Southern Africa and the Swahili World. Studies in the African Past 2

Felix Chami and Gilbert Pwiti, eds. Southern Africa and the Swahili World. Dar es Salaam: Dar es Salaam University Press Ltd., 2002. Distributed by African Books Collective Ltd., The Jam Factory, 27 Park End St., Oxford OX1 1HU. vi + 138 pp. Photographs. Bibliography. Index. $29.95. Paper. - Volume 48 Issue 1

introductionThe as both repository and methodological concept has spawned increasing interdisciplinary exchanges, fueled by the development of digital forms of production. The has spurred further debates inspired by Michel Foucault's definition of the as system of discursivity (1982, 129) and Jacques Derrida's postmodern musings on archive fever (1996) as central the politics of individual and collective memory, desire, and interpretation.1 In mining various literary, performative, and visual materials and sexual subcultures, Ann Cvetkovich (2003) and Jack Halberstam (2005) in particular have stressed the importance of recovering queer archive of feelings that accounts not only for the past trauma of queer lives but also for the repression, ephemerality, and often spectral traces of queer experiences.Although some scholars have written on the and traditions of African same-sex practices, systematic and meticulous archival work on that topic has remained limited. In his research on male homosexuality in South African compounds and prisons at the turn of the twentieth century, Zackie Achmat, in his genealogical attempt to recover from the archives series of local knowledges for queers in contemporary South paved the way for other scholars engage in similar research (1993, 108). Marc Epprecht notably has worked on uncovering a pan-regional, proto-queer identity firmly rooted in history in southern Africa while acknowledging the many obstacles encountered in the process, from the silence or destruction of historical sources and documents, the prejudices laced with such accounts (2004, 4). Other historians have tackled the multidimensional complexity of archival work on the African continent, specifically South Africa, using feminist and social lens that highlights the controversial status of queer African archives (Hamilton et al. 2002; Mangcu 2011).The study of queer archives in African contexts is further problematized by number of indigenous and exogenous factors. The archival hubris of the colonial enterprise, intent on superimposing its own imperial of knowledge and fantasy, has jeopardized access African records and histories (Richard 1993). The colonial homophobia fostered by British antisodomy laws, for example, contributed the reinvention of the continent as hotbed of sexual perversions, which obscured indigenous same-sex in different ethnic groups. For Keguro Macharia, the political homophobia deployed by government leaders in countries like Cameroon, Uganda, and Nigeria has prompted activists engage in queer archival work: This turn the also subtends sexual minority organising in Africa: against claims that homosexuality is 'un-African,' activists, artists, and intellectuals have attempted produce archival evidence of same-sex acts in African pasts (2015, 141). Conversations about the role of archives in gender- and sexual-diversity organizing generate questions about such archives' goals. For instance, Western queer archivization of African lives may be motivated by ethnocentric taxonomies and identity politics, undermining African scholars and activists' own work of restoration (Epprecht 2008). In addition, theories of the queer deployed in the U.S. academy have had limited methodological applicability queer African archives, which require different understandings of temporality and subjectivity and should be approached with sense of urgency heightened by the necropolitics of homophobia enforced by some African leaders (Mbembe 2001, 2003).Our goal is not (re)locate same-sex or retrieve queer African agency from the past. Rather, we probe the discourses and best practices that can be implemented uncover queer African archives, broadly defined as methods and movements. The ethical protocol guiding archival projects enables wider conceptualization of transnational queer that, rather than dwelling in the porous uncertainty of its past, remains actively connected both its political present and future. …

Sometime in 1975, I walked into the office of Arnold Rubin (1937–1988), an associate professor in the department of art at the University of California, Los Angeles, inquiring about graduate study in Africanist art history. Students of African art, he assured me, would be at the forefront of mighty changes in the academic world. He promised that we would blow the dust off the hidebound field of art history. Rather shaken by his passionate rhetoric, I left thinking I might be too conventional for such an avant-garde enterprise. So after a much more pragmatic conversation with Herbert M. ("Skip") Cole about the shrinking number of teaching positions in art history, I headed to the University of California, Santa Barbara, for my graduate work. There I was plunged into a program of instruction and research that was full of its own unexpected adventures and rewards. While I have always been immensely grateful that Skip Cole agreed to be my advisor and guide, I have never forgotten Rubin's vision, his assertion that Africanist art historians would overturn entrenched paradigms and revolutionize the study of art.This issue of African Arts celebrates a generation of scholars—the elders of our discipline—whose contributions shaped the journal when it was launched as african arts/arts d'afrique some fifty years ago. Arnold Rubin was one of these, as he had been appointed editor of "graphic and plastic arts" when the second issue of the fledgling magazine appeared in 1968. As a member of his students' generation, the cohort charged with bringing the study of African art into the twenty-first century, I would like to revisit my initial encounter with this influential scholar and teacher through the lens of African Arts. Has his vision indeed become a reality? Have Africanists reshaped the narrative of art history over the last fifty years and brought novel, interdisciplinary, Africa-centered approaches to a staid Eurocentric discipline?Clearly, I encountered Arnold Rubin during a time when his own views had been shaped by the theoretical and methodological debates swirling around the art department at UCLA, and by his awareness of the new and rather tenuous position of Africanists within the discipline of art history. After all, in the United States the first dissertation on an African topic presented for a PhD in art history (rather than anthropology or Egyptology) had been written less than twenty years earlier, in 1957, by Roy Sieber (1923–2001). While art historians such as Douglas Fraser (1930–1982) may have taught courses on African art as "Primitive Art" during the 1950s, it was not until the 1960s that Africanist scholars such as Sieber and Frank Willett (1925–2006) could draw on their own fieldwork when they offered classes in American art history departments. Rubin presented his thoughts on the development of the field at a conference on "African Art