Late Holocene Paleoclimate Reconstruction and Long-Term Human Response in the Region of Timbuktu, Mali (West Africa): Interdisciplinary collaboration in the study of Lake Faguibine

Late Holocene Paleoclimate Reconstruction and Long-Term Human Response in the Region of Timbuktu, Mali (West Africa): Interdisciplinary collaboration in the study of Lake Faguibine and the drought-afflicted populationsR. McIntosh1, R. Smith2,

D. Park3 , C. Warren4, P. Douglas5 , P. Coutros6

Grant Proposal for:

Yale Climate and Energy Institute, Interdisciplinary Grants in Climate and Energy Studies

Amount Applied for: $98,890

Dates of Proposed Research: October 30th 2009 - October 29th 2011

Yale University R. McIntosh and R. Smith

Late Holocene Paleoclimate Reconstruction and Long-Term Human Response in the Region of Timbuktu, Mali (West Africa)

1 Department of Anthropology, Yale University

2 Center for Earth Observation, Yale University

3 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Anthropology, Yale University

4 Ph.D. Student, Department of Geology, Yale University

5 Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Geology, Yale University

6 M.A Student, Council on Archaeological Studies, Yale University

Figure 1: Map showing the places and regions mentioned in the text.

SUMMARY: Modern Timbuktu and its hinterlands, with its degraded arid environment, volatile climate, rapid population growth, and landscape deflation, has been continuously ravaged by the Sahel drought, beginning in the late 1960’s with no clear signs that it has yet ended. Resource sustainability has severely diminished in the Sahel, and cities such as Timbuktu are at the precipitous edge of social collapse, and not for the first time. Historic Timbuktu was founded in the 12th century AD by industrious tribes of Tuareg traders. From thence it underwent expansion, eventually resulting in social collapse at the end of the 17th century AD. In recent decades, the population at Timbuktu has grown exponentially, a result of governmental policy aimed at forcefully resettling desert tribes, which has only further increased the environmental degradation and social conflict in the region. However, the human history in the Timbuktu region is deeper than the historical Tuareg settlements. Based upon recent archaeological work by project PI R. McIntosh in 1984, and project collaborator D. Park in 2008, it is now clear that Timbuktu’s prehistoric urbanism was far greater than it ever was during the historic period. Beginning somewhere around 500 BC and collapsing before AD 1000, prehistoric Timbuktu’s evolution was one of the most sustainable social epics in the ancient world; its demise also the most dramatic example of social collapse. “Causations” of social collapse and regional abandonment in the Sahel are often ascribed to severe drought conditions. However, rarely do interpretations from the Sahel extend beyond simplistic and reductionist correlations between arid conditions and social collapse. Perhaps the most overlooked aspects of human response to climate change are all the severe climate anomalies that occurred during the lifespan of the civilization that did not cause collapse. Herein lies the central question of the proposed research: over the long-term, how have certain human responses to climate change in arid regions facilitated social success (i.e. the creation of successful social institutions of climate response), while other human responses to such biophysical stresses created the eventual conditions leading to social collapse (inadequate or ill-informed social institutions)? To answer this question, three main data-sets will be investigated: 1) the past five thousand years of late Holocene climate change in the Timbuktu region; 2) the concurrent human experience preserved at Timbuktu, which also extends back about five thousand years; and 3) a remote sensing study of modern changes to the regional environment and changes in subsistence and settlement patterns. The immediacy of such pluralistic research programs is well supported by the observation that arid environments are most at risk from human induced climate change. There have been several UNDP funded project investigating land degradation in the Sahel. Presently, the US State Department Millennium Challenge Corporation is pumping $461 million over 5 years into trying to make the Malian Sahara green (Congressional Research Service 2007: 32) – but all these efforts ignore the pertinent lessons for today that can only be provided by archaeology and earth science. A rare but successful collaboration between the aforementioned academic fields has already been carried out in the South West Asia Project (SWAP) headed by project PI. R. Smith and Frank Hole of Yale Anthropology. The present proposal will: 1) contribute to late Holocene climate studies; and 2) offer promising applications to contemporary issues of subsistence, security and landscape erosion, all of which has direct repercussions on global dynamics. While many projects interested in human response to climate change are limited to the recent development of satellite imagery, one which includes long-term studies of human society, in addition to climate study and remote sensing, has the ability to construct more robust hypotheses which can be tested at multiple time scales in various periods. Yale stands to gain a competitive advantage in the long-term study of human response to climate change. Scientists in archaeology or earth sciences, while sometimes utilizing one another’s research to help illuminate observations in their own fields, rarely directly collaborate on large-scale projects. This practice limits the overall resolution on both the archaeological and earth science interpretations on the manners in which humans respond successfully, or poorly, to climate change. Projects, such as the one presently under review, are in need of seed funding to bridge the gap between archaeology and earth sciences since each field generally has specific funding requirements that do not include direct collaboration between the two fields. Yale’s reputation for strong interdisciplinary research can only be bolstered by further integrating the departments of Geology, The Center for Earth Observation, and Anthropology. Project PI R. Smith’s SWAP study has set a precedent at Yale for such pluralistic efforts aimed at mitigating climate induced stress on populations living in arid environments.


