Heading south, looking north: Why we need a post-colonial archaeology

Abstract

Excursion today with a group of 30 trainee-teachers from the Cape Town Teachers Training College. Many of the students are older, having returned to college in later life. Some were in detention in the mid-1980s. Two men and a woman are returned ANC cadres. There is a tremendous sense of resolve about the group, a kind of moral seriousness. They are putting themselves through college, one student says, as a way of giving something back to the country, by developing the youth. Their lecturer, June Bam, is wonderful, an activist who has carried the struggle through to the field of education. We are lucky with the weather, a mild summer day. We try a new path to Peers Cave, along the ridge rather than up the Dune. I am surprised by the students' level of knowledge and interest. They ask detailed questions, and want to know why none of this is in the history textbooks. I turn the table on them and ask them to work in their groups on developing approaches to teaching archaeology in the classroom. The discussion becomes very animated. There isa lot of debate on questions of social value: whether we need archaeology in this country? What apartheid did to our consciousness of the past? What their role as teachers might be? This discussion runs all the wa y back to the busses. A group atthe back sings freedom songs. We shoulder our way through the Port Jackson scrub,