Studies in the 1980s" held at UCLA in 1979 and reviewed for African Arts by Marla Berns:1Although his ideas were disseminated in the classroom as well as through his many creative research projects, it is Rubin's association with African Arts in the first decade of its publication that allows us to examine how his goals for Africanist art history intersected with other impulses during a unique period. Fifty years ago, personal and professional relationships linking Americans and Africans promised to forge new ways of seeing and describing the world, and the excitement of this promise permeated the journal. I should note here that my own memories of that time were recently refreshed by a visit to an African country I had not seen in almost half a century. My brother arranged for me to join childhood friends and family members for a visit to Malawi, where our fathers had worked from 1964–1969, and where our mothers had volunteered in local colleges and hospitals. The church we had attended, constructed by members of the Church of Scotland congregation before 1891 (Briggs 2013:206), was still a vibrant place of worship in Blantyre (Fig. 1), its physical structure intact. I had only vague memories of an even earlier precolonial monument, the Mandala House, which had been the headquarters of the African Lakes Corporation in 1882 (Fig. 2). The interior is now a bright, sunny space managed by La Caverna, an art gallery specializing in paintings by Malawi's most influential modernists, while the upper floor houses the library and meeting rooms of the Malawi Historical Society. This venerable building thus enshrines the art history as well as the history of twentieth and twenty-first century Malawi, both pivoting around the nation's independence in 1964.Flipping through the first few years of african arts/arts d'afrique, the bilingual precursor of African Arts, also brought me back to the heady days of the 1960s. Just as my father and his American colleagues set up a technical college as a "contribution from the people of the United States of America to the people of Malawi" when that nation became independent from Britain,2 the very first issue proclaimed, in boldface print, that "The African Studies Center of the University of California Los Angeles presents a gift [of the magazine] to Africa." Since the journal and the technical school were offered to Africans at the height of the Cold War, when the continent and its resources were seen as vulnerable to influences from the Soviet Union, postcolonial theorists might characterize both as instruments wielded by the US government to ensure the loyalty of African allies.3 It was true that my father had been hired through an American university with funding from the Agency for International Development, while the growth of the African Studies Center at UCLA was nurtured by government grants and fellowships. Faculty and graduate students at UCLA were provided with funds for research on the African continent, allowing the African Studies Center to act as a "think tank" that was continually renewed by contacts with Africa. Former Peace Corps volunteers, sent by the US government to promote democracy and economic progress in Africa, enrolled in graduate programs after returning home, joining the ranks of scholars who studied the arts of the African continent. Yet despite their origins in hegemonic political policies, educational programs and initiatives such as african arts/arts d'afrique fostered a discourse that exposed Americans to African ways of knowing, to epistemologies which would lead researchers such as Arnold Rubin to challenge the assumptions of his own academic traditions.In the second issue, the editors wrote that the purpose of the new journal would be "to record the art of the African past, to provide an outlet for the contemporary African artist, and to stimulate the creative arts in Africa" (Povey 1967:2). Judging from other short entries, the publication was a highly experimental enterprise. According to a later reflection written by John Povey (1929–1992), the specialist in African literature who was one of its original editors, "the entire original concept of African Arts derived from a purely serendipitous seat proximity on an airline which brought Paul [law professor Paul Proehl (1921–1997)] and [Sudanese artist] el Salahi together. They communed and agreed that what was really wanted was a magazine that would display the manifold arts of Africa—hence the plural title—to the world" (1991:6).4Arnold Rubin had joined the editorial board quite soon after his arrival at UCLA. He was almost immediately joined by Skip Cole and by Eugene Grigsby, a professor of African and African American art history at Arizona State University. Other editors worked with them to assemble material celebrating a broad spectrum of African creativity. The first issues featured short essays on architecture, dance, theater, the cinema, music, literary criticism, and oral literature, in addition to an overview of the archaeology of Ife by Frank Willett, a reflective piece by Léopold Sédar Senghor, and reviews of contemporary art. Some of the discussions in these first volumes, such as a long essay by Bohumil Holas, were deeply primitivist, and John Povey himself could give way to paternalist pronouncements: "Somewhere between the inhibiting forms of the tradition and the too facile fashionable fads of contemporary art in the West, rests the legitimate area in which the African artist can create" (1968a:1). Yet in these years Dennis Duerden stated, "I am looking for an African kinetic artist, or one who uses a computer" (1967:30). Too few contributors would join him in expecting African artists of the 1970s and 1980s to engage with developments happening elsewhere in the world of contemporary art, and apparently neither video artists not digital arts would appear in the pages of African Arts prior to the twenty-first century. John Povey himself was startlingly prescient when he humbly acknowledged that "We hope that the possibilities supplied by the presence of this forum will encourage Africans to write their own account of their arts. Such essays will undoubtedly reveal to us areas of perception which are inevitably denied even to the most sympathetic of outside critics" (1968b:1). Unfortunately, the "presence" of the journal would diminish in African libraries and art centers during the following decades (Nettleton 2017, Okwuoso 2017), and as Simbao has clearly demonstrated (2017), scholars based on the African continent would be hindered from publishing their research in the journal by a variety of constraints. It is now clear that the laudable sentiments of Povey needed to have been accompanied by sustained action.Soon after its inception, the editors announced an annual competition, with monetary prizes for winning submissions of art (two- and three-dimensional work) and literature (plays, poetry, short stories, excerpts from novels) that would be published or reproduced in the magazine. Each issue would include reports by African "correspondents" providing "perceptive analyses of the underlying situation that confronts the African artist" (Povey 1968b:1). As a showcase for African literature, african