structure topped by a convex pyramid. They may have initially been inspired by Greek monuments but they constitute an original type of structure associated with Numidian culture. Examples of these are found at Siga, Soumaa d'el Khroub, Dougga, and Sabratha. West Africa Burkina Faso Mouhoun Bend At Mouhoun Bend, Burkina Faso, people dwelled in a community of residences that housed multiple families in the second quarter of the 1st millennium BCE, which may have also been part of a pre-existing marketplace system of trade (e.g., salt) and technology transfer between agricultural communities (e.g., Jenne-Jeno, Kintampo, Rim) throughout West Africa that persisted from the 2nd millennium BCE to the early 1st millennium CE. In addition to farming undomesticated crops and maintaining domesticated animals, the people of Mouhoun Bend engaged in hunting and fishing as well as iron, salt, and pottery production. The funerary culture of the Mouhoun Bend people included ceremonial placement of food and material goods in pits and concave surfaces as well as the development of earth structures. Mauritania Tichitt Culture Tichitt Walata is the oldest surviving collection of settlements in West Africa and the oldest of all stone-base settlement south of the Sahara. It was built by the Soninke people and is thought to be the precursor of the Ghana empire. It was settled by agropastoral people around 2000–300 BCE, which makes it almost 1000 years older than previously thought. One finds well-laid-out streets and fortified compounds, all made out of skilled stone masonry. In all, there were 500 settlements. The Tichitt Tradition of eastern Mauritania dates from 2200 BCE to 200 BCE. By 2000 BCE, as aridification followed the Holocene Climate Optimum, the pastoralists had become agropastoralists and had established the Tichitt tradition in the Mauritanian settlement areas of Dhar Tichitt, Dhar Walata, and Dhar Néma, based on a hierarchical economy composed of pastoralism, agriculture (e.g., millet), and stonemasonry (e.g., architecture). In the Sahelian region of West Africa, the corded roulette ceramics of the Tichitt Tradition developed and persisted among dry stonewalled architecture in Mauritania (e.g., Dhar Tichitt, Dhar Walata, Dhar Néma, Dhar Tagant) between 1900 BCE and 400 BCE. Within these settled areas (e.g., Dhar Tichitt, Dhar Tagant, Dhar Walata) with stone walls, which vary in scale from (e.g., 2 hectares, 80 hectares), there were walled agricultural land utilized for livestock or gardening as well as land with granaries and tumuli. As areas where the Tichitt