Late Holocene Paleoclimate Reconstruction and Long-Term Human Response in the Region of Timbuktu, Mali (West Africa) 1

1. INTRODUCTION This interdisciplinary proposal seeks to integrate climatological, remote sensing, geomorphological and archaeological research into a cohesive study of long-term climate change over the past 5000 years at the border between the Sahara and the Sahel at Timbuktu, which is part of the Middle Niger hydraulic system (McIntosh 1998, 2005a; Webb 1995). Understanding how humans have responded to Late Holocene climates in this region, to their long-term trends and abrupt excursions, will provide insight into the types of social institutions employed by the local populations that sought effectively to deal with the unpredictability of their physical world. The Timbuktu region has been chosen as a case study to research human response to late Holocene climate change for a number of reasons. We now understand that highly dense populations and an original urban civilization emerged in the first or even second millennium BC in this 170,000 km2 arid-lands floodplain without influence or stimulation from the Mediterranean or Egypt. The multiple urban societies we are only now discovering and excavating thrived, despite an overall decline in conditions, until a few centuries ago. However, there has been virtually no high-resolution climate research in the area, and in fact, there have been no lake core studies in the Middle Niger region, or indeed throughout the western Sahel. The targeted waterbody, Lake Faguibine, is a closed basin lake with no fluvial outflow. Faguibine, which is one of the largest lakes in Africa (measuring around 125 square kilometers in area), is located 60 km west of Timbuktu. Since the mid 1990’s, Lake Faguibine, once a major regional center of agriculture and aquaculture, has suffered a major drop in water levels. We believe that Faguibine is highly responsive to both fluctuations in the water volume of the Niger River, reflecting precipitation falling on the rainforest zone, far up river, and also geomorphological processes. Lake level at Faguibine is less affected by local rainfall patterns. This interpretation is derived from the observation that although local precipitation amounts at Timbuktu have increased since the late 1990’s, the Niger River has continued to remain low during the winter flooding season, which is compounded by the observation that landscape erosion and the silting of secondary waterways limit the northern reach of the Niger floods. The modern and future implications of continuing droughts in the Sahel are of immediate concern since there is potential for heightened international conflict over scarce water resources in arid environments (Starr 1991; Kolars 1993). However, understanding historical processes of human response to climate change provides insight into plausible social actions that can be implemented to mitigate population stresses caused by future long-term dry episodes (Rosen 2007:179-80). Understanding human response to climate change has been a recent focus of many archaeologists, earth scientists and various international organizations, and it is believed that such an understanding can come from a interdisciplinary and diachronic study spanning numerous episodes of climate variations and of human social response to those variations (McIntosh et al. 2000). 2. INTEGRATION BETWEEN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND EARTH SCIENCES: The study of historical ecology, sustainability and resilience in deep-time perspective Historical ecology, the long-term, complex and recursive relationship between human action and environmental change, is a recent development in the global effort aimed at understanding how humans have, over the long-term, altered not just local environments, but also how we have contributed to, and not just responded to, climate change (Crumley 1994; Balée 1998; R. McIntosh and Tainter 2004:1). In the earlier literature of environmental determinism, which still persists in some cases, people were considered as passively responding to climate change. Such paradigms of reductionist thought have proven to be of little use in the higher goal of applying research results towards modern issues of climate change, social sustainability and resilience. The Timbuktu region is one such region with modern sustainability issues resulting from recent abrupt climate change and poorly organized social institutions of climate response. Abrupt climate change, defined as a change in the status of the climate system that falls far enough outside ranges tolerable for a group’s established adaptive tradition to create surprise (R. McIntosh and Tainter 2004:2), is not a recent phenomenon of the western Sahel, but rather typical of the region since the beginning of the Late Pleistocene (see Section 3 and 4c). Institutions of climate response represent the active component of perceptions and ideologies about how to respond to climate anomalies with the goal of fostering sustainability in terms of subsistence, conflict resolution and peaceful interaction. Conflict and collapse is a result of the failure of those cultural institutions to adapt to strenuous and abrupt climatic change, not a direct result of climate change.



