Annex 14C: Cultural Context for West Africa and Guinea - Rio Tinto ...

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14C.2 Detailed Cultural Chronology (1) The following overview of cultural history and prehistory in West Africa was developed from standard published sources as part of the desk study for the cultural heritage assessment. It provides a context for understanding and evaluating archaeological sites present in the study area. Archaeological sites and historic monuments of the described prehistoric and historic periods are the tangible record of human developments and as such have both universal scientific and cultural value. Cultural Heritage sites are also sometimes associated with intangible aspects of Guinea’s traditional cultures and thus may hold deep significance to the local people. The following cultural chronology is divided into two broad periods: Prehistoric (200 000 BC – AD 1000) and Historic (AD 1000 – Present). This division reflects the significant changes that occurred around AD 1000 with the rise of the Ghana Empire (sub-Saharan Africa’s first empire), the influence of Islam, the appearance of detailed historical texts, and the general inclusion of West Africa into the global arena through European and Mediterranean trade networks. 14C.2.1 Prehistoric Periods: 200 000 BC – AD 1 000 14C.2.1.1 Early Stone Age (ESA): 200 000 – 100 000 BC This is the time period of the expansion of Homo erectus out of South and East Africa to other points on the globe, including West Africa. Remains from early Homo erectus are composed purely of stone tool technologies. Acheulian stone tools, which become wide-spread during the ESA, are found in fairly high densities in the western Sahara and are found in small numbers across West Africa. Plant and animal remains from these sites suggest a grassland / scattered woodland habitat (2) . Sites such as El Beyyed in Mauritania, with thousands of stone bi-face tools, indicate that favourable Saharan climates may have supported stable populations over a long period of time. Oldowan lithics have been identified at a scatter of sites from the present forest region in Nigeria to the Sahara. At Yapei in Northern Ghana a number of pebble-choppers have been found which may suggest habitation dating to the Oldowan Period (ca. 2.5-1.5 m.y.ago (3) ). During this period, human societies probably practiced a range of scavenging and hunting / gathering activities. Population numbers were likely quite small. South of the Sahara, there are few ESA sites and none are known in Liberia, Sierra Leone, or in Lowland Ivory Coast or Guinea (4) Sites in Senegal (5) and southeastern Ghana and Togo (6) contain possible remains from the ESA. The best known area with ESA remains in western sub-Saharan Africa is the Jos Plateau in central Nigeria where hundreds of bifaces were discovered as a result of tin mining in alluvial deposits (7) . Overall, there is a low potential for the Project encountering ESA sites in Guinea. 14C.2.1.2 Middle Stone Age (MSA): 100 000 – 30 000 BC Much like the ESA, most of the archaeological evidence for this period is found in the western Sahara. MSA remains are also identifiable by their specific stone tool technologies. Two types of stone tool technologies exist during the MSA: Mousterian and Aterian. These technologies are quite similar, most likely contemporary, and probably represent slight variations in hunting and other subsistence activities (8) . The (1) French or Anglo-American archaeologists who have worked in West Africa have employed different terminologies. This document uses the Anglo-American terminology. (2) Camps, G. (1974) Les Civilisations Pre-historiques de l'Afrique du Nord et du, Sahara. Paris: Doin (3) Swartz, B. K. (1972) An analysis and evaluation of the Yapei Pebble Tool industry, Ghana. Int. J. Afr. Hist. Stud. Notes Doc. 2:265- 70 (4) Swartz, B. K. (1980) The status of Guinea Coast paleoarchaeological knowledge as seen from Legon. See Ref. 15, pp. 37- 40 (5) Descamps, C. (1978) Etat des connaiss-ances sur le Paleolithique au Senegal. Presented at Colloq. Assoc. Ouest-Afr Archaeol., 2nd, Bamako (6) Davies, 0. (1967) West Africa Before the Europeans. London: Methuen (7) Shaw, C. T. (1978) Nigeria. Its Archaeology and Early History. London: Thames & Hudson (8) Clark, J. D. (1982) The cultures of the Middle Palaeolithic / Middle Stone Age. See Ref. 48, pp. 248-340 Simandou SEIA Volume III Port Annex 14C 14C-2
