Ecology of the past

The second part of the Mapping Ancient Africa session at the INQUA Rome congress contained eight talks. Busisiwe Hlophe (University of the Witwatersrand) kicked us off by showing us the power of looking at wood anatomy preserved in charcoal microfossils to determine the nature of past vegetation and climate. Rahab Kinyanjui (National Museums of Kenya) presented phytolith work from archaeological sites revealing a mixed woody and grassy vegetation associated with archaic Homo sapiens in Kenya.

Three talks from the Cape Region in South Africa then followed with Saul Manzano (University of Leon), Stella Moscher (University of Utah), and Asithandile Ntsondwa (Nelson Mandela University) using various palaeo ecological approaches to explore climate, vegetation and fire regime shifts during the Holocene. Adele Julier (University of Portsmouth) then took us a little further north to Namibia to think about the challenges of parameterising modern pollen-vegetation relationships in arid regions. The final southern African talk was given by Gemma Poretti (University of Cape Town) explored a new approache to tracking change in past rainfall patterns using charcoal material.

The final two talks of the session took us to western Africa with Alfred Houngnon (Association de Gestion Integree des Ressources) using modern floristic data to provide clues into the biogeographic connectivity of forest taxa across the Dahomey Gap. The final talk, which focused on the chronology of Lake Bosumtwi (Ghana), was given by Mathias Vinnepand (University of Mainz).

The session was well attended throughout – despite the move in room due to the extreme heat – and many interesting and stimulating discussions were generated. For me it was particularly fun to bring together palaeoclimatologists, palaeoecologists and archaeologists to see, and address, the challenge of understanding ‘Africa of the Past’. I look forward to many of these talks will follow through into the proposed MAA Special Issue of Quaternary International.