Tichitt Excavation Radiocarbon Dates and Pottery Analysis

Fourteen AMS radiocarbon dates from 1968 excavations at Dhar Tichitt, Mauritania, provide refined chronology for the Tichitt Tradition. The dataset includes new descriptive details from pottery restudy, including petrographic and organic residue analysis. Data originates from Patrick Munson's foundational work and was reanalyzed by Susan Keech McIntosh.

Use Cases

• Calibrate site chronologies using the 14 AMS radiocarbon dates to refine the timeline of the Tichitt Tradition.
• Analyze time-sensitive changes in pottery characteristics described in the restudy to track cultural evolution.
• Correlate petrographic analysis results with organic residue analysis data to infer pottery function and technology.
• Reassess settlement growth models by integrating the new chronological precision with existing excavation data.

Strengths

• Provides 14 high-precision AMS radiocarbon dates, a significant increase over previous conventional dates.
• Includes multi-faceted pottery analysis with petrographic and organic residue data.
• Data is derived from foundational 1968 excavations at a dozen sites within a 40-km study area.
• Published under a permissive CC BY 4.0 license for reuse.

Limitations

• The dataset is small in scale, consisting of a single 823.1 KB PDF file without a structured tabular format.
• Sample data and column definitions are unavailable, limiting immediate machine-readability.
• Temporal coverage is specific to archaeological samples and may not represent continuous time series.

Provenance

Source

Figshare, authored by Susan Keech McIntosh.

Collection Method

Reanalysis of curated charcoal samples and pottery from Patrick Munson's 1968 excavations.

Time Range

Archaeological period after 2000 BC, specific to the Tichitt Tradition.

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-03-23.

Geography

Dhar Tichitt, a 40-km-long study area in Mauritania, West Africa.