New paper on human impact on Tigray’s landscape
The spatial relation between gully erosion and distance to settlements and footpaths, as typical areas of human interaction, with the natural environment in rural African areas is investigated.
Category: Publications EN
New publication by ‘Entangled Africa’ project ‘Routes of interaction’
The cost of human movement, whether expressed in time, effort, or distance, is a function of natural and human related variables. At the same time, human movement itself, whether on land, air or sea, causes environmental cost. We are looking into the long-term environmental relationship of this interplay. [...]
Publication: Fired brick élite locations in Kanem, Chad
One of the most intriguing problems concerning the Kanem-Borno sultanate of the central Sahel between the eighth and nineteenth centuries AD concerns its early intra-African connections. Apart from historically documented linkages with North and parts of West Africa, were there trade and other contacts with eastern regions such as Darfur, the Middle Nile Valley and areas beyond prior to the fifteenth century? [...]
Publication: Archaeological research in Tié, Chad
Presently, the most conspicuous material vestiges known are the ruins of fired-brick elite locations, some of which are demonstrably associated with the Kanem-Borno Sultanate and dated to the period 11th-14th centuries AD. Amongst those, the place named Tié stands out due to a number of particular attributes. [...]
Publication: Studying Northern Kordofan by remote sensing
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the planned work of the InterLINK project in North Kordofan had to be spontaneously cancelled in spring 2020. Instead, research focused on remote sensing of the area. [...]
Publication: Late Holocene vegetation changes in the Chad Basin, Nigeria
The development of cultivated landscapes under the influence of food production has decisively shaped the composition and appearance of West African savannas as present today. With trees and shrubs forming an important constituent of such landscapes, and its composition characterizing different types of land-use, anthracology is a tool particularly well suited to trace developments and changes through human exploitation of the landscape. [...]
Contribution on Central Sudan by C. Magnavita in the Oxford Handbook of Islamic Archaeology
In view of the paucity of research, the Islamic archaeology of the Central Sudan and Sahel remains one of the less well known of the African continent. While this also applies to the material legacy of the past six centuries, it is particularly sites and remains from the early period of Islamic influence in the region that are virtually unexplored. [...]
Report on the archaeological and geological science research in Ethiopia by the project ‘Routes of Interaction’, 2018-2019
The project »Routes of Interaction« is a collaboration between the Sanaa Branch of the Orient-Department, the Department of Earth Sciences – Physical Geography of the Freie Universität Berlin and the Egyptian Museum – Georg Steindorff, Leipzig University. Embedded into the SPP Programme of the DFG »Entangled Africa«, field work has been carried out since 2018. [...]
Report of the ‘Connecting Foodways’ project on 2019s work in Sudan
Focusing on past culinary practices, the “Connecting Foodways” project explores cross-cultural connections and technological transmission between the Middle Nile Valley and central and eastern Africa during the early Iron Age (ca. 1000 BC – 1000 AD). It is one of twelve projects of the DFG Priority Program “Entangled Africa” (SPP 2143), which explores inner-African relations and thereby develops new perspectives for joint archaeological research in Africa. [...]
Publication: Iron Age agricultural reliance in the Central African rainforest
The emergence of agriculture in Central Africa has previously been associated with the migration of Bantu-speaking populations during an anthropogenic or climate-driven ‘opening’ of the rainforest. [...]