Sustainability and resilience are central components in either the success or failure of institutions of climate response. Sustainability, defined as “...maintaining, or fostering the development of, the systemic contexts that produce the goods, services, and amenities that people need or value, at an acceptable cost, for as long as they are needed or valued” (Allen et al. 2003:26), can only be achieved in high-risk environments, such as the Sahel, if social institutions of climate response are highly resilient. Resilience, defined as “...the ability of a system to adjust its configuration and function under disturbance” (R. McIntosh and Tainter 2004:4), is directly related to the development-anthropological literature of risk management (Raynaut 1997). Resilience activities related to risk management during periods of abrupt climate change include: mobility, diversification, intensification, specialization, storage, exchange, and reciprocity (Redman 2005). If institutions of climate response enact responsive methods of resilience, then social sustainability is possible even in the most stressful and chaotic of climates. We can state this with certainty since recent archaeological research in the Timbuktu region presents us with the physical remains of a massive and long-lived prehistoric urbanism which persisted in one of the most difficult and unpredictable regions in the world. Shulka (1995:44) states of the western Sahel that: “There is no other region of the globe of this size for which spatially and seasonally averaged climatic anomalies have shown such persistence”. However, despite a largely unpredictable Sahelian climate, the massive prehistoric urban society of the Timbuktu region persisted for around 1500 years (500 BC-AD 1000), longer than many of the better-known Old World civilizations. Yet, the prehistoric urbanism in Timbuktu did collapse, replaced by the mid second millennium AD with much simpler, shorter lived, and less regionally hierarchical settlement patterns, which in turn also collapsed. With this in mind, the interdisciplinary team asks the central problem-based research question: over the long-term, how have certain human responses to climate change in arid regions facilitated social success (i.e. the creation of successful social institutions of sustainability), while other human responses to such biophysical stresses created the eventual conditions leading to social collapse (inadequate or ill-informed social institutions)? To begin answering this question for the western Sahel it is necessary to implement the various methodologies presented below. William Ruddman (2003), a leading scientist in paleoclimate circles, has extended the term “anthropogenic era” to include not only industrial-era human activities that influenced the climate but also the expansion of agriculture beginning around 8000 BP, which correlates with anomalous increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at that time, and intensifying rice cultivation around 5000 BP, which correlates with increases in methane. These are trends in greenhouse gas increases, Ruddman claims, that cannot be explained by natural forcing mechanisms. Rather they can be understood if archaeological research is taken into account. Indeed, the anthropocene has caught on in the serious scientific press (ex. Nature 2003), and it is generally believed now that humans have been influencing both local and global climate for millennia. Ecologists and archaeologists have drawn together evidence of both a long-term and large-scale human footprint on local and global climates and environments, such as the case of anthropogenic origin of the Amazonian dark earths (see Heckenberger et al. 1999, 2008; Mann 2002, 2005) and fire maintenance of the great North American prairie (Periman 2006). Relating this observation back to the region of interest, the early ancestral prehistoric populations in the Timbuktu region would have had a similar impact on their local climate that may have set up the major landscape changes to which their descendants had to adjust. Forest clearance, the anthropogenic production of grasslands or bare soil and experimentation with crop domestication (African rice, sorghum, millet, fonio) all create a regional micro climate, and at various times large-scale landscape erosion. It is well known that dust in suspension directly affects the West African monsoon cycle, and that an increasing albedo creates “heat islands” that can change climate on a sub-continental scale. The activities dictated by institutions of climate response can be detected by the archaeological sciences. Relating the physical diachronic changes in said institutions, with an appreciation of the complex interactions between humans and the biophysical world, to the variations and abrupt shifts in climate requires the earth sciences and strong collaborative research between all scientific fields involved in this proposal. The causative links between variation in human society and variation in climate can only be established with such an interdisciplinary research program. 3. LATE HOLOCENE CLIMATE DYNAMICS IN THE WESTERN SAHEL One hundred years of excellent instrumental precipitation data from the West African Sahel suggest that there are few other regions in the world of this size that present such persistence in seasonal



climate anomalies (Nicholson 1986; Shukla 1995:44). Perhaps the most notable case, although one not unique to the 20th century, was the Sahel Drought, beginning in the 1960’s and lasting several decades with no clear evidence that it has yet ended. Millions of people have been displaced from Sub-Sahara Africa as a result. Modern droughts are a direct result of a shifting West African Monsoon (WAM) cycle, and much research has been directed at understanding the 20th century forcing mechanisms controlling WAM variability. Research consensus has begun to focus upon changing sea surface temperatures (SST), whether in the eastern Atlantic or Indian Ocean, and even more poorly-understood land surface feedbacks, which are considered as possible forcing mechanisms for WAM (Charney 1975; Giannini et al. 2003; Hoerling et al. 2006; Hegerl et al. 2007; Swart 1998). Moreover, our understanding of the causal relationships for the late Holocene between SST changes, land surface feedback, and WAM for the late Holocene is unclear as high-resolution paleoclimate reconstructions are lacking for continental West Africa (Shanahan et al. 2009:337; Hegerl et al. 2007; R. McIntosh 2005b). Recent studies of lake sediments from Lake Bosumtwi in Ghana suggests that long term cyclical patterns of wet and dry episodes on multi-decadal and century scales has been a feature of WAM for the past 3000 years (Shanahan et al 2009:379). The regional patterns recorded in Lake Bosumtwi sediment cores, and also trends discerned at a lower resolution from research at Lake Chad (Brunk and Gronenborn 2004; Maley 2000), may have limited applicability to the proposed region of study (located 1200 km north of Lake Bosumtwi and even further from Lake Chad) since climate patterns are more variable in both time and space than previously assumed (Bradley 2000). 4. METHODOLOGY a. Lake coring:Lake cores collected from Lake Faguibine in Mali will be the first such cores from the western Sahel region, and will provide important and novel opportunities to reconstruct the environmental and climatic history of northwestern Africa through the late Holocene. The collection of overlapping core sections from the deepest part of Lake Faguibine, will yield a continuous record of its climatic past, during which the lake has retained water over recent droughts that are thought to have been among the most severe of the past several millennia. With present data it is unclear whether the entire lake may have dried out in the past. Still, other studies in the Sahara have had successful core recovery from dry lake beds (see Gasse 2002). We will conduct a basic bathymetric survey using a hand-held sonar depth gauge in order to locate an ideal location for coring within the lake. We plan to collect sediment to a depth of five to seven meters below the sediment-water interface. Coring will be accomplished using a modified Livingstone square-rod piston coring device, and cores will be collected and shipped in polycarbonate tubes.