arts/arts d'afrique was bilingual, offering essays in French and English. At the time, this was a sophisticated, European approach that addressed a wide, intercontinental readership, even if the possible incorporation of other languages commonly used in Africa (such as Arabic, Portuguese, or Swahili) was not mentioned. In many ways the magazine resembled creative modernist publication projects such as Minotaure, produced in Paris in the 1930s, or Black Orpheus, published in Ibadan after the 1950s, or Transition, launched in Kampala in the 1960s. What is striking, however, was the offer by the editors of african arts/arts d'afrique to distribute their color illustrations of African contemporary art to schools so that teachers could mount them on bulletin boards (Povey 1968a:38). This was a didactic effort to reach out to the American public, a program to dispel misconceptions about African cultures. In today's global art world, where critics value the transgressive, provocative stance of marginalized artists, few curators would attempt to place reproductions of contemporary African art in K-12 classrooms of the United States.As Doran Ross noted in his review of the first twenty-five years of African Arts (Ross 1992:1), submissions of literary works and coverage of contemporary art faded away after the annual competitions came to an end in 1975. Just as Arnold Rubin brought his experience with performance, ephemeral art, and ritual in African contexts to his exploration of American cultural practices, African Arts covered a broad range of urban and rural artistic creativity in Africa and its Diaspora during the 1980s. It became a leading outlet for fresh, new accounts of artists' practice based on fieldwork conducted in communities throughout Western and Central Africa, and studies of arts from Eastern and Southern Africa were featured as well. Given the variety and sophistication of the new studies appearing in African Arts, its readers may not have noticed how few contributors were still visiting the studios of artists working in African galleries, cultural centers, and institutions of higher education. In a "First Word" written as African Arts approached its twenty-fifth anniversary, Povey complained that at the 1989 Triennial conference of ACASA, the Arts Council of the African Studies Association, "contemporary African art … was considered at best marginal, at worst a regrettable intrusion of a tiresome product outside the concerns of serious scholars" (1990:1). Other journals would eventually arise to cover arts identified as "contemporary," such as Revue Noire (in 1991) and Nka (in 1994), and in last decade of the twentieth century African Arts itself would once again turn its attention to artists who had studied in African universities or art institutes. I would argue, though, that by neglecting critical studies of these African artists during the 1980s, Africanists missed the opportunity to interact with art historians in other "non-Western" fields, who were extending their own research methods into the study of modern and contemporary "global" arts (Sullivan 1996, Farago and Pierce 2006, Hay 2008).Furthermore, because African Arts focused on community-based (rather than nationally based) art and architecture during the 1980s, it bypassed a pivotal period in the history of African modernisms. During my visit to Malawi, I was honored to meet Willie Nampeya, now professor emeritus in the art department at Chancellor College in Zomba, who had been a student of my mother, Barbara Blackmun (Fig. 3). After learning of the challenges faced by Prof. Nampeya and his younger colleagues, and realizing that they have worked for many years in relative isolation, I wish that I (and other faculty in American institutions) had been more aware of their need for international recognition and support (see Simbao 2017:6). Whatever the reasons, close contacts between art educators working in Africa and in the United States still tend to be the exception rather than the rule.The switch to a monolingual format in volume 4 (and the adoption of the name African Arts) may have contributed to the diminishing number of articles on modernist cinema, literature, and theater appearing in the journal. One immediate casualty was the coverage of francophone northern Africa. During the first few years, contributors had written about artists based in Tunis and Cairo, providing material that is useful now for researchers reviewing the history of African modernism. The original inclusion of arts from the entire continent had reflected political movements of the 1960s and 1970s, when newly independent African states sponsored arts festivals in Dakar, Algiers, and Lagos that were expressions of African solidarity. Of course biennials and other exhibition events today return to this model by soliciting artworks from across the continent, weaving economic and political networks as part of national cultural policies. And of course many art fairs are sponsored by francophone African nations and produce bilingual texts.The early articles on textiles, ceramics, and other artisanal traditions in the Maghreb were also responses to the work of historians and archaeologists, who were then mapping trade routes and the movements of people and ideas across the Sahara. But in the 1960s, art historians had often been introduced to African art by European modernists, who believed that only sub-Saharan Africa could produce art nègre, authentically "primitive" art. Even after abandoning the tenets of Primitivism, many art historians remained in thrall to the masterpieces of West Africa and Central Africa that had inspired early twentieth century French painters. It is not surprising that the pages of African Arts would be dominated by these regions, even though Africanists such as Rubin and Cole had moved far beyond formal analyses of sculpture to broader understandings of the totality of creative production on the continent in its very first issues.Perhaps the shift away from Egypt and the Maghreb was also a result of the critiques of the field of African Studies in the 1970s, when African Americans affirmed their own ancestral links to ancient cultures. Following the lead of Robert Farris Thompson, many Africanists extended their art historical analyses to the Americas, narrating art histories as creative expressions of the Black Atlantic world. As African Studies in several institutions was subsumed under "Black Studies" or appended to departments of African American and Africana Studies, the art historical relationships between West Africans classified as "black" and North Africans seen as "non-black" by outside observers became more difficult to place within an American academic framework. When Sidney Kasfir reviewed Jan Vansina's Art and History in Africa for African Arts, she underscored his inclusion of arts from the northern half of the continent, asserting that this was perhaps "the most alien part of the author's perspective for African art specialists" (Kasfir 1986:12).For the first decade or so, the journal had close relationship with commercial enterprises. In addition to receiving funding from the Kress Foundation to print images in color, african arts/arts