Tichitt‐Walata ( Dhar , Mauritania)

Abstract

During the second half of the Holocene, the Dhar (cliffs) Tichitt and Walata (southeastern Mauritania) constituted a refuge area for human populations in the increasingly arid southern Sahara, essentially between the third and first millennium bce . Besides open‐air sites in the Baten , more than 400 villages with thick dry‐stone walls were built on the edge of the Dhar . Sedentary populations practiced breeding (bovines, ovi‐caprines) and agriculture (pearl millet), which was possible thanks to the hydrological system linked to the cliff. The lithic artifacts, made with local rocks, include small and heavier tools, arrows, and an abundance of grinding equipment. Bone tools are varied but rare. Adornment is present. In the decorated round‐bottomed pottery items, the abundant vegetable temper included in the clay left impressions of domesticated Pennisetum (pearl millet). Terracotta figurines represent ovi‐caprines and bovines. On the plateau, fields enclosed by walls have soils resulting from an anthropogenic transport of sediments from the Baten to the Dhar for growing; small turriform gardens, surrounded by stones, with a filling of same nature, are reminiscent of those of the present Dogon of Mali. In this refuge area, these village communities were able to adapt, from the earliest stage of occupation, to manage resources, produce others, and store them (in jars and granaries). When anthropogenic pressure on the environment became too strong and water sources dried up, human groups left the region following the Baten toward the Dhar Tagant and Nema, west and south‐southwest extensions of these cliffs, where evidence attests to this.