Once the cores are collected they will be transported to the Limnological Research Center (LRC) at the University of Minnesota for initial description and sampling. The LRC is an National Science Foundation funded laboratory dedicated to promoting the study of limnology and paleolimnology and offers core description services free of charge. Specifically, core density and magnetic susceptibility will be measured, both to correlate overlapping core sections and to determine first-order sedimentological variability that will help to identify past environmental changes. The cores will then be split, with one half being archived and the other half sampled for geochemical and micropaleontological analysis. These analyses will include pollen and phytolith analysis, and isotopic analysis of both carbonate shells and organic compounds. Pollen analysis has long been used to assess changes in the vegetation in and around lake beds and to infer changes in climate that influence the local flora. Pollen counts will be conducted by experts in paleotropical palynology at University College, London.

a1. Organic and Isotope Geochemistry:A principal component of this study will be compound specific isotope analysis of biomarker compounds preserved in the lake sediments. Recent studies have shown that stable isotope analysis of both terrestrial and aquatic biomarkers provide important paleoenvironmental information (Eglinton and Eglinton, 2009). The hydrogen isotope (δD) composition of long-chain n-alkanes and n-alkanoic acids, which form terrestrial plant leaf waxes, has been used widely to reconstruct the isotopic signature of precipitation and infer global precipitation dynamics (Schefuss et al., 2006; Tierney et al., 2008). These proxies appear to be particularly useful in semi-arid to arid climates, such as the Sahel (Hou et al., 2008). The isotopic composition of precipitation in tropical regions is believed to be primarily controlled by precipitation amount, with precipitation becoming more enriched in drier periods (Rozanski et al., 1992). Furthermore, precipitation δD is increasingly included as



an output variable in climate models, and therefore provides a point of comparison between proxy and modeling studies of past climatic change. Meanwhile, the hydrogen isotope composition of aquatic biomarkers, namely short-chain n-alkanes and n-alkanoic acids, provide an indication of lake water δD values (Huang et al., 2004). In closed basin lakes with no fluvial outflow, such as Lake Faguibine, this parameter provides an indication of the evaporation to precipitation ratio (E/P), an important indicator of aridity (Leng and Marshall, 2004). Oxygen Isotopic signatures (δ18O) also act as indicators of aridity. The oxygen isotope signals of Lake Faguibine will be dominated by an evaporative signal as lighter isotopes of oxygen are preferentially removed during times of drying. Samples will be comparatively enriched with heavy oxygen relative to the source water standard for the region. Isotopic measurements from core samples will be used to reconstruct the hydrological history of the region and differentiate periods in which the lake was connected to a meteoric water source and periods when the lake was dry or actively dehydrating. While oxygen may also be employed as a temperature proxy, it is important to perform concurrent analyses to disintegrate signals and confirm noticeable trends (Jones, et al. 2005). Recent research into terminal desert lakes supports the application of oxygen isotopes (LanLan, et al. 2007; Bright, et al. 2004; Yadav, D. 1997). In addition to hydrogen isotope and oxygen isotope measurements, carbon isotope measurements (δ13C) of terrestrial biomarkers provide a valuable indicator of ecological change. Since C3 (trees and temperate grasses) and C4 (tropical grasses) plants have markedly different carbon isotope signatures, shifts in the carbon isotope value of leaf wax lipids indicates shifts in the relative abundance of these vegetation types. In tropical settings such as the Sahel this provides a valuable measure of shifts between tree and grass dominated ecosystems, which will complement the results of pollen and phytolith analysis (Hughen et al., 2004; Huang et al., 2001). Analysis of the distribution of a further set of biomarkers derived from soil bacteria, tetraether lipids, may provide useful indicators of changes in soil temperature, pH, and the delivery of terrestrial organic matter to the lake (Hopmans et al., 2004; Weijers et al., 2007). The interpretation of these novel proxy measurements is not well established for lacustrine settings (Damsté et al. 2009); however, comparison of the distribution of these compounds in modern lake sediments and soils in and around Lake Faguibine will aid in interpreting changes seen within the lake core. Organic and isotopic geochemical analyses will be carried out by Courtney Warren and Peter Douglas, Ph.D. candidates in Geology and Geophysics at Yale University. They have done extensive work to date using these techniques and are well prepared to utilize them for this project. Analyses will be carried out through the Pagani Biogeochemistry Laboratory and the Earth Systems Center for Stable Isotope Studies, both at Yale. Field research will occur over the course of two seasons: 1) October 30th-November 20th 2009; 2) October 30th-November 20th 2010. In the second field season another lake will be targeted, most likely Lake Debo, which is 200 km south of Faguibine and located fully within the Inland Niger Delta. Having proxy data from both regions will allow for comparison between climate patterns at different rainfall isohyets in the western Sahel. b. Remote sensing: The earliest remote sensing study in the Timbuktu region was conducted by project PI R. McIntosh and by S. McIntosh in 1984 (R. McIntosh and S. McIntosh 1993). This study utilized aerial photography in the hopes of locating and mapping archaeological sites. However, this method for site detection was abandoned due to modern dune activity preventing the accurate identification of sites. Jacobberger (1986, 1988) has conducted several studies utilizing remotely sensed images in order to map the morphology of the Inland Niger Delta and the drought related changes to the geomorphologic processes of the Timbuktu region. Since these studies, the environment around Timbuktu has seen drastic changes. Archaeological sites have been revealed due to the disappearance of vegetation, the remobilization of dunes and the overall deflation of the landscape. The continued drought has also had severe impacts on the local populations inhabiting the afflicted areas. Several large scale projects have unsuccessfully attempted to mitigate these impacts. Most notably the Office du Niger, set up by the colonial French and then overtaken by the US Department of State Millennium Challenge Corporation (R. McIntosh 1998:1-5). Their failures were due to the lack of local knowledge regarding the current hydrology and morphologic processes of the region, the extent to which humans influence and are influenced by climate change, as well as historic or contemporary social institutions of response to climate change.