d'afrique received advertising revenue from airlines, a mining company, and the Franklin Gallery in Los Angeles. Private collections as well as exhibitions at public institutions such as the Los Angeles County Museum were reviewed. This context helps explain why Rubin wrote his influential essay "Accumulative Sculpture: Power and Display" (Rubin 1974) for the Pace Gallery in New York City before publishing it in the contemporary art journal Art Forum (Rubin 1975). It would be several years before a messy divorce would separate private galleries selling "primitive arts" (or "tribal arts") and the academic world. This divorce was finalized as postcolonial theory pushed art historians (and the editors of African Arts) towards new discussions of professional ethics, fieldwork methods, and collection practices.Arnold Rubin may have been instrumental in moving african arts/arts d'afrique in a direction that was quite different from that originally envisioned by Povey and Poehl. His own, detailed study of Kutep mud sculpture in the first volume contained the publication's first endnotes (Rubin 1968). For its second volume, the magazine featured an extended study of Chokwe arts by Marie-Louise Bastin that spanned three issues and whose overview from the of most early Skip essays on appeared that as a new for critical of fieldwork Rubin's and a in on in the of the literature on and Robert Farris wrote his of African Arts was as a forum for research in the arts by art and other submissions were to as they would be at other journals (Ross Povey when from his editorial that despite its African Arts had became an academic publication in with the of a It could thus could more of a to the discipline of art how has this years ago, Doran Ross wrote a "First Word" in which he complained that "the arts of Africa to be in the world, the art the or the classroom … Even the most courses on African arts a at colleges and the Africanist who to have had the in the field of art history as a wrote in the vision of an to position and the of to the rather than the product of artistic to have been Yet by the of African art history more "African art … has collections and What might we in 2017, a decade are many ways to the of Africanist art historians within the American academic world, from positions of Africanists in art history programs or the number of courses we to the number of on African art published by university or the number of articles and reviews we have in the most The number of Africanists who art exhibitions as or curators might also be in addition to the many gallery art independent and whose academic to their in African art. Yet as faculty members at American college or university such might not us what we really wish to our in the art historical they not us much about or even we have had an the field as a I a the art history When Doran Ross and wrote their African artworks to art as of "primitive" Some African again in the on twentieth century European where they were by the of the where they had been of both of the leading for art history Art the by and Art include on African art that are with on or the The that will provide at to African in an in art history. of artworks from the African also in the of American school students need to for an Art History these on the work of Africanists to working in the on African art history, written almost in the by Skip Cole for Art the and and Roy for Art History have been for later in to provide student readers with a historical Povey might have of these which African art was of when the arts of other As several scholars have serious studies of historical developments in African art forms are few and far and the review was launched in part out of the with the of attention to historical context in African Arts and In many has not been on African artistic of the immediate or to such as (see But that may as art historians and other scholars new research and produce more For in Barbara Blackmun had very to draw when a in to for the family on the following (Fig. The was a But when agreed to for at a in (Fig. we could a literature on that the in historical perspective if the history of African art is in and classrooms so that Africa can become in of its inclusion offer students the opportunity to African artistic practices, and that provide them with new ways of looking and is "African its place in the that african arts/arts d'afrique as "graphic and plastic arts" in a collection of identified by artist, and in the today's African artists can be in such as Art which them into the discourse of global modern and contemporary art and on the of are we Arnold Rubin's of as art within a cultural And if we write articles in Art that showcase African studies of art historical are we to Arnold Rubin's vision of Africanist art history as recently wrote that he Rubin would be to that contributors to African Arts still hope to the discipline of art history, even if we are of how this can be

Tracks registration is influenced by the dynamic interplay between the pedal anatomy of the trackmaker, its behaviour, and the substrate conditions it interacts with. Differences in substrate conditions, especially those linked to grain size and moisture content, often result in the most dramatic variations in track morphology. In the upper Stormberg Group, main Karoo Basin of southern Africa, diverse trace fossils, primarily comprising Late Triassic–Early Jurassic dinosaur tracks, are preserved. Numerous studies have extensively documented individual ichnosites, investigating variations between sites over time, with recent studies suggesting that track abundance and anatomical fidelity increase up-stratigraphy. Despite the well-established link between substrate and track morphology, past studies have not specifically focused on substrate conditions, often emphasizing macro-sedimentary features instead. Here, we examine the micro-sedimentary features of track-bearing units in the upper Stormberg Group using petrographic techniques to better understand the palaeosubstrate and its effect on fossil track registration and preservation. The analysis revealed that very fine-grained sandstones and substrates modified by microbial activity tend to preserve tracks with greater abundance and/or higher anatomical fidelity. Furthermore, the prevalence of very fine-grained and microbially modified strata, and their associated track trends increases in younger stratigraphic units. Across the Triassic – Jurassic boundary in southern Africa, a boom in dinosaur track abundances is observed and credited to the proliferation of dinosaur populations during the Early Jurassic. Our findings, however, suggest that the observed local increase in track abundance (and anatomical fidelity) up-stratigraphy may be linked to substrate composition differences, which were ultimately controlled by large-scale changes in the palaeoenvironment from high-energy meandering fluvial to lower-energy aeolian-lacustrine settings in the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic, respectively. These findings have implications for global macroevolutionary patterns, palaeo-geographical reconstructions, and biostratigraphic correlations in the early Mesozoic.

