This is a gap rather than an argument. The monument fields at Sine-Ngayene, Wanar, Wassu and Kerbatch, inscribed by UNESCO in 2006, were built over a long span and have been partially excavated, but no excavator has been able to attach them to a named present-day people, and no scholar has published a positive attribution to defend. Serer oral tradition, recorded most fully by Henry Gravrand, connects the monuments to Serer forebears and reads the burials as those of ancestors who are now among the pangool. Historians have neither confirmed that reading nor produced a rival one; they have set it aside as unproven and moved on, which leaves the question with no position holding the field.
What would resolve this A dated burial and ceramic sequence from a securely stratified excavation across several of the monument fields, combined with ancient DNA from the tumuli burials and comparison against present-day Serer, Wolof and Mandinka populations. Radiocarbon coverage of the circles is thin and unevenly published, and no aDNA programme has been directed at the Senegambian monuments. Community consultation with Serer authorities would need to precede any sampling.
OpenWest African archaeology; archaeogenetics; Senegambian oral history and its evaluation as a historical source.UNESCO World Heritage Committee, Stone Circles of Senegambia, UNESCO World Heritage List