Since the early 1970’s the western Sahel has experienced several severe spikes in aridity and lack of precipitation, including 1972, 1984 and 1992. Precipitation records suggest, however, that these spikes are manifestations of a larger trend towards aridity, with the 1990’s being the warmest decade on record (Bradley 2000). Although the drainage system of the Niger River has helped to buffer the region against the possibly catastrophic consequences of the multi-decadal increase in aridity, Jacobberger (1986) found that the sustained lack of precipitation has resulted in marked changes to the landscape of the region. Previous work in regions experiencing long dry spells found that sensitivity to drought is one of the most important features of a landscape (R.C. Smith and Harris 1981). The decrease in discharge of the Niger River has resulted in changes in vegetation type and density, increase aeolian erosion of soil and altered the land-atmosphere feedback system. Project PI R. Smith (2006) has conducted studies on the dynamics of land-atmosphere feedback in Europe, which will provide the basis for questions within the proposed investigation. All of these environmental changes have in turn, had a dramatic impact on the local settlement and agricultural patterns. The response of social institutions to biophysical stress may alleviate or exacerbate the already worsening conditions.

Studying modern changes over the past 10 years in regional environment, population and subsistence and settlement patterns is a multifaceted effort to establish relationships and possible patterns between human response and climate change in the western Sahel. Project PI R. Smith has conducted several investigations into the hydrology, agriculture and meteorology of semi-arid zones, most notably with his work with the South West Asia Project (SWAP) (2001, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007).

b1. Satellite Methods: The proposed investigation will focus on identifying the source of modern changes to the environment around Timbuktu and to discern the relationships of this environmental change to current and past actions of the human population. Long-term, sub-regional records of these changes will be constructed in terms of: 1) biological and physical changes in native vegetation communities; 2) changing patterns of land use/land cover, and settlement; and 3) changing aspects of land quality in relation to agriculture.

Change detection will be carried out on a seasonal and interannual basis. MODIS, ASTER and Landsat-7 imagery will be utilized based on the respective strengths of each data set. NDVI and brightness temperature data will provide a comprehensive analysis of the density of the vegetation as well as a Vegetation Condition Index (Kogan 1995). Previous work has also been done on determining the growth of land area devoted to irrigated fields using a downscaling method applied to AVHRR imagery (W. Smith et al. 1999). Change in land-cover and land-use patterns will be documented through the use of straightforward techniques of classification. Data obtained by remote sensing will be supplemented by local meteorological data, cartographic sources, aerial photography and political, agricultural and cultural data records when available.

The investigation will include the analysis of areas of heavy human modification as well as areas of minimal modern human influence. This approach will emphasize the distinction between natural and anthropogenic sources of environmental change. This distinction will also allow for the creation of models determining the human impact on, as well as the human response to biophysical stresses. These models will provide a quantitative assessment of how modern social institutions (successfully or poorly) manage said biophysical stresses. This assessment can also provide insights into how landscape dynamics may have influenced human society in more remote periods of Timbuktu’s long history. b2. Field Methods: In order to verify and enhance the data collected through the analysis of satellite images, a ground truthing campaign led by Dr. R.B. Smith will take place during the second field season. Networks of foot and vehicle traverses will cover areas of special interest, to be determined by image analysis. Data sheets will be completed for points of interest, documenting the vegetation cover, the dominant agent of erosion, and the soil type. Representative samples of soil will also be collected for chemical and textural analysis. Upon completion of the field season, the original interpretations of the satellite imagery will be updated. c. Geomorphology and Fluvial Dynamics: Archaeological studies in the Sahara have uncovered rock art depicting elephants, buffalo, antelopes and even hippopotamus hunts, dating no later that 5 ka BP (Lhote 1958; Hugot 1967; Beadle, 1982). These finds, combined with the remains of freshwater flora and fauna that can be found in many modern inland waters of tropical Africa, including mollusks (Lymnaea natalensis and Biomphalaria guadi), aquatic reptiles (Trionyx triunguis and Crocodilus niloticus) and fish (Lates niloticus) in the Arawan depression, just northwest of Timbuktu lead archaeologists to suspect that



the Sahara was not always as barren as it is today (Faure 1967, 1969). Recent remote sensing studies throughout the Sahara have confirmed the suspicions of archaeologists by revealing extensive networks of dry riverbeds, paleolakes and paleoswamps which lake Faguibine and Lake Debo are the last remnants (Jacobberger 1986, 1988). With the collaboration of archaeology, geomorphology and remote sensing, a generally agreed upon, millennial-scale climatic chronology of the western Sahel has been produced (R. McIntosh 2004).