Over the past quarter century the HIV virus has spread to all corners of the globe, resulting in one of the deadliest pandemics of modern times. Since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 70 million people have been infected with HIV and about half of them have died of AIDS. The pandemic has evolved rapidly and can be roughly divided into three phases. The first is the period of expansion from the mid-1980s through the late 1990s when the virus spread widely. The response then largely consisted of preventive measures such condom distribution. Next, in the early 2000s, as the cost of antiretroviral treatment (ART) dropped sharply, a massive global effort was initiated to make ART available in all countries. As a result, 17 million people worldwide are now on ART, about half of those who need it. In the latest phase, AIDS has evolved into a chronic disease in most countries, and several of the key epidemiological indicators have leveled off or declined. HIV/AIDS policy has moved from an emergency mode to an emphasis on sustainability and cost-effectiveness. In monitoring the pandemic, it is crucial to distinguish between cumulative and annual numbers. Cumulative estimates such as global numbers of deaths and infections continue to rise because new infections and AIDS deaths keep occurring. In contrast, the annual number of events have started to decline. For example, the number of AIDS deaths dropped from 2.0 million in 2005 to 1.1 million in 2015, accounting for 2 percent of all deaths in the latter year. HIV/AIDS is no longer in the top ten causes of global deaths. Annual new infections are also down from 3.5 million at the peak in 1997 to 2.1 million in 2015. This is good news, but the pandemic is far from over. The number of new infections has ceased to decline in the past three years and has leveled off at 2.1 million per year. This is nearly double the number of new AIDS-related deaths. As a result, the number of people living with HIV, now at 36.7 million, continues to rise. This volume takes an expert look at various economic dimensions of the epidemic. In successive sections the author examines the global health and economic impact, the global response, and the design and financing of HIV/AIDS policies. The most important impact of the epidemic is on health and mortality. In the hardest-hit countries in Southern Africa, with about one in five adults aged 15–49 infected, the death rate nearly doubled and life expectancy declined by two decades between the late 1980s and the peak of the pandemic. This unprecedented health shock is felt particularly at the individual and household level. In other sub-Saharan regions the pandemic has been less severe and, for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, the average HIV prevalence at its peak was only 5 percent, with a proportionally lower impact on mortality. In most of the developed world ART is now widely available and the AIDS death rate is low. For example, in the US the annual number of deaths from AIDS has dropped to 0.5 percent of all deaths. The adverse health impact and the humanitarian motive provided strong rationales for the international effort to halt the pandemic, but there were other motives as well. First, in the initial stages of the pandemic, there was fear within the developed world that HIV was a highly communicable virus threatening to leap to its shores. Global public-good logic demanded a stiff global response. That response has not occurred, but political interests were served. A second and still important reason for intervention was the poverty impact in the poorest afflicted countries. Past studies have demonstrated a strong association between rising life expectancy and economic performance that in part operates through the higher productivity of a healthier labor force. However, after an examination of the relevant evidence, the author concludes that the expected economic decline has not occurred (“the evidence for any impact of HIV/AIDS on GDP per capita is very weak”). As explicated in the book, the reason for this finding are not altogether clear. The global response to the epidemic has been unprecedented. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) was launched in 1995 to coordinate the HIV/AIDS–related activities of its co-sponsoring UN agencies. Its mandate was to organize the expanded global response to HIV/ AIDS and to achieve universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care, and support. The main impact of these efforts had to wait until the early 2000s when ART treatment became sufficiently affordable to allow its introduction into the poorest countries. The number of patients on ART in Africa was small in the early 2000s but reached 12.1 million in 2015. Gains were greatest in the continent's most-affected regions, Eastern and Southern Africa, where coverage of those in need increased from 24 percent in 2010 to 54 percent in 2015. The expansion of treatment to low-income countries became possible as a result of large-scale funding from the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), initiated by President George W. Bush, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. External resources to fund the global HIV/AIDS control effort rose sharply over time from $0.5 billion in the mid-1990s to $15.6 billion in 2016. But this flow of funding has stabilized in recent years. Prospects for further increases are not promising, as governments in the developed world are turning increasingly to domestic concerns. A second stream of funding for the epidemic consists of domestic resources, which have also risen over time and now constitute 57 percent of the total resources for HIV in low- and middle-income countries. Further increases in domestic resources will be needed to raise the coverage of ART, which still covers only half of those in need. The effects of this massive international intervention are evident in mortality statistics. The earlier large declines in life expectancy were reversed and individuals on ART can expect to live a near-normal life if treatment starts early and is continuous. While ART certainly deserves much credit for the decline in AIDS deaths, there is another and often neglected factor. Specifically, the number of new infections rose until the mid-1990s, peaked in 1997, and then declined. Since it takes on average about a decade between infection with HIV and an untreated AIDS death, one would expect to have seen a decline in AIDS deaths even in the absence of ART. Of course, the wide availability of ART accelerated the rate of decline in deaths. The reason for the peaking and subsequent drop in the annual number of new infections after 1997 remains a puzzle. The possible explanations offered here include the rapid early infection of the highest-risk populations, so that the