1 septembre 2022
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ , info:eu-repo/semantics/OpenAccess
Christian Dupuy, « Le Tilemsi et ses abords de la préhistoire à nos jours », HAL-SHS : archéologie, ID : 10670/1.xdr9c9
The Tilemsi is a long and wide depression, starting from the Algerian-Malian borders, joining the Niger at Gao, and bordered by the Adrar des Iforas and Timetrine massifs. While the ancient prehistory of this valley remains largely unknown, its recent prehistory provides some key milestones that allow us to follow the development of the agro-pastoral economy in subtropical West Africa and its consequences on the organization of society. Ancient rock art expressions make it possible to situate the beginning of livestock breeding in the region at some point between the sixth millennium and the end of the fourth millennium BC. Furthermore, the imprints of millet spikes observed on archaeological pottery reveal that this grass was gathered for food in the northern Malian Sahara in the fifth millennium BC. The cultivation of this cereal during the following millennium led to an increase in the size of the grains, and then to the acquisition of domestic characteristics in the Lower Tilemsi at the end of the third millennium BC. In parallel, the construction of enclosures with double stone facing and the building of tombs with imposing lithic superstructures attest to a level of social complexity that was already high at the turn of the fourth-third millennium BC. The development of the agropastoral economy during the first half of the second millennium B.C. is consubstantial with the appearance of specialized crafts (metallurgy, hard stone cutting, manufacture of chariots), the acquisition of exotic animals (horses, zebus), the circulation of ideas and beliefs over great distances (complex symbolic motifs and themes characteristic of the Bronze Age), and the transmission of pearl millet cultivars with a West African genetic signature as far as India. Warrior aristocracies asserted themselves through ostentation during the first millennium before aridity forced, at the end, the populations of Tilemsi to abandon their lands for regions more favored by geography and climate. From the fourth-fifth centuries AD, the liberated spaces were taken over by nomadic herders who brought with them new traditions that are illustrated by rock art: riding horses and dromedaries, carrying several javelins and wearing ample and well-covered clothing, hunting with hounds, writing short messages using a script composed of signs very similar to the Tuareg tifinagh. These combined elements attest to the attachment of the region to the Amazigh-speaking domain, before the development of Arab-Berber trans-Saharan trade. The Tilemsi valley then became a caravan route of primary importance. From the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, the merchant city of Essouk-Tadmakkat in the southwest of the Adrar des Iforas flourished. The city was abandoned in the fifteenth century for reasons that remain to be clarified.