differentiation of these tools is significant because it represents an early human innovation in West Africa as societies begin to diversify their toolsets to exploit a wider variety of environments and resources. MSA tools have been located in Nigeria (1) and Northern Cameroon (2) , but in secondary deposits, which makes them difficult to date. Better documented studies from southern Ivory Coast near Abidjan present unique deposits of MSA tools which provide important information about the diversification of the early toolsets used by West African people. MSA sites have a slightly higher potential of being uncovered in Guinea than ESA sites. However, these sites still pose an overall low potential risk of being found in the study area. 14C.2.1.3 Late Stone Age (LSA): 30 000 – 500 BC As in the previous periods, most of the known LSA sites are located in the Western Sahara. This period is significant archaeologically because it is the first period in West Africa where knowledge of the presence of humans is no longer based solely on stone tools; in this era, wide-spread rock art appears in the subcontinent (3) . The earliest part of the LSA (30 000 – 8 000 BC) is known as the pre-ceramic LSA. At around 20 000 BC, West Africa entered into a hyper-arid climatic period in which most of the population in West Africa would have probably lived south of 11 degrees north (4) , an area which includes Guinea. Between 10 000 and 8 000 BC, humid conditions returned. Archaeological traces are quite rare during the pre-ceramic LSA. The ceramic LSA (8 000 – 500 BC) witnesses a significant increase in recognised sites in West Africa. The earliest use of pottery in West Africa coincides with a humid period in the eighth and seventh millennia BC when now extinct Saharan lakes reached their highest Holocene levels. The earliest known examples of the ceramic LSA occur in the western Sahara along valleys or dry riverbeds, known as wadis in the central plateau (5) . The archaeologist’s reliance on stone tools persists, with the addition of grinding stones thought to be used for the processing of wild grains, a sure precursor to the later indigenous development of agriculture around 2 000 BC. High quantities of bone harpoons in the lower western Sahara near Timbuktu point to specialised fishing activities. Evidence for herding of Barbary sheep also occurs by 8 000 BC and domestic cattle appear sometime between 5 000 and 2 500 BC, pointing to an ever increasing trend in specialised subsistence (6) . The development of cattle husbandry required large amounts of water and so seasonal movement of populations became a necessary aspect in the lives of early West Africans (7) . Beginning around 2 500 BC, West Africa entered into another extremely arid period in which many previously inhabited sites were abandoned, and those that remained tended to be located near permanent water sources such as rivers and near plateaus containing seasonal pools. During this period, the ancestors of the Ghana Empire in southern Mauritania, known as the Tichitt Tradition, developed a highly resilient society of cliff dwelling cities with lowland resource gathering camps. Closer to Guinea, coastal sites from Mauritania, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Ghana during the LSA possess massive arca shell middens created between 4 500 and 1 500 BC. The best known of these sites are Tintan on the southern Mauritanian coast (8) and Gao Lagoon in Ghana (9) . Looking inward from the (1) Allsworth-Jones, P. (1980) - The Middle Stone Age industry from Zenabi, northern Nigeria. See Ref. 1, pp. 244-47; Allsworth-Jones, P. 1980. The Middle Stone Age north of the Jos Plateau: a preliminary report on the finds and their context. West Afr. J. Archaeol. 10: (2) Marliac, A. (1973) Prospection archeologique au Cameroun. Cah. ORSTOM (Ser. Sci. Hum.) 10:47-114 (3) Mori, F. (1974) The earliest Saharan rock engravings. Antiquity 48:87-92 (4) See: S. and R. McIntosh. (1983) Current Directions in West African Prehistory. Annual Review of Anthropology. Vol 12 Pp. 215- 258. (5) Maitre, J. P. (1976) Contribution' al a pre-histoire recente de l'Ahaggar dans son context Saharien. Bull. Inst. Fondam. Afr. Noire Ser. B 38:46, 716-89 (6) Barich, B. (1974) La serie stratigraphica dell'uadi Ti-n-Torha. Origini 8:7-182 (7) Clark, J. D. (1980) Human population and cultural adaptations in the Sahara and Nile during prehistoric times. In The Sahara and the Nile, ed. M. A. Williams, H. Faure, pp. 527-82. Rotterdam: Bal-kema (8) Petit-Maire, N. (1979) Cardre ecologique et peuplement humain: le littoral ouest-Saharien depuis 10,000 ans. Anthropolo-gie 83:69-82 (9) Calvocoressi, D., David, N. (1979) A new survey of radiocarbon and thermo-luminescence dates for West Africa. J. Afr. Hist. 20:1- 29 Simandou SEIA Volume III Port Annex 14C 14C-3
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