Peter Reid Coutros

• Ph.D.
• Post Doctoral Researcher at Ghent University

During the first millennium BC , West Africa was in the midst of social, political, technological, and environmental change. The Diallowali site system, located along the western edge of the Middle Senegal Valley ( MSV ), is one of the few sites from this period to be intensively investigated and has produced a wealth of data regarding these proces...

The expansion of people speaking Bantu languages is the most dramatic demographic event in Late Holocene Africa and fundamentally reshaped the linguistic, cultural and biological landscape of the continent1–7. With a comprehensive genomic dataset, including newly generated data of modern-day and ancient DNA from previously unsampled regions in Afri...

The Tichitt culture of the Ceramic Late Stone Age is known for its large settlement sites, built from dry stone walls. It is centered on the cliffs of southeastern Mauritania, but its links to the Middle Niger and the later urban developments there have long been a topic of research. This article adds a further piece of evidence linking the two reg...

The Diallowali site complex is a network of interconnected mounds along the western Middle Senegal River Valley (MSV) occupied from the late 2 nd to the late 1 st millennium BC. Excavations between 2013 and 2017 revealed a deeply stratified settlement with extensive deposits, including more than 150kg of faunal material, 5000kg of ceramics, bone to...

Society of Africanist Archaeologists, 2023 Houston, Texas Niger-Congo (NC) is one of the world's largest language phyla-incorporating more than 1500 languages spoken across all except Northern Africa. Although the earliest stages of NC's development are not well understood, its purported origins lay between ~20-12 kya within West Africa. This timef...

Early West-Coastal Bantu (WCB) would have been spoken by the first Bantu speakers south of them rainforest ~2,500 BP (Bostoen et al. 2015; Grollemund et al. 2015). From its homeland between the Kasai and Kamtsha Rivers in the present-day DRC, WCB would have undergone two expansions to the Atlantic Coast, a southern at the origin of the Kikongo Lang...

The first millennium BC was a time of important sociopolitical and climatic change throughout West Africa. Previous research from the Middle Senegal Valley (MSV) suggests that the geography of this region enabled a diversity of subsistence approaches that helped early settlers withstand widespread environmental stress at this time. First settled by...

Since 2018, the BantuFirst project has engaged in a cross-disciplinary research program across multiple regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Here we present results of three years of intensive archaeological research focused on Kwilu and Mai-Ndombe provinces, DRC, including the major river systems (Kwilu, Kasai, Kamtsha, and Loang...

Intentional fires, pastoralism and plant food-production have decisively shaped the composition and appearance of West African savannas today and in the past. Due to shifting cultivation and the protection of useful trees in fields, the woody vegetation forms an important constituent of these cultured landscapes, which allows characterizing past la...

With the largest genomic dataset to date of Bantu-speaking populations, including newly generated data of modern-day and ancient DNA from previously unsampled regions in Africa, we shed fresh light on the expansion of peoples speaking Bantu languages that started ∼4000 years ago in western Africa. We have genotyped 1,740 participants, including 1,4...

The BantuFirst research project is a cross-disciplinary project funded by the European Research Council (ERC Consolidator’s Grant no. 724275) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. Since 2019, the BantuFirst team has identified 140 new archaeological sites, ranging in time from the Middle Stone Age (~300,000 years...

A synthetic history of human land use Humans began to leave lasting impacts on Earth's surface starting 10,000 to 8000 years ago. Through a synthetic collaboration with archaeologists around the globe, Stephens et al. compiled a comprehensive picture of the trajectory of human land use worldwide during the Holocene (see the Perspective by Roberts)....

Since the end of the last glacial period (~12.4 ka bp) the African continent has undergone no less than 30 dramatic climate transitions. West Africa in particular witnessed abrupt climate oscillations—between humid optima and hyper‐aridity—which lasted anywhere between 10 and 15 years and a millennium. Such unpredictable shifts forced local communi...

While peoples engage with the landscape in accordance with their culturally mediated perceptions of the world, the objective conditions of the biosphere are the realities in which these perceptions are forged. Environmental realities, and thus the perceptions of them, are decidedly non-static, geographically diverse, and progress in non-linear ways...

