Hello everyone! I am Sara Scaglia, an Italian archaeologist with a major in archaeobotany. In my life, I lived in Italy, Sweden, and Germany in pursuit of having as extensive an understanding as possible of both field (research and commercial excavations) and lab work. I am currently one of the two PhD candidates based at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain. My research within the AGRI-DRY Project focuses on human-environment interactions in the Sahara and Sahel regions over the Holocene (10,000-0 years BP). Even if the focus of this research is quite far from the topics and the geographical areas I used to work with, I was fascinated by the topic, and I applied eagerly to learn more and to contribute to this incredibly international project.
Climatic oscillations are the hallmark of the Holocene in Saharan and North Africa. Human societies adapted to shifts in resource availability through time and space by customizing their supply management techniques. Animal and plant domestication integrated with hunting-gathering practices may be a response to wild species shortages. Nevertheless, how these practices spread still requires further investigation, and modelling is the most effective method at the moment.
Due to the political situation in North Africa, my study is based on edited material that was collected into two databases: the Green Sahara and the MedAfriCarbon (Lucarini et al., 2020). Thanks to QGIS and RStudio, two open-source programmes, I could merge the databases and visualize the data on the map. The geospatial data reported in the picture are from archaeological sites, geohydrological evidence, and rock art showing the inhomogeneous pattern of data spread in the research area. This can be attributed to the archaeological priorities of the 20th and early 21st centuries, which primarily focused on specific regions of North Africa while largely overlooking extensive areas of the Sahara and Sahel, particularly in their central regions. Hence, three study areas will be selected to test the accuracy of the models. My primary supervisor, Stefano Biagetti, and I agreed on choosing the Central Sahara, the Nile Valley, and the Maghreb. During my PhD, I will utilize land change modelling to have a broader picture of to which extent aridification influenced the emergence of pastoralism and agriculture over the past millennia. Additionally, the models used may be beneficial to delineate successful plans towards aridification in modern-day and future dry areas over the globe. Comparisons with Southern Africa are included in the AGRI-DRY project as beneficial to the understanding of the past, present, and future dynamics of resource exploitation. That is why the dialogue and cooperation between doctoral candidates have been fundamental since the early stages.
The next planned steps include the introduction of an archaeobotanical proxy to the merged database to proceed with land use modelling and the AGRI-DRY Summer School at Università del Salento, Lecce (Italy) in the upcoming April. The latter event is an amazing opportunity to improve my modelling techniques and to network with my peers and other members of the project while gathering all together for the first time in person. I am willing to get fresh and brilliant feedback from my project’s presentation that can help me to improve ahead of July, when I will present at the SAfA conference the preliminary result of my doctoral project.
I hope you found this first contribution interesting. If you are looking forward to knowing more about the AGRI-DRY project stay tuned! We will be happy to share with you the updates on our research and, more broadly, the project in general.
Know more about Sara and her work here…
References:
Lucarini, G., Wilkinson, T., Crema, E. R., Palombini, A., Bevan, A., & Broodbank, C. (2020). The MedAfriCarbon Radiocarbon Database and Web Application. Archaeological Dynamics in Mediterranean Africa, ca. 9600–700 BC. Journal of Open Archaeology Data, 8. https://doi.org/10.5334/joad.60
AGRI-DRY 