Since the last glacial maximum (Wisconsin/Würm) the climatic evolution of the western Sahel can be divided into five key phases of abrupt and dramatic changes in environmental conditions. Corresponding to the last glacial maximum, (20-12 ka BP), the western Sahel was in the throes of a sustained period of hyper-aridity in which extensive formations of massive dunes took form. With the near total ablation of the glaciers (12.5-8 ka BP) the West African Monsoons (WAM) shifted northward resulting in the First Holocene Humid period. A short, intense dry episode (8-7 ka BP) followed, drying lakes and forming longitudinal dunes fields, severing river channels and creating isolated interdunal lakes. Between 7-4 ka BP, a break in the Mid-Holocene arid period brought about the Second Holocene Humid period, stabilizing dunes, and recharging streams and lakes. However, this weaker Second Humid period was cut short around 4 ka BP bringing an end to an era (Vernet 2002). Despite several humid interruptions, since the Late Holocene Arid period, the western Sahel has been on a course of increased aridity (de Vries and Makaske 2005).

Previous geomorphological investigations into the climatic evolution of the western Sahel have been conducted by researchers in several fields, including the morphology of the Inland Niger Delta (McIntosh 1993; Jacobberger 1988; de Vries and Makaske 2005), and large-scale, continent-wide climatic reconstructions (Street and Grove 1979). Even with these extensive studies, archaeologists are still forced to work with climate change at a millennial-scale resolution, and thus must form broad assumptions about human response to climate change during the prehistory of Timbuktu.

In collaboration with geology and remote sensing, a more refined chronology of climatic oscillations will be defined and the first detailed geomorphological map of the Timbuktu region will be created. These paleoevironmental reconstructions, will aid in the understanding of the land/water use and agricultural and settlement patterns of the ancient peoples of Timbuktu. c1. Field Methods: Over the course of this investigation, Courtney Warren and Peter Coutros will collect samples of the major land-cover types, map major landforms and dig soil pits to document the strata development. Samples will be taken back to Yale University’s Greeley Laboratory for textural and chemical analysis to determine provenance, dominant depositional force and organic composition. An annotated geomorphological map will then be generated, utilizing the field mapping and land and aerial photography.

Much like the lake coring campaign, the geomorphological survey will occur over two separate field seasons. The reason for this, as is also the case with the archaeology, is that an extensive geographical area must be covered which will take at least 4 months of cumulative field walking and feature mapping. The dates for the first geomorphological field research are November 20th - January 20th 2010. The second phase of field research is planned for November 20th - January 20th 2011. d. Archaeology: A unique aspect of this study is to include the archaeological context of the last five thousand years, a period which includes: initial human occupation, multiple complex societies and several social collapses (R. McIntosh 1998, 2005a), wide spread incipient urbanism (S. McIntosh 1997, 1999; R. McIntosh 2005a 2008), the indigenous origins and intensification of husbandry (MacDonald 1999) agriculture (Marshall and Hildebrand 2002), metallurgy (Schmidt and Childs 1995), transcontinental trade (Hunwick 2003), and major changes in ideology with the advent of Islam (Saad 1985). d1. Field Methods: Extensive survey will be focused around the Lake Faguibine region in efforts to discover sites of previous habitation, to determine their dates and to map the various settlement patterns by period. The manner in which people place themselves on the landscape often corresponds to particular land use strategies (Binford 1980). Whether or not a particular strategy proved to be successful or not during a certain period can be assessed by evaluating population density and various types of specialized industry found on the surfaces of the sites. In addition to the climate and environmental information obtained from the lake coring project, archaeological excavations also provide insights into changing conditions, namely: faunal study, macro-



