Draft:Chalcolithic of Akjoujt

Akjoujt(Arabic: أكجوجت) is a small city in western Mauritania. It is the capital of the Inchiri region."Akjoujt" (ɑk'ʤuʤt) means 'wells'.Sustained archaeological research has been conducted in different parts of the continent from the early 1980s on. Evidence of copper and iron metallurgies is documented in the continent, in West, Central, and East Africa. Early copper metallurgies were recorded in the Akjoujt region of Mauritania and the Eghazzer basin in Niger

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Range of the Chalcolithic of Akjoujt

Discovery of the industry

The discovery of copper metallurgy in the Akjoujt region in Mauritania and the Eghazzer basin dated to the second and early first millennium BCE shook the foundation of that consensus. In all the other areas reviewed in this article, however, iron metallurgy was adopted directly by Late Stone Age mixed-farming and horticulturalist communities.

Origins of the culture

A general outline of the origins of African copper metallurgy is presented by Michael S. Bisson. Native copper was exploited for one to two millennia. “The mining and smelting of copper ore appears to have arisen independently in Asia Minor, Eastern Europe, and Egypt between 5000 and 4000 BC” . He outlines a number of elements suggesting a link between the Akjoujt copper metallurgy, Western Europe Early Bronze Age, and Phoenician North Africa. First, the large proportion of utilitarian objects tends to suggest that copper technology was introduced in the area as a package, in contrast to all cases of early metallurgy development in which status objects are dominant. Second, there are striking stylistic similarities between Mauritanian, North African, and Iberic Peninsula copper artifacts. He concludes that “. . ., the presence of more prosaic copper artifacts at the beginning of the Mauritanian sequence suggests that the technology may have its roots elsewhere.”

Debates on the date

The cases from the Eghazzer basin that point to the late third–early second millennium BCE age of copper smelting are still strongly debated. Egypt was suggested as the most likely initial source of the Eghazzer copper metallurgy: It is not inconceivable that communications, however indirect and periodic, between the Nile Valley and interior Sahara regions occurred over a long period and that the knowledge of working with metals (particularly copper) was along the numerous routes to the west, southwest and south. Iron technology may have been introduced along similar networks by the turn of the first millennium BC, although additional stimulus was provided by the new links to the northern coast.