Palaeosecular variations of the geomagnetic field in Africa during the Holocene: a review

Abstract

AbstractThe importance of the full understanding of the Holocene geomagnetic field spans from human history and archaeology, to palaeoclimatic changes and engineering, to geomagnetic field modelling and unravelling of the geomagnetic field characteristics and anomalies. Unfortunately, the dearth of data from large under-covered areas such as oceans, the African and South American continents, and the southern hemisphere (only 4–6% of the global datasets) dramatically limits our knowledge of the temporal and spatial evolution of the geomagnetic field and its application. Here, a review of all data from the African continent is presented in order to encourage and motivate a new generation of palaeomagnetic and archaeomagnetic studies. New data will sharpen the palaeomagnetism as a dating tool, improve our knowledge of local/global geomagnetic features, and will help to finally answer some of the fundamental questions in palaeomagnetism, like the temporal and spatial distribution of the palaeointensity peaks described, and the origin and evolution of the South Atlantic Anomaly.