The first millennium BC was a period of dramatic social and environmental change throughout West Africa. Along the Middle Senegal Valley (MSV), communities experienced rapid and dramatic changes to biospheric conditions accompanied by largescale technological, social, and economic reorganizations. On the western edge of the MSV, the inhabitants of...

In the spring of 2017 geophysical remote sensing surveys were conducted across three locations at and around the Dakajalan sacred site, Sous-Prefecture, Sanankoroba, Mali in order to detect anomalies associated with archaeological features. This site has been described in oral tradition as the location where the battle that proceeded the formation...

Over the past few decades, advances in theoretical and technological approaches have placed archaeology in a unique position to inform broader palaeoclimatic studies. This paper explores archaeological data from the two major West African floodplains, The Middle Senegal Valley and the Inland Niger Delta, particularly focusing on how these communiti...

Recent archaeological research at the Diallowali site system has revealed an intensive occupation in northern Senegal between the late 2 nd and mid 1 st millenniums BC. Extensive excavation has produced a wealth of information on the environment, technology, economy, and subsistence regimes of the populations that inhabited this 14-mound cluster al...

Between 2008 and 2010 three field seasons targeted the Iron Age landscape surrounding modern Timbuktu – a phenomenon we are calling the Tombouze Urban Complex. Results are currently informing hypotheses concerning the rise, fluorescence and disarticulation of a clustered, expansive and urban population well before Timbuktu's estimated traditional f...

In May 2017, archaeologists from Yale University and the Mission Culturelle de Kangaba conducted a series of magnetometer surveys around the newly identified site of Dakajalan, Sous-Prefecture, Sanankoroba, Mali. Several notable features were located, including areas suitable for future excavations. © 2017 Society of Africanist Archaeologists. All...

The Malian Lakes Region of West Africa has long been overlooked in favour of better-known basins of the Niger River. New archaeological survey of this region, however, shows a history far more complex than had previously been thought, with settlement mounds and multiple phases of migration and eventual abandonment in a landscape of shifting power s...

The first millennium BC was a time of considerable social, technological, and environmental change for the peoples of West Africa. Despite the growing number and distribution of archaeological projects throughout the region, very little is known about this critical period. Likewise, many of the climate models currently in use lack the sufficient te...

New England Writing Centers Association, 2016 Undergraduate and graduate writing centers work with populations of diverse backgrounds, ethnicities and identities, and share many stories related to their experiences. Bilingual students with non-native English skills, referred here as English as a Second Language (ESL) students, represent a major pop...

Since the earliest days of the discipline, archaeologists have been interested in how early human communities have interacted with the landscape. Considerable theoretical and methodological advancements have led to vast improvements in our understanding of human-environment relationships throughout the past. With this improved understanding, has co...

We formally describe the late Miocene Mpesida Beds (Baringo, Kenya), which at 7-6.3 Ma capture a crucial time period for hominid evolution, climate change and biotic events in Africa, yet have been neglected paleontologically. Renewed prospecting alongside improved dates and stratigraphy of 12 sites across 50 miles 2 has nearly doubled the total fa...

A two-part archaeological and limnological study of the Malian Lakes Region has revealed the high research potential of the region. The exploratory reconnaissance of the Gorbi Valley, on the eastern edge of Lake Fati, identified, mapped and sampled eight new sites. The results of the survey suggest a long duration occupation of the Gorbi Valley, as...

Throughout the developing world responses to climate change have been defined by political and economic policies that have largely left heritage management out of the equation. A recent campaign using high-precision topographic techniques to remap the central tell of Jenne-Jeno, one of the most important and well-known prehistoric centers in West A...

The African Humid Period (ca. 14.8 to 5.5 ka) is an interval of wet climates across northwest Africa, with evidence for widespread lake basins and savannah vegetation in areas that are now desert. There are few high-resolution continental records of hydrologic variability during the African humid period however. In particular, it remains uncertain...

The Malian Lakes Region of the Middle Niger is home to hundreds of habitation mounds, tumuli, and megalithic monuments. Yet, the function, diversity, and relationship between these sites is, as of now, unclear. These uncertainties prompted a recent investigation into the nature of the unique settlement distribution found in this region. Based on sa...