Dhar Tichitt is a line of sandstone cliffs located in the southwestern region of the Sahara Desert in Mauritania that boasts a series of eponymous Neolithic archaeological sites.

In addition to herding livestock (cattle, sheep, goats), its inhabitants hunted, fished, collected wild grain, and grew bulrush millet.

And around some settlements, larger common stone "circumvallation walls" were built, suggesting that "special purpose groups" cooperated as a result of decisions "enforced for the benefit of the community as a whole.

These humid phases would have made it possible for moisture to accumulate in the sandy flats, leading to small lakes forming in the interdunal depressions of the region.

[11] In the Akreijit deposit, his excavation discovered various microliths of diverse size and purpose, scrapers, projectile points, quartz pebbles and cores, milling stones, and a particular ceramic pottery culture.

The most notable contents of the Khimiya phase were the huge number of fish and shellfish remains, as well as other aquatic cultures; this deposit indicated that the people of this time were extensively using the lakes in the region.

[11] The Naghez layer showcases a major departure from the previous phases, since the sites contain precise stone-masonry constructions which measured 20 to 40 meters in diameter.

Studies led by archaeologists, many of them French, such as Hugot, Delneuf, Beyries, Amblard, Holl, and Roux explored the architecture, ceramics, rock engravings, lithics, and possible economies at the site.

[10] Carnelian and amazonite beads, as well as stone-arm rings and axes have been found in association with the site, and these objects are known to represent at least some level of long-distance trade.

This method allowed archaeologists to collect data regarding the placement of the stone structures in relation to each other by studying site morphology as well as topographical location.

[14] Significant progress has taken place in research necropolises and tumuli located in and around these sites in order to decipher the culture's potential funerary perspectives.

Patrick Munson hypothesized that the Dhar Tichitt region was inhabited by pastoralists around 4500 BP, and it likely reached its population and cultural peak during this period.

However, there is some level of pushback from one of the leading archaeologists at the site, Sylvie Amblard-Pison, who does not believe that the current data is able to represent an accurate chronology.

[17] Overall, the chronology at the site is contentious, especially due to the spatial separation across a large space which makes it difficult to determine relative stratigraphy.

[15] The original investigation put forth by Munson hypothesized that the people associated with this site had likely become sedentary as a result of decreasing rain over the period of hundreds of year.

Moreover, the evidence for material culture changes between the Pre-Tichitt and Early Tichitt periods appears to suggest that people started to farm millet more intensively around this time.

[15] Much of the archeological data associated with the Pre-Tichitt period points to a relatively simple and widespread pastoralist economy incorporating herding of cows, sheep, and goats with hunting of antelope and freshwater fish.

[23] Many of the societies of the Sahelian West Africa region are defined by organization into compounds, which encompass a given kinship group's material possessions.

[27] Many archeologists have hypothesized a connection between the Dhar Tichitt and the overarching Middle Niger River Delta cultures such as the Ghana Empire.

Both archeological and linguistic evidence shows that the Soninke people associated with the Ghana Empire are descendants of the remnants of the Tichitt culture following its collapse.

[15] Thus, the presence archeological evidence seems to point to the Tichitt diaspora as being directly related to the later emergence of Middle Niger cultures in the first millennium BCE.

Berbers are thought to have displaced many of the original inhabitants of the area, who then gradually moved into the northern Middle Niger River Valley.