Semi-permanent foragers in North Africa – An archaeological perspective

This chapter takes into consideration the archaeological indicators and vestiges of past human adaptational skills, settlement organizations, technologies, and economies in relation to the existing natural environments of the last foragers in North and West Africa. These populations were semi-permanent hunter-fisher-gatherers living in aridity-stricken environments between approximately 10,000 and 7000 years ago. Also at that time, social, cultural and economic transformations were partly determined by the changes of the natural environment, and partly led to environmental changes, as is highlighted by the crucial role that water had. Instead of offering a blunt description of the manifold sites and cultural complexes associated with the last foragers in North and West Africa, it is more useful to present a selection of case studies based on recent archaeological investigations in the Middle Nile Valley in Upper Nubia, Sudan and in the Tenere desert, in the Southern Sahara, Niger, where semi-sedentism became the successful solution for foragers in both the Nile Valley and the Sahara desert, although it was performed with different strategies.