ABSTRACT
E xcavations at Walaldé began as part of the Middle Senegal Valley (MSV) Project, a joint e ort between IFAN (Institut Fondamentale d’Afrique Noire) and Rice University (Houston). One of the primary goals of the Middle Senegal Valley Project was to investigate the settlement chronology of the Middle Senegal oodplain and to document change through time in material culture, subsistence, technology, and trade. Research at Walaldé was undertaken by Alioune Deme in 1999 to expand on the little-known Phase I occupations and to document whether initial colonisations were made by pastoralists or agro-pastoralists and if these populations derived from one or many source area(s) (Déme 2003; Déme and McIntosh 2006). As a oodplain, the Middle Senegal Valley is characterised as a reliable water source with a varying geography that enables a diversity of subsistence approaches that, as the ndings at Walaldé suggest, might have lured early colonisers experiencing environmental stress elsewhere. Excavations revealed that Walaldé not only predates expected 1st century C.E. (Phase I) occupation but also straddles the transition from stone-to iron-based technology (ca. 800-500 B.C.E.), making it the earliest known site in the MSV oodplain. is site provides important data on early pastoralist incursions and an insight into the emergence of social complexity in a region thought to have given rise to the large-scale Takrur
polity. is chapter reports on a small number of botanical samples collected from deposits at Walaldé, providing information on subsistence practices at this early transitional site.
