IEA

Fellowship time: October 2010 to June 2011

Reseach project :

" Establishment of Proto-urban Neolithic societies in theDhar Nema, Mauritania, South East"

The recognition of the evolution of human populations in recent millennia is hampered by the perception of periods of cultural transition, unstable and variable. The project objective is to identify the foundations of urbanization which will lead to the emergence of West African historical empires and which are noticeable in the Neolithic populations in West Africa. The hilly region of Dhar Nema southeast of Mauritania has benefited from a particular water system, providing water and natural resources over the past 4 000 years, when climate dries up. Agropastoral village communities occupy large sites of housing and domestic activities as witnessed by the complex organizations and architectures of stone. The analysis of the characteristics of occupation and land use, of the exploitation of natural resources and economic and material production brings out the techno-cultural foundations of these proto-urban societies. This analysis will concern mainly two types of emblematic remains: grinding equipment in connection with the development of agriculture and materializing the occupancy of family groups on the ground, and animal bones reflecting strategies for the food supply and food production.

Biographical elements:

Helene Jousse holds a doctorate in archeology, specializing in the field of africanist archaezoology. Her doctoral thesis in 2003 at the University of Lyon 1 focuses on the faunas from the Neolithic settlement of Mali, where men colonizing the Sahara migrated southward, driven by desertification. During the two post-doctorates at the Institute of Paléoanatomie Munich and the Museum of Natural History in Vienna, she has specialized in the fauna of fish and produced a bibliographic review which analyzes all faunas in Africa since 20 000 years. Currently post-doctoral researcher attached to the Zooarchaeology Laboratory of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, she studies the relationship between people and animals in different archaeological contexts in West Africa mainly: migrations, settlement of refuge areas, symbolism, faunal paleoecology of vertebrates, development of pastoral activities, supply of the first proto-urban settlements.