Bridging the Gap: Exploring Historical Human-Environment Dynamics within a Biodiversity Hotspot in the Gulf of Guinea

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Islands around Africa: State-of-the-Art and Future Directions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

To help protect the Earth’s diverse species from disappearing at an alarming rate, research is needed in important biodiversity hotspots to understand how humans have interacted with their environment throughout history and how these insights can contribute to their future sustainability. Archaeology and paleoecology are ideally positioned for this. Unfortunately, however, Africa’s islands have been largely overlooked. To bridge this gap, our research focuses on São Tomé and Príncipe, one of the most understudied biodiversity hotspots in the world, situated in West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea. Being possibly the only country where no systematic archaeological fieldwork has yet taken place, Príncipe, in particular, offers an excellent research opportunity due to its exceptional biodiversity, high level of endemism, recent human presence, small size, low population, and limited urban development. With our research, we aim to shed light on the historical relationship, past and present, between humans and their environment in the archipelago. Following our earlier paleoecological fieldwork—the first of its kind on Príncipe—we will now conduct the first archaeological research on the island through an archaeological reconnaissance of the entire island using technologies like lidar, along with archaeological surveys and test excavations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Islands around Africa: State-of-the-Art and Future Directions   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39147.0