remaining uninfected population became progressively lower-risk over time. In addition, it is likely that behavior change (e.g., condom use and reduction in the number of casual partners) played a role as the epidemic became better known (e.g., through an increase in AIDS funerals) and government efforts to promote HIV prevention became more prominent. Whatever the cause, the decline in the incidence of HIV was a key turning point in the epidemic. The international response to the pandemic has been the subject of extensive debate. The critics’ arguments are summarized in a provocative section entitled “Has the global HIV/AIDS response received too much money?” There are two main reasons for suggesting that overall health outcomes could be improved by diverting some fraction of HIV/AIDS funds to other health services: 1) the proportion of health funding allocated to HIV/AIDS is much higher than the pandemic's proportion of the global burden of disease, and 2) the cost-effectiveness of ART is considerably lower than for a number of other health interventions. The author does not dispute these points but simply asserts that the response to HIV/AIDS has been “effective but also expensive.” The book's third part deals with the design and financing of HIV/AIDS policies. It is more technical and primarily aimed at an audience of economists. The objective is to use cost-effectiveness analysis to design optimal HIV/AIDS strategies—a complex task that often involves computer models. A first difficulty is to decide what is to be optimized: HIV infections or AIDS deaths averted, life years lived, life expectancy, or economic indicators? Then there are a range of interventions available including prevention (condoms, male circumcision, treatment-as-prevention, mother-to-child transmission) and ART treatment. Another choice is whether to focus on core groups of high-risk individuals or on the general population. Moreover, epidemics differ among populations and one prescription does not fit all. Despite these complexities, the author reaches an important general conclusion: cost-effectiveness analysis models should have long time horizons. The importance of this is clear when one compares an investment in treatment of an AIDS patient, which gives an instantaneous result, with an investment in the prevention of an infection, which has very limited impact for years but then saves treatment costs for many years. With a short time horizon, prevention could receive too little attention. The complexity of the discussion of optimal strategies has led the international community to rally around a simple and clear goal referred to as the 90-90-90 initiative to end the pandemic. The objective for 2020 is that 90 percent of all people living with HIV will know their HIV status, 90 percent of all people with diagnosed HIV infection will receive sustained antiretroviral therapy, and 90 percent of all people receiving antiretroviral therapy will have experienced viral suppression. This effort puts treatment-as-prevention at its center. The author appears to be skeptical that this can be achieved. One of the most significant obstacles is to identify HIV-infected individuals (most of whom are asymptomatic) and persuade them to take ART for the rest of their lives. This will be very expensive. Other prevention approaches (condoms and male circumcision) are much more cost-effective than treatment-as-prevention. The large amounts of additional funding required for full implementation of 90-90-90 are also unlikely to be made available, since both international donor and within-country resources for HIV/AIDS are facing increasing competition from other pressing needs. This book's focus on economics makes it uniquely valuable and interesting for the mostly non-economist readers of this journal. Policymakers, program managers, and researchers will gain much new insight from the rich and thoughtful discussion. If there is a flaw, it is that the author—like US President Harry Truman's proverbial two-handed economist—is sometimes too evenhanded. He is so familiar with the literature that he can cite studies on both sides of any issue. This provides valuable information but sometimes leaves key issues unresolved. For example, by raising the question of whether we are spending too much on HIV/AIDS versus other health interventions, one can infer that this is at least a reasonable question to ask even though no clear answer is provided. On the issue of treatment-as-prevention, he states several times that it is expensive but offers no explicit critique of the 90-90-90 goals. This leaves this reader with the suspicion that we may not be on an optimal policy trajectory, despite the remarkable success of the global HIV/AIDS response in reversing epidemic mortality. In the meantime 2.1 million new infections continue to occur each year.

Introduction-Global malaria cases have drastically dropped in recent years, however there is still high incidence in sub-Saharan African countries. South Africa is mostly malaria-free, but northeastern provinces still have seasonal transmission of malaria. Past studies have reported various relationships between malaria and climatic factors. The aim of this study is to investigate patterns in malaria incidence in Limpopo and explore the association to climate conditions. Methods-Self-organizing maps were used to find patterns in malaria incidence based on case data. Composite analysis showed different climate patterns that associated to high and low incidence events. Classification methods were used to predict future malaria incidence. Results-Strong association of high malaria incidence to climate were found at varying lags. Interestingly significant association was seen with the rainfall of neighboring Mozambique at 2- to 4-months lag, as well as strong easterly winds over Mozambique Channel at 2-month lag, and drier conditions in Limpopo at 0- and 1-month lag. These provided optimal conditions for malaria incidence to reach higher rates during spring and lasting for consecutive seasons. Composite maps of sea surface temperature showed La Nina patterns in the tropical Pacific, which cause higher than normal rainfall over southern Africa. In contrast, seasons with low incidence were associated with considerably drier conditions at 2-month lag, and more westerly winds over southern Africa. Classification methods predicted events of high and low malaria incidence several months in advance. Conclusion-Links of malaria incidence to lagged climate patterns of temperatures in Limpopo, rainfall in Mozambique, zonal winds over the Mozambique Channel, and La Nina events suggest the importance of local climate as well as that of neighboring countries. This implies that there is a need for strengthening cross-border malaria control management to minimize the spread of malaria.

