The Pulse Model: Genesis and Accommodation of Specialization in the Middle Niger
- 1 March 1993
- journal article
- prehistory of-west-african-urbanism
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in The Journal of African History
- Vol. 34 (2), 181-220
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0021853700033326
Abstract
By the mid-first millenniuma.d., Middle Niger cities 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 is an attempt to reconstruct the circumstances of environmental change and interactions among these communities that encouraged occupational specialization. The model predicts the best locations to search for evidence of early specialization, namely the several north–south trending palaeochannels of the southern Sahara. There, groups increasingly concerned with intensification of production within separate microenvironments would nevertheless have been in close contact. 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. If corporate identity can emerge in a form that discourages conflict between groups, the result might be increasingly specialized responses to climate change and to the economic and social opportunities of early urbanism. There should be no sharp discontinuity between the emerging specialization of the last millenniab.c.and the earlier clustered urbanism of cities such as Jenne-jeno. Middle Niger urbanism is an intensification of prehistoric social dynamics, not a revolutionary process.Keywords
This publication has 48 references indexed in Scilit:
- Cattle domestication in North AfricaAfrican Archaeological Review, 1986
- Subsistence patterns of the Dhar Tichitt Neolithic, MauritaniaAfrican Archaeological Review, 1985
- The early city in West Africa: towards an understandingAfrican Archaeological Review, 1984
- Human Response to Environmental Change in the Perspective of Future, Global ClimateQuaternary Research, 1983
- The Sahara in northern Mali: man and his environment between 10,000 and 3500 years bp. (Preliminary results)African Archaeological Review, 1983
- Oscillations of lake chad over the past 50,000 years: New data and new hypothesisPalaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 1982
- Dust, Clouds, Rain Types, and Climatic Variations in Tropical North AfricaQuaternary Research, 1982
- Global Maps of Lake-Level Fluctuations since 30,000 yr B.P.Quaternary Research, 1979
- Quelques gisements néolithiques du Sahara malienJournal de la Société des Africanistes, 1966
- La pêche dans le delta central du NigerJournal de la Société des Africanistes, 1949