle or Late Iron Age, raising the question of where the initial farmers of the Celtic fields lived, as the communities planning and first using these Celtic fields probably pre-dated the Iron Age. A critical review of existing dates and discussion of new OSL and AMS dates has shown that bank construction of Dutch Celtic fields started around the 13th–10th centuries calbcand continued into the Roman era. The chronostratigraphies preserved in the banks testify to a sustainable agricultural regime of unprecedented time-depth: centuries of continued use make the system employing raatakkers the most enduring and stable form of farming known in the history of the Netherlands.

scholarly journals The gradual transition to farming in the Lower Rhine Basin

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leendert P. Louwe Kooijmans
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
The North ◽  
Large Scale Field ◽  
Lower Rhine Basin ◽  
The Baltic

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research finances a research programme directed towards a new synthesis of the transition to farming in the Netherlands, viewed in its wider geographical context, profiting from the new wealth of data made available by modern large-scale field research. The programme encompasses various projects: a critical approach to the sitebound evidence by Luc Amkreutz, a regional approach by Bart Vanmontfort (Leuven), the first physical anthropological and isotopic study of the area by Liesbeth Smits, the acquisition and distribution of raw materials and prestigious items by Leo Verhart, and a re-evaluation of the various sources of palaeobotanical evidence from the delta district by Welmoed Out. This chapter serves as a short interim report, anticipating the synthetic volume planned for the year 2008. Comments are made especially on the seemingly parallel developments at the other end of the North German Plain in the Baltic coastal area.

scholarly journals West Central African Peoples: Survey of Radiocarbon Dates over the Past 5000 Years

Radiocarbon ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 1377-1382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Oslisly ◽  
Ilham Bentaleb ◽  
Charly Favier ◽  
Michel Fontugne ◽  
Jean François Gillet ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Democratic Republic Of Congo ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Republic Of Congo ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Geographical Patterns ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Late Stone Age ◽  
West Central

Tracing human history in west central Africa suffers from a scarcity of historical data and archaeological remains. In order to provide new insight into this problem, we reviewed 733 radiocarbon dates of archaeological sites from the end of the Late Stone Age, Neolithic Stage, and Early and Late Iron Age in Cameroon, Gabon, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Congo, and the western Democratic Republic of Congo. This review provides a spatiotemporal framework of human settlement in the forest biome. Beyond the well-known initial spread of Iron Age populations through central African forests from 2500 cal BP, it depicts the geographical patterns and links with the cultural evolution of the successive phases of human expansion from 5000 to 3000 cal BP and then from 3000 to 1600 cal BP, of the hinterland depopulation from 1350 to 860 cal BP, and of recolonization up to 500 cal BP.

Radiocarbon Dating of Aghios Antonios, Potos, and Intersite Chronological Variability in South Thasos, Greece

Radiocarbon ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 57 (5) ◽  
pp. 807-823 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yannis Maniatis ◽  
Nerantzis Nerantzis ◽  
Stratis Papadopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Northern Greece ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
The North ◽  
Chronological Sequence ◽  
Hilltop Settlement ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Early Late ◽  
Of Greece

Radiocarbon dates obtained for the coastal hilltop settlement of Aghios Antonios Potos in south Thasos are statistically treated to define the absolute chronology for the start and the end of the various habitation and cultural phases at the site. The location was first occupied during the Final Neolithic (FN) between 3800 and 3600 BC, extending this much contested phase to the lowest up to now record for Thasos and the northern Greece. The site is continuously inhabited from Early Bronze Age I until the early Late Bronze Age (LBA; 1363 BC) when it was abandoned. Comparison with other sites in Thasos and particularly with the inland site of Kastri Theologos showed that the first occupation at Aghios Antonios came soon after the abandonment of Kastri in the beginning of the 4th millennium. In fact, after the decline and abandonment of Aghios Antonios in the LBA, the site of Kastri was reinhabited, leading to the hypothesis that part of the coastal population moved inland. The presumed chronological sequence of alternate habitation between the two settlements may evoke explanations for sociocultural and/or environmental dynamics behind population movements in prehistoric Thasos. A major conclusion of the project is that the 4th millennium occupation gap attested in many sites of Greece, especially in the north, is probably bridged in south Thasos, when the data from all sites are taken together. The mobility of people in Final Neolithic south Thasos may explain the general phenomenon of limited occupational sequences in the FN of north Greece.

scholarly journals Current Manifestations of the Ethnic Identity of Transylvanian Saxons

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 46-65
Author(s):  
Tomáš Drs
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
Interethnic Relations ◽  
Evangelical Church ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Majority Culture ◽  
Future Direction ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract The study ‘Current Manifestations of the Ethnic Identity of Transylvanian Saxons’ presents this ethnic minority in Romania. Based on the theoretical concepts of T. H. Eriksen, it deals with the issues of the ethnic identity and its contemporary manifestations in the culture of Transylvanian Saxons. Information gathered during the qualitative field research make it possible to capture changes in the manifestations of the ethnic identity and the relationship between the minority and the majority culture. As a result of modernization processes and large-scale emigration, there has been a change of the group’s mentality, with traditional behaviour patterns and models of social coexistence disintegrating. The need has arisen to revise the ethnic identity of the community. The observed aspects of the ethnic identity include ethnicity and Saxon self-concept, Saxon dialect, Saxon Evangelical Church, festivities, minority education and interethnic relations. Attention is also paid to the opinions of Saxon politicians and intellectuals of the current situation of the society and its future direction.

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