Popular concerns about blood-stealing, trade in body parts, surreptitious birth control and the deliberate spreading of disease are common across sub-Saharan Africa, and there are indications that they are becoming more common in pace with the process of deprivation that economic and political destructuring has, over the last quarter century, set in motion across most of the continent (Comaroff & Comaroff 2000). Such stories are commonly referred to as ‘rumours’ – by those who observe and dismiss them, but also by those who, usually with due scepticism, pass them on to others. With its connotation of hearsay and gossip, the term is often used in contrast to ‘truth’, much like the equally problematic distinction of ‘belief’ and ‘knowledge’. It is our aim in this paper to move beyond the dismissal of these stories as ‘mere’ rumour, based on erroneous belief or traditional superstition, and to appreciate them as modern commentaries on social relations that involve, and extend far beyond, scientific medical research. If we nevertheless use the words ‘rumour’, ‘story’ and ‘concern’ synonymously, we follow the historian Luise White’s understanding that rumours, such as vampire stories in 20th-century Africa, ‘are neither true nor false, in the sense that they do not have to be proven beyond their being talked about; but as they are told, they contain different empirical elements that carry different weights: stories are told with truths, commentaries, and statements of ignorance’ (White 2000). By telling these stories, relating them to empirical facts in a given locality and at a particular moment, and intertwining them with other seemingly unrelated tales, people make new connections and reveal hitherto unseen links, weaving wide, often global connections into local patterns of relatedness (Geissler 2005). When, below, we speak of ‘rumour’ we are not expressing our scepticism; rather, we are reflecting the scepticism of those who tell these stories: their ambiguity towards formations of knowledge and power that reach deep into their everyday lives, and which are set in a world order that provokes their doubts. Medical research and the ‘trial communities’ it constitutes by linking scientists and subjects, institutions and funders, media and publics, is one of the networks of global connections that has been particularly prolific in the generation of rumours (P.W. Geissler and C. Molyneux, in press). The sort of rumours mentioned above, particularly those about blood, are often directly related to medical research and health interventions. During 15 years of involvement in medical research in Africa we have repeatedly encountered such rumours. From friends and colleagues we have heard many more reports of such rumours, sometimes impeding recruitment to research, affecting adherence to interventions and even threatening the continuation of whole research projects while more commonly providing a background noise without direct impact (Geissler 2005; Molyneux et al. 2005a; Pool & Geissler 2005; Fairhead et al. 2006; for a rare note in a medical paper, see Nchito et al. 2003; for the potential detrimental impact of public debates see most recently Singh & Mills 2005). Most of these rumours follow a relatively limited number of themes, while also showing regional and locally specific variation. On a more general level they merge into related genres such as urban legends and oral traditions (Burke 1998; Ellis & Ter Haar 2001), Tropical Medicine and International Health doi:10.1111/j.1365-3156.2006.01682.x

Southern African historiography has become increasingly gender‐sensitive in the last decade. Primarily as a result of the impact of feminism in the world of work and in universities, research on women has burgeoned. The inclusion of women in the study of the past and the recognition of their agency has filled an important lacuna but also has made evident the corresponding gap in knowledge about men. The dominance of men in the public record has obscured the fact that little is known about masculinity. Men have generally been treated in essentialist terms. The socially constructed nature of masculinity is widely acknowledged and it is this insight that needs to be applied to a study of the region's history. This article introduces readers to the inter‐disciplinary work on masculinity, reviews how research on gender in South Africa has handled issues of men and masculinity and then suggests how insights taken from Men's Studies might help to broaden gender analysis and enrich the study of the South African past. In this article, a range of masculinities is identified. Colonialism created new and transformed existing masculinities. Race and class featured prominently in the configuration of these masculinities. Under colonialism positions of domination and subordination were created along the lines of race, bequeathing to the region the language of white men and black ‘boys’. The particular trajectory of colonialism ended the political independence of the indigenous polities and destroyed their economic independence but the success of the defeated polities in retaining possession of land and of the policies of segregation and apartheid meant that key African institutions survived. These were the basis for an African masculinity that in certain geographical and social areas disputed hegemony with white masculinities.