botanical analysis and pollen/phytolith analysis along with the remains of activities that would have had a major impact on the surrounding environment (i.e. iron smelting, forest clearing, agriculture, hunting, pastoralism). Test excavations will target the range of settlement types for each time period of previous settlement. Such a strategy will allow for a larger understanding of how previous human activity varied over time. The archaeological field research schedule will mimic the geomorphological research schedule since both components can easily work together during their extended field research seasons. Two research seasons are needed since the area that is planned for survey and test excavation is extensive and will take around 4 cumulative months of field work. The two scientists studying the archaeology of the Faguibine region have both conducted research in the immediate area. Dr. R. McIntosh led the first archaeological survey in 1984 (R. McIntosh and S. McIntosh 1984, 1985, 1993), along with conducting more than three decades of active research further south in the Inland Niger Delta region (R. McIntosh 1998, 2005a) and in the Mema region 300 km south west of Timbuktu (R. McIntosh 2005b). D. Park has conducted both a survey and excavation season in the region (Park 2009a, 2009b, in press). d2. Laboratory Research: Laboratory work will follow each field season. Ceramic and faunal analysis will be undertaken by D. Park at Timbuktu, who has extensive experience and various publications in both techniques. Phytolyth and macro-botanical analysis will be outsourced to the Archaeobotanical Laboratory at University College London where the the samples will be studied by Dr. Phillipa Ryan, a botanical specialist, who will be able to reconstruct environmental change from changes in plant species ratios, along with looking for early signs of domestication. 4. CONCLUSIONS We have briefly described the four interrelated components of the proposed research along with explaining the modern applications of such research to social sustainability in the Timbuktu region, with larger applications to the western Sahel and to literature on arid landscape management. The Yale interdisciplinary team believes that these research components comprise the most important aspects of human response to climate change in the western Sahel which can be studied by the research tools available at Yale. Initial field work is scheduled to begin in the winter of 2009-2010, with a second field expedition in the winter of 2010-2011. Laboratory study for each field based component will follow the completion of each field season. Final results are expected to be ready by Fall semester 2011. We expect that by the second year of study the four main research components will become heavily integrated to establish causative connections between human response to climate change. The diverse backgrounds of the collaborators will facilitate a multispectral and pluralistic perspective on western Sahelian environmental and social issues. Integrating archaeological sciences and earth sciences is an approach that offers great potential to the global effort aimed at mitigating the physical and social stresses caused by increasing aridity. Furthermore, this project will contribute significantly to the education of graduate students at Yale. Much of the information gathered during the field and laboratory phases of research will be used in their dissertations. The proposed project also intends to focus on community outreach via a program of lectures and radio addresses at Timbuktu and in the capital city of Bamako. Outreach to the local scientific community is also intended. Targeting the Office du Niger, the governmental organization which deals with landscape erosion and hydrology in this region of Mali, the Yale interdisciplinary team will offer training in social sustainability as informed by the research results. Thus far the Office du Niger, first set up by the French colonialists and then forming a partnership with the State Department Millennium Challenge Corporation, has continuously not only failed to mitigate the erosion of landscape and social sustainability, but in actuality, it has more often than not made the situation worse (Lee 2006). By providing the Office du Niger with the pertinent lessons obtained from the proposed study of long-term human response to climate change derived from their own traditions which have interacted with a chaotic climate for millennia, we believe that significant progress can be achieved as local solutions are applied to local problems.



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BUDGET JUSTIFICATION

A./B./C. SALARIES, WAGES, FRINGE BENEFITSIn the interest of reducing the budget as much as possible, all members of the Yale Interdisciplinary team (i.e. Both PIs and the Graduate students) have volunteered to forgo salaries and fringe benefits for their time in the field and in the laboratory. The Malian attaché has a government mandated per diem rate.

D. EQUIPMENTAvailability of a 4-wheel drive, full-time during both field seasons is essential, both for safety in this difficult and barren landscape, and because the lake coring study and the geomorphological and archaeological surveys will cover an expansive territory that only can be traversed by vehicle. We propose to purchase one used Toyota Landcruser. The Direction Nationale du Patrimione Culturel (DNPC) does not have vehicles adequate for their own functioning, much less to hire out to research teams. Given the long term nature of the proposed research, procuring a used vehicle as the property of the Yale interdisciplinary project for its 2-year duration best serves the research by assuring transport during several extended field seasons. We have investigated the resale market for 4x4’s, such as the Toyota Landcruser (specifically made for the rugged conditions of the Sahel and Sahara and popular with local mechanics, with spare parts in adequate supply), that are regularly recycled by the multitude of NGO’s in Bamako (generally after two years of city driving). If the Yale team were to rent a vehicle for the combined period of around 6 months in the field over two years, the price at $120 a day (which is the reduced rate provided by a driver used by both McIntosh and Park in past field seasons) would cost over $25,000. If the Yale team were to purchase a vehicle, then we would expect to pay $17,000, which is a fair market price. Furthermore, our contacts at USAID and the US Embassy have agreed to help us to procure a high quality used Landcruser. PI McIntosh will make all arrangements for the vehicle purchase before arriving to Bamako. The actual purchase will be made only after a physical inspection in Bamako to determine the quality of the vehicle. At the end of the 2-year project the vehicle will be donated to the DNPC, which will greatly expand their ability to undertake future tours of threatened sites, including interdiction of looting and ethnographic theft. The vehicle would also be expected to be provided to members of the Yale interdisciplinary team during future projects. Other essential equipment needed for the field project will be provided by the Yale Department of Anthropology. Namely, a high quality Topcon Totalstation with Bluetooth interface to a Trimble Recon data-collector which also connects to the Trimble ProXT external GPS receiver with sub-centimeter accuracy possible with post-processing. In addition, Yale Anthropology will lend a Panasonic Toughbook to the field team on which is installed Pathfinder Office, TDS Survey and ArcGIS. This software suite is required for actual data processing while in the field.

E. TRAVELDomestic travel is related to some specific laboratory analysis not available at Yale. Peter Douglas will travel to the LRC Laboratory at the University of Minnesota for basic analyses and storage of half the core samples. Courtney Warren will travel to the XRF Laboratories at University of Wisconsin Madison. C. Warren will need to stay for two weeks to conduct the XRF studies. P. Douglas will need 5 days at the LRC. A per diem of $150 a day (including hotel and food) will be alloted for, along with paying for their flights out to the midwest (averaged around $395 roundtrip). They will both be traveling to the mid west in mid May 2010 and then in mid May 2011. For air travel to Mali discounted excursions rates were used in all fair calculations. As it is planned, Douglas Park (who has his own internal funding from Yale Anthropology for his flights), Courtney Warren and Peter Coutros will travel to Timbuktu both field seasons. Project PI McIntosh will travel to Mali for the geomorphology and archaeological surveys in the first season to help guide those aspects of field research. This comes out to 5 round trip tickets over two years at an averaged cost of $1,700 per ticket. Other then international flights it is necessary for members of the field team to spend time in Bamako (Mali’s capital) meeting with the Office du Niger, USAID and The Millennium Challenge Corporation to establish preliminary relations that will help with the collaboration of the Yale team’s results from the study and the actual implementation of those results in the Timbuktu region. It is also necessary to meet with aspects of the Ministry of Culture, namely the



