Resilience and identity: the ethnoarchaeology of the Kel Tadrart Tuareg (SW Libya)

Summary

In the Tadrart Acacus (SW Libya), ethnoarchaeological research carried out between 2003-2011 has shown that its current inhabitants, the Kel Tadrart Tuareg, are a successful example of adaptation to extreme climatic and environmental conditions. Their exceptional resilience, characterized by high degree of variability and opportunism, escapes some of the traditional assumptions often done in ethnography and archaeology regarding the classification and identification of societies, such as mobility, food security, or interaction with neighboring groups. Indeed, this study demonstrates that identity and self-representation play major role in shaping individual and communal choices in the Kel Tadrart society, leaving specific material correlates that might elude our traditional interpretive tools. These data reveal the often underestimated complexity of arid zones pastoral societies of the present, raising issues related to mainstream approaches to Saharan Holocene archaeology, where arid times are generally associated with marked drops in both cultural and social level of communities.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Interrogating Identity: The Fluidity of Social Boundaries in African Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage