the foreigner visiting Nouakchott for the first time is somewhat confused by what he is given to see: a few tar axes, including a multitude of sand runways, construction sites everywhere, fairly large and above all “free” traffic from the point of view of the Code of Conduct, chartters drawn by donkeys carrying metal drums filled with water and running on a path in the middle of cars and lorries, tents on the roofs of houses or on the edge of the road, hints at the entrance of some women, and free-range livestock, including in wealthy neighbourhoods, all this seems to be part of an insolvent urban atmosphere, especially as the city has apparently not missed its “connection” to the global network by relying on the number of public telephones, cyber cafes or even paraboles that spread the urban space. Neutral space at birth to become the crucible of the young Mauritanian Nation (Frérot and Ould Mahboubi, 1998: (35) its inhabitants, of various origins, have for the last fifty years tried to invent ‘their’ capital, with their culture, which is known to be both anchor points and preferred vectors. Some ‘objects’ seem, more than others, to be marked with the stamp of nomadism and frustrate the idea that the visitor may have ‘elsewhere’ in the city. While for the inhabitants of Nouakchott, and for the Maures in particular, they are fully integrated into the urban environment, such as meaningful familiar people. It is precisely the social meaning of these objects that our contribution will focus on revealing: it will in fact ask us whether they are mere ‘traces’ of the ‘broussis’ and the nomadic culture of the Maures or, on the contrary, privileged media of an original urban identity which, together with others, give the city its current face. We will try to give an overview of these objects by first looking at the tent in Nouakchott and its footprint in the ways in which maure citadins live. then urban mobility means and attitudes, the ubiquity of Nature in the city, and finally everyday objects and goods bearing the ‘Bedouinity’ (badâwa) brand.