| Summary: | <p>This doctoral thesis investigates the prehistoric and medieval archaeological record of southeastern Mauritania (c. 2,000 BC to AD 1,100). The highlands of southeastern Mauritania present an extraordinary archaeological record for documenting the emergence, consolidation, and reorganisation of cultural dynamics. A remote sensing approach represents the most viable research methodology, politically and logistically, for this study. My work integrates quantitative methods and transdisciplinary theoretical developments to characterize and assess diachronic cultural trends in terms of regional settlement dynamics, the nature of funerary landscapes, and supra-regional connectivity. The results include the identification and spatial distribution mapping of >9,000 funerary tumuli and 1,140 settlements belonging to the Tichitt Tradition, many of which were previously unpublished or undocumented.</p>
<p>The Tichitt Tradition represents the growth and consolidation of a thriving agropastoral economy based on cattle-keeping and pearl millet (<i>Pennisetum glaucum</i>) cultivation throughout during the second millennium BC, structured around extensive, drystone settlements. I interpret these Late Holocene cultural dynamics through the lens of Complex Adaptive Systems, unfolding within the cultural milieu of pre-colonial African polities. The expansion of Tichitt Tradition communities was characterized a conservative but decentralized reproduction of material and ideological forms leading to high systemic coherence, conforming to Kopytoff’s Internal African Model. From the first millennium BC, Tichitt Tradition communities witnessed a drastic release and reorganisation of settlement patterns amidst severe aridification trends and the arrival of Lybico-Berber groups. This scenario led to migration outflows and the formation of interstitial communities with greater adaptive creativity, reflected in a greater diversity of settlement styles and the syncretism of pottery traditions described by Kevin MacDonald. The interplay between concepts of spatial and socio-political centrality and liminality—illustrated by the shifting trends of funerary monument clustering in relation to settlement centers—highlights issues of translocal resilience and landscape memorialisation among agropastoral communities in dryland ecosystems.</p>
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