Many societal and environmental changes occurred between the 2nd millennium BC and the middle of the 2nd millennium AD in western Africa. Key amongst these were changes in land use due to the spread and development of agricultural strategies, which may have had widespread consequences for the climate, hydrology, biodiversity, and ecosystem services of the region. Quantification of these land-use influences and potential feedbacks between human and natural systems is controversial, however, in part because the archaeological and historical record is highly fragmented in time and space. To improve our understanding of how humans contributed to the development of African landscapes, we developed an atlas of land-use practices in western Africa for nine time-windows over the period 1800 BC–AD 1500. The maps are based on a broad synthesis of archaeological, archaeobotanical, archaeozoological, historical, linguistic, genetic, and ethnographic data, and present land use in 12 basic categories. The main differences between categories is the relative reliance on, and variety of, domesticated plant and animal species utilized, and the energy invested in cultivating or keeping them. The maps highlight the irregular and frequently non-linear trajectory of land-use change in the prehistory of western Africa. Representing an original attempt to produce rigorous spatial synthesis from diverse sources, the atlas will be useful for a range of studies of human–environment interactions in the past, and highlight major spatial and temporal gaps in data that may guide future field studies.

西非在公元前第二个千年到公元第二个千年中期发生了许多社会和环境变化。其中关键是由于农业战略的传播和发展而导致的土地利用变化，这可能对该地区的气候、水文、生物多样性和生态系统服务产生广泛的影响。然而，对这些土地利用影响以及人类与自然系统之间潜在反馈的量化存在争议，部分原因是考古和历史记录在时间和空间上高度分散。为了加深我们对人类如何为非洲景观发展做出贡献的理解，我们绘制了公元前 1800 年至公元 1500 年 9 个时间窗口内西非土地利用实践地图集。这些地图基于广泛综合的考古学、考古植物学、考古动物学、历史、语言、遗传和人种学数据，并介绍 12 个基本类别的土地利用情况。不同类别之间的主要区别在于对所利用的驯化植物和动物物种的相对依赖程度和多样性，以及在培育或饲养它们时投入的能源。这些地图突出显示了西非史前时期土地利用变化的不规则且常常是非线性的轨迹。该地图集代表了从不同来源进行严格空间综合的原始尝试，将有助于过去人类与环境相互作用的一系列研究，并突出数据中的主要空间和时间差距，从而指导未来的实地研究。