Shaqadud Archaeology Project – Questions, approaches and preliminary results of an interdisciplinary research project

0583258 - ARÚ 2024 FR eng A - Abstrakt
Pokorná, Adéla - Hošková, K. - Hošek, J. - Varadzinová, L. - Varadzin, Ladislav
Shaqadud Archaeology Project – Questions, approaches and preliminary results of an interdisciplinary research project.
10th International Workshop for African Archaeobotany. 27th-30th June 2023, Paris (France). Abstracts. Oral and poster communications. Paris: AASPE, 2023. s. 12. ISBN N.
[International Workshop for African Archaeobotany /10./. 27.06.2023-30.06.2023, Paris]
Grant ostatní: AV ČR(CZ) LQ300022002
Program: Prémie Lumina quaeruntur
Institucionální podpora: RVO:67985912
Klíčová slova: African Humid Period * hinterland savanna areas * Holocene vegetation succession * Sahel * subsistence
Obor OECD: Archaeology
https://iwaa10.sciencesconf.org/data/pages/Program_IWAA_2023_final_5.pdf

The climatic amelioration after the last ice age labelled as the African Humid Period (AHP, ~14,700–4200 cal BP) allowed expansion of vegetation, animals, and people into vast barren regions of Africa, including the Sahelo-Saharan region. Later, during the later AHP, North Africa experienced a progressive climatic deterioration and a succession of arid-climate ecosystems. The Shaqadud Archaeology Project focuses on the Holocene development of hinterland savanna areas, i.e., the areas away from rivers and lakes. They lack aquatic resources as well as natural buffers against dry climatic oscillations. In prehistory, hinterlands could have occupied no less than ~80% of the terrestrial surface of northern Africa. However, the previous research in the Sahel has focused predominantly on riverine and lacustrine areas. Thus, it is so far unknown when the succession of savanna-type ecosystems began in the vast hinterlands, as well as how fast the changes were and what specific vegetation grew there. Shaqadud is an area of sandstone hills lying up to 80-100 km east of the Nile in Western Butana, Sudan. Shaqadud prehistoric site represents, in this context, a unique opportunity to study deep, well-preserved and stratified profiles dating back to the beginning of the Holocene. It contains relics of several successive prehistoric hunter-gatherer and early-herding cultures that were able to sustain in the area for centuries and millennia. Dozens of (extinct) freshwater springs and seeps, revealed by our expedition in 2021, were certainly of great importance for local occupation in prehistory. The relics of these springs (spring tufa and travertine deposits) constitute an excellent proxy for reconstruction of humidity and temperature conditions during the AHP.
Trvalý link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0351259