Intangible cultural heritage in Mauritania: sedentarisation, adaptation and ongoing reinvention
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2015-10-23

Leonora O'Brien
AECOM
This paper will explore the evolution, adaptation and reinvention of Mauritanian intangible cultural heritage in the context of
increasing desertification and rapidly accelerating social change. Mauritanian intangible heritage practices include living national languages; social structures and lifeways; written and oral poetry and songs; instrumental and sung music; oral culture and education; traditional games, popular wisdom and stories; traditional science and technology including desert plant medicine and agriculture in arid environments; housing; written
knowledge, calligraphy and manuscripts; Islamic cosmology, theology, popular beliefs, liturgical and symbolic concepts; and knowledge systems associated with desert navigation.
The Moorish epic T’heydinn, performed by Griots accompanied by traditional instruments, was inscribed on the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding in 2011. The country participates in UNESCO’s ‘Living Human Treasures’ programme, striving to foster the transmission of skills to the next generation in the areas of traditional music and in the fishing practices of the Imraguen community. Mauritania underwent a period of accelerated social change catalysed by the Sahelian Droughts of the early 1970s and mid- 1980s, resulting in massive and ongoing cultural upheaval – extensive sedentarisation of nomadic pastoralists and sudden urbanisation. Cultural tourism initiatives supporting traditional lifeways, artisanal crafts and cultural industries established in the 1990s and 2000s are foundering due to rising militant insurgency in the Maghreb. Increasing industrialisation, regional environmental pressure and insecurity is giving rise to greater contact with other cultures, internal migrants and international workers. Intangible heritage practices are in flux, adjusting to cultural dislocation and transformation.