“Leveling the playing field” in the contested Territory of the South African past: A “public” versus a “people’s” form of historical archaeology outreach

Abstract

In South Africa, the legacy of colonialism and apartheid includes a history of partisan concepts of ethnic and social identity. The long charged, sociopolitical context has also affected research questions, as well as public interpretations, about the past. Today, there are calls for a new past for the new South Africa. Historical archaeology can provide both a methodology and raw materials which South Africans can use to form their own interpretations of their past helping, in turn, to engender pride through a historical consciousness emancipated from colonial and apartheid ideology. This article presents an overview of this complex and changing research context and its implications for a historical archaeology study of South African frontier identity. Research and “public” archaeology efforts concerning material and mythical perspectives of ethnicity are discussed. Employed in a cross-context comparison with African-American research, this study highlights the need for decolonized historical archaeology outreach.