Under the direction of Dr. Susan McIntosh, Mr. Ibrahima Thiaw will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. He will focus on a ca. 50 kilometer-long segment of the Falemme River Valley in Senegal and conduct both archaeological survey and excavation. Although economically marginal today, in the past the region had important trade links with both Northern Africa and the Atlantic coast. The research is designed to recover information on changes in subsistence, technology, trade and material culture over the last thousand years. Mr. Thiaw will conduct an extensive foot survey of the study area to recover reliable data on the number, chronology and location of archaeological sites to determine distribution, chronological relationships and functional variability. In addition he will carry out controlled stratigraphic excavation at three second millennium sites discovered in the course of a previous reconnaissance. Recovered local and imported artifacts and paleoeconomic data will be combined with information on context and chronology to permit the establishment of a regional chronological sequence and to provide insight into change through time in subsistence economy, technology and participation in trade networks. The research is directed at two important anthropological questions. The first concerns the boundary between history and prehistory. One school contends that prehistoric cultures functioned as basically independent agencies unaffected by larger scale geographic interactions and can be studied as isolated units. Only with the onset of history did this situation significantly change. Thus, according to this argument, there is a clear divide between historic and prehistoric periods and it is extremely difficult to use historic patterns to project back into the prehistoric past. Another group of anthropologists sees the prehistoric period as changing and dynamic and not significantly different than its later historic counterpart. Because Mr. Thiaw's research will encompass significant periods on both sides of this gap, he will be able to examine this issue directly. Secondly, Mr. Thiaw's research will also provide important information on the rise of complex societies in sub-Saharan Africa and help to determine the extent to which trans-Saharan trade played a role in the rise of African kingdoms. This research is important for several reasons. It will provide data of interest to many archaeologists. It will contribute significantly to the development of archaeological methodology and will assist in the training of a promising young scientist.
