Introduction to the Themes of Sedentarisation, Urbanisation and State Formation in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond
Year: 2020
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: This volume explores a series of linked themes that have wide relevance in world archaeology: sedentarisation, urbanisation and state formation. In this opening chapter we review some of the key background to recent debate on these themes and identify some of the Saharan particularities which complicate the application of models developed elsewhere. A dominant discourse on the Sahara throughout history has been the idea of a ‘nomad menace’, coupled with a persistent emphasis on the Sahara as largely uninhabited and uninhabitable. It is true that pastoralism has at all times been a key mode of life and mobile populations have underpinned the development of networks variously used for trade and raiding. Yet the lifestyle and inter-relations of mobile peoples of the historic Sahara, such as the Tuareg, have always been contingent to a greater or lesser extent on the existence of sedentary communities, both within the Sahara and at its fringes.
Authors: David J. Mattingly, Martin Sterry
Institutions: University of Leicester, Durham University
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W3013249320