Presentation
After agriculture, iron metallurgy profoundly revolutionised the organisational, economic and technological patterns of human communities. Its widespread use had a lasting impact on land and territories. Although this principle is now accepted, its scale, chronology and impact on the environment and landscapes are still largely unknown throughout the world, and particularly in Africa. Our project places Man-Environment relations in their historical context by studying two major iron and steel districts – Bassar (Togo) and Mono (Benin) – located in different geographical areas. Its retrospective approach to the environment will provide a better understanding of human practices and the responsiveness of human beings to climatic and environmental challenges.
In this scientific context, Giorgia Ricci’s thesis aims to renew the chronological framework of metallurgical activity in Bassar country between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, thanks to the archaeomagnetic dating of several dozen low furnaces. By synthesising the dates obtained using Bayesian modelling, we will be able to reconstruct the temporal evolution of metallurgical activity in the Bassar region at both site and regional levels. These results will be cross-referenced with existing geomorphological, ethno-graphical and historical data, in order to determine the contribution of metallurgy to local environmental changes and its relationship with the profound socio-cultural changes observed in West Africa over the last 5 centuries.
C. Robion-Brunner (PI), G. Ricci, G. Hervé, A. Garnier, A. Van Toer, C. Wandres, LMC14, A. Foucher, O. Evrard
PhD in the framework of the project
The interdisciplinary OBTAAIN project is funding a doctoral grant for Giorgia Ricci, who was an intern at LSCE in 2022-2023 (beginning of October 2023; dir.: C. Robion-Brunner, TRACES, Toulouse; co-director: G. Hervé, LSCE). G. Hervé, LSCE).
As part of this PhD, we (G. Ricci, A. Van Toer, G. Hervé) carried out two weeks of fieldwork in October 2023 in the Bandjeli district of Togo. New blast furnaces were collected for archaeomagnetic dating at the main site of Tchogma 1 (Fig. 1). The exhaustive survey of this site also enabled preparations to be made for the autumn 2024 campaign, when excavations will be carried out in addition to archaeomagnetic sampling. A reduction experiment on a reconstituted blast furnace will also be carried out during this mission.