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

The 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.