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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The Pulse Model: Genesis and Accommodation of Specialization in the Middle Niger
Author:McIntosh, Roderick J.ISNI
Year:1993
Periodical:The Journal of African History
Volume:34
Issue:1
Pages:181-220
Language:English
Geographic term:Mali
Subjects:migration
Stone Age
prehistory
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Anthropology and Archaeology
History and Exploration
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/182426
Abstract:By the mid-first millennium AD, Middle Niger cities (Mali) took the form of many separate mounds clustered together. Many of these mounds may have been settlements of specialists. This distinctive city form may have had its origin in segmented, but articulated, Late Stone Age communities in the southern Sahara. The pulse model presented in this article is an attempt to reconstruct the circumstances of environmental change and interactions among these communities that encouraged occupational specialization. The model is a hypothetical alternative to the usual model of linear migrations of Late Stone Age peoples south out of the Sahara due to late Holocene desiccation. It predicts the best locations to search for evidence of early specialization, namely the several north-south trending palaeochannels of the southern Sahara. Climate shifts over the past several millennia create a 'pulse' of population movements, or shifts of ecological adaptations, along these long corridors. However, adaptation to climate change and stress incompletely explains the emergence of specialization. Tradition, myths, legends and material reinforcements of divisions between present-day ethnic and artisan groups in the Middle Niger suggest the ways in which corporate identity may have been constructed and maintained in the very distant past. Notes, ref., sum.
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