I have been spending some time trying to find evidence to help place the Sukur Landscape on our timeline - Difficult!!
Unlike the Dogon there doesn't appear to have been a period when the people migrated into this area
The AB file is rather vague!! -
"Criterion v The cultural landscape of Sukur has survived unchanged for many centuries," !! quite a lot of what makes up an African Cultural landscape -huts, terraced fields for the local crops, water management etc are likely to have existed almost since time immemorial and are not by themselves particularly "unique"
However the Nom File does have few pointers and I also found an interesting (albeit LONG!) anthropological article about the Xidi's Palace.
http://www.sukur.info/Lib/Smith&David2000.pdfThis palace figures large in the AB evaluation
"The historic terraced landscape of Sukur, with the palace of its ruler on a hill dominating the villages below, its terraced fields and their sacred symbols, and the extensive remains of a former flourishing iron industry, is a remarkably intact physical expression of a society and its spiritual and material culture."It seems to me therefore that 2 important elements of the Cultural Landscape are
a. The social organisation and Xidi with his palace
b. Iron making - both for the remains of manufacturing - Blast furnaces etc, but also for the infrastructure. For instance the paved paths mentioned in the Nomination and AB were, it appears, put there to help transport the iron.
Based on these 2 factors and info from the article I am plumping for 17C. What do you think?? I have chosen it as a "middle way" across the various "date-related" statements as quoted below to provide a period when both the Palace existed AND Iron making was definitely well in progress
"There is some limited evidence of Neolithic occupation of Sukur (1 Axe)... A pre-Sukur iron age phase is represented by numerous grinding stones, iron ore stones and abandoned furnaces. A later Iron age phase going back at least to the 17th Century is represented by the establishment of the current Dur Chiefly Dynasty and the development of Sukur as a major iron producing centre. Statement of Significance - Dating back to the 15th/16th and 17th Centuries Sukur Cultural landscape has continued to exhibit durability and sustainability of systems of land use..." (Nom File). This article places the date of the Sukur Xidi house as
"unlikely to be earlier than 16C .. or later than 18th." http://www.sukur.info/Lib/Smith&David2000.pdf