Kursakata, Ngala LGA, Borno State, Nigeria

Kursakata is one of the earliest occupations in the area. Two 14C-Dates from the bottom layers, one obtained by Connah one by us, confirm the initial occupation to have occured around 1000 cal BC.

The stratigraphy of the site can be divided into two major phases, the lower one belonging still to the Later Stone Age (first half of the first millenium cal BC), the upper one dating to the Early Iron Age. Because of the potsherd floors on the top of the mound (see The Architecture), and their chronological position within the Daima sequence around cal AD 650, we believe, that the site became abandoned towards the beginning of the second half of the first millenium cal AD. The early settlements of all of the mounds lay on the sand "islands" close to the clay which at this time may have been still flooded permanently, so a lagoonal situation can be reconstructed. Kursakata was founded on a portion of a former beach ridge of Lake Chad, the so called "Ngelewa Beach Ridge". Although Kursakata started on an elevated spot, the beach ridge must have been flooded when Lake Chad once was much larger (see The Environment), as a thin layer of clay was detected underneath cultural layers.

Stratigraphic Sequence of Kursakata, total heigth: 5,80 m

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