A fluid past: Socio‐hydrological systems of the West African Sahel across the long durée

Abstract

Since the end of the last glacial period (~12.4 ka bp) the African continent has undergone no less than 30 dramatic climate transitions. West Africa in particular witnessed abrupt climate oscillations-between humid optima and hyper-aridity-which lasted anywhere between 10 and 15 years and a millennium. Such unpredictable shifts forced local communities to develop a suite of risk-buffering strategies that could withstand climate change on various scales. Both archeological and palaeoclimatic research has begun to reveal how these societies engaged with their erratic environment over the span of the Holocene. The adoption of pastoral lifeways, the domestication of cereal crops, and the emergence of monumentality or urbanism may indeed be viewed through the lens of environmental risk-buffering strategies. Yet, these developments proceeded along trajectories that belie traditional narratives rooted in environmental determinism and underscore the unique cultural processes at play, which do not conform to presumptions imported from outside regions. Revised narratives, therefore, must take into account cultural perceptions of climate change, and the localized nature of landscape.

A Systematic Review of Spatial-Temporal Scale Issues in Sociohydrology

“…The most common water component was water resource management (39%; Table 3). This was not surprising because water resource management was defined very broadly Elshafei et al, 2014Elshafei et al, , 2016Yaeger et al, 2014;Asbjornsen et al, 2015;Liu et al, 2015;Padowski et al, 2015;Srinivasan, 2015;Zhou et al, 2015;Bark et al, 2016;Pramana and Ertsen, 2016;Farjad et al, 2017;Gonzales and Ajami, 2017;Haeffner et al, 2017;Khan et al, 2017;Kotir et al, 2017;Re et al, 2017;Roobavannan et al, 2017Roobavannan et al, , 2020Schifman et al, 2017;Wei et al, 2017;Cobourn et al, 2018;Garcia and Islam, 2018;Iwanaga et al, 2018;Keys and Wang-Erlandsson, 2018;Lei et al, 2018;Lu et al, 2018Lu et al, , 2021Vollmer et al, 2018;Bojórquez-Tapia et al, 2019;Caprario and Finotti, 2019;Coutros, 2019;Hou et al, 2019;Huber et al, 2019;Li et al, 2019;Liu, 2019;Luo and Zuo, 2019;Ogilvie et al, 2019;Parolari and Manoli, 2019;Pouladi et al, 2019;Sun et al, 2019;Tian et al, 2019;…”

“…In most cases, maps were used in addition historical or archeological studies (e.g., Nüsser et al, 2012;Baker et al, 2015;Chang and Huang, 2015;Caprario and Finotti, 2019;Cian et al, 2021;Gholizadeh Sarabi et al, 2021). Where historical and archaeological data was only used in 10% of the primary studies, by showing how human and water systems co-evolve over time, from ancient Rome (Di to West Africa (Coutros, 2019) to the Tarim River basin in Western China and beyond (Liu et al, 2014).…”