Direction Nationale du Patrimoine Culturel, and also with the Institute Science Humaines to obtain necessary permits to carry out the field work. A subsistence rate of $50 a day for is based on previous stays in the capital. Eight days in Bamako will be enough for conducting all necessary pre-field activities. The second season will not require as much time in Bamako. The trip to Timbuktu takes two days, but we will stop over in Jenne (about half way) and stay at the Cultural Mission there for free. At Jenne we will also pick up some field equipment left over from PI McIntosh’s multiple projects conducted in the Jenne region for over 30 years.

G. OTHER DIRECT COSTS1. Material and Supplies: Camp supplies during the first year will include purchase of tables and chairs for dual-use for dinning and for the field laboratory, which will be located at the Cultural Mission in Timbuktu at no charge (this institution will also house the team members when not actively camping in the field). Mattresses, a pump action water filter, cutlery dishes, cooking pots and lockable trunks will have to be bought in Bamako (aside from the water filter which will be bought in USA). Equipment for active field camping (i.e. tents, flashlights, medical kits) during the survey and lake coring expeditions will be brought in from personal camping kits already owned by the Yale team. Bulk Provisions, those tinned, preserved or bulk items that have to be transported to the field during the field expeditions will be purchased in either Bamako or Timbuktu. Meat will be purchased in the form of goats from local goat herders. One goat costs about $40 and will last the team a week. Rice will be purchased for $40/50kg a bag. One bag of rice will last the team about 2 weeks. Charcoal can be purchased for $50/35kg a bag. One bag of charcoal is sufficient for one week. Small ingredients for sauces will cost $10 per week. Past field seasons conducted in the Timbuktu region suggest that $120 a week for bulk provisions should be sufficient for the field team. Water can be obtained from filtering water either at Timbuktu, or from water sources in and around Lake Faguibine. Gas is expected to be fairly expensive. On average, a Toyota Landcruser can travel 400 km on a tank of gas, one tank of gas costing around $100. It has been estimated that we will travel up to 10,000 km each season. Thus gas charges are expected to be around $2,500 a season. Vehicle maintenance is expected to cost around $600. We will buy a repair kit and spare parts such as a drive belt and gas pump in addition to regular oil changes. Excavation and Survey supplies can largely be recycled from past campaigns conducted at Jenne and Timbuktu. GPS and Total Station systems and field computers can be borrowed from the Yale Department of Anthropology (as has been done with past seasons at Timbuktu). However there will be certain front-end costs (and less costly top-ups in the second field season) , namely stationary and recording supplies (field notebooks, misc. office supplies, portable printer supplies, traditional hoes and trowels, brushes, rope, buckets, artifact bags, screens, etc.). Lake coring supplies will be rented from University of Minnesota Limnological Research Center facility at $200-250 a week. The lake coring campaign is over 20 days and se we expect to spend at the most $750. We will also need to purchase about 10 meters of PVC piping, which will be very inexpensive. A lake coring raft will be constructed from two local “canoes” with corrugated tin roofing lashed onto their gunwales at nominal cost.

2. Consultant Services: The only consultant service fees that will be paid is to an attaché from the Centre National de Recherch Scientifique et Technique (CNRST). The Malian government mandates that we include an attaché in our lake coring aspect of the project for reasons of government oversight. The government also mandates that we pay the attaché $14 a day, and he is expected to stay on the project for 20 days of the lake coring campaign.

6. Other: Estimates for air shipping are based on some thirty years of research in Mali by PI McIntosh. The greatest expense in shipping will be paying for exceeding the baggage limit on international flights. Air freight will be needed to send the lake core samples back to the US along with numerous soil samples from the surrounding region. Vehicle insurance represents a fixed annual fee for the second-hand, purchased field vehicle. We are expecting to spend $1600 for the entire 2 year research period. Analysis is confined to both paleoenvironmental laboratory work and AMS dating. Organic analysis will cost $100 a sample and we are planning analyzing 50 samples. Oxygen isotope will cost $20 a samples and we are planning on analyzing 100 samples. XRF will cost $40 a sample, and we are planning on analyzing 100 samples. Phytolith analysis will cost $120 a sample and we are planning on analyzing 40 samples.



Phytolith analysis will be outsourced to Dr. Phillipa Ryan at the University College London’s archaeobotany laboratory, the best facility to research west African botanical samples. AMS dating will cost upwards of $500 a sample and we are planning on submitting 6 samples. Remote Sensing costs are confined to the purchase of satellite images. An amount of $5,800 has been alloted. All costs for analyses listed above will occur twice since we are conducting the study over two field seasons.



Late Holocene Paleoclimate Reconstruction and Long-Term Human Response in the Region of Timbuktu, Mali (West Africa): Interdisciplinary collaboration in the study of Lake Faguibine

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