Previous articleNext article No AccessDiscussion and CriticismOxen or Onions? The Search for Trade (and Truth) in the KalahariRichard Lee and Mathias GuentherRichard Lee Search for more articles by this author and Mathias Guenther Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Current Anthropology Volume 32, Number 5Dec., 1991 Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/204006 Views: 10Total views on this site Citations: 28Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1991 The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological ResearchPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Tim Forssman An Archaeological Contribution to the Kalahari Debate from the Middle Limpopo Valley, Southern Africa, Journal of Archaeological Research 30, no.33 (Jun 2021): 447–495.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-021-09166-0Akira Takada Pragmatic reframing from distress to playfulness: !Xun caregiver responses to infant crying, Journal of Pragmatics 181 (Aug 2021): 180–195.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.05.021Mark Dyble, Andrea Bamberg Migliano, Abigail E. Page, Daniel Smith Relatedness within and between Agta residential groups, Evolutionary Human Sciences 3 (Sep 2021).https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2021.46Alan Barnard Bushmen, 1 (Jul 2019).https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108289603 Byung-Soo Seol San Society in Botswana Facing with the Crisis of Dissolution: The Influence of Ethnic Dynamics and Development Policy, Journal of the Korean Association of African Studies 55, no.11 (Dec 2018): 131–170.https://doi.org/10.35751/af.2018.55..005Robert K. Hitchcock Discontinuities in ethnographic time: A view from Africa, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 46 (Jun 2017): 12–27.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2016.09.002Paul Sillitoe The Knowing in Indigenous Knowledge: Alternative Ways to View Development, Largely from a New Guinea Highlands’ Perspective, (Jan 2016): 129–163.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21900-4_7Robert Hitchcock The Contributions of Richard B. Lee to Anthropology, Ethnoarchaeology, and Indigenous Peoples' Studies, Ethnoarchaeology 4, no.22 (Jul 2013): 226–260.https://doi.org/10.1179/eth.2012.4.2.226Richard O. Clemmer Pristine Aborigines or Victims of Progress? The Western Shoshones in the Anthropological Imagination Clemmer, Current Anthropology 50, no.66 (Jul 2015): 849–881.https://doi.org/10.1086/646607John Parkington, Simon Hall The Appearance of Food Production in Southern Africa 1,000 to 2,000 Years Ago, (Nov 2009): 63–111.https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521517942.003Mathias Guenther Meanderings and musings in the field of San and hunter-gatherer studies, Before Farming 2009, no.44 (Jan 2009): 1–8.https://doi.org/10.3828/bfarm.2009.4.3Peter R. Schmidt, Jonathan R. Walz Re-Representing African Pasts through Historical Archaeology, American Antiquity 72, no.11 (Jan 2017): 53–70.https://doi.org/10.2307/40035298Edward Eastwood Shared symbols, Before Farming 2007, no.11 (Jan 2007): 1–22.https://doi.org/10.3828/bfarm.2007.1.2Robert Hitchcock, Wayne Babchuk Kalahari San foraging, land use, and territoriality, Before Farming 2007, no.33 (Jan 2007): 1–14.https://doi.org/10.3828/bfarm.2007.3.3Richard Borshay Lee Twenty-first century indigenism, Anthropological Theory 6, no.44 (Jul 2016): 455–479.https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499606071597Alan Barnard Kalahari revisionism, Vienna and the‘indigenous peoples’ debate*, Social Anthropology 14, no.11 (Jan 2007): 1–16.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8676.2006.tb00020.xSibel B. Kusimba What Is a Hunter-Gatherer? Variation in the Archaeological Record of Eastern and Southern Africa, Journal of Archaeological Research 13, no.44 (Dec 2005): 337–366.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-005-5111-yCARMEL SCHRIRE THE CONCILIATORS: BUSHMANIA AND THE NIGHTMARE OF SURVIVAL, Visual Anthropology Review 19, no.1-21-2 (Jan 2008): 160–166.https://doi.org/10.1525/var.2003.19.1-2.160Kathleen D. Morrison, Laura L. Junker Forager-Traders in South and Southeast Asia, 3 (Sep 2009).https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511489631Renee Sylvain "Land, Water, and Truth": San Identity and Global Indigenism, American Anthropologist 104, no.44 (Dec 2002): 1074–1085.https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.2002.104.4.1074Christer Norström 5. Increasing competition, expanding strategies—Wage work and resource utilization among the Paliyans of South India, (Apr 2015): 66–87.https://doi.org/10.3362/9781780445403.005Pnina Motzafi-Haller Beyond Textual Analysis: Practice, Interacting Discourses, and the Experience of Distinction in Botswana, Cultural Anthropology 13, no.44 (Nov 1998): 522–547.https://doi.org/10.1525/can.1998.13.4.522Richard B. Lee Anthropology at the crossroads: From the age of ethnography to the age of World systems, Social Dynamics 24, no.11 (Jan 1998): 34–65.https://doi.org/10.1080/02533959808458640PNINA MOTZAFI-HALLER when Bushmen are known as Basarwa: gender, ethnicity, and differentiation in rural Botswana, American Ethnologist 21, no.33 (Oct 2009): 539–563.https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1994.21.3.02a00050SCOTT RUSHFORTH political resistance in a contemporary hunter-gatherer society: more about Bearlake Athapaskan knowledge and authority, American Ethnologist 21, no.22 (Oct 2009): 335–352.https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1994.21.2.02a00060David Simon, Heike Schmidt Book reviews, Journal of Southern African Studies 19, no.11 (Mar 1993): 166–170.https://doi.org/10.1080/03057079308708353Richard B. Lee, Mathias Guenther Problems in Kalahari Historical Ethnography and the Tolerance of Error, History in Africa 20 (May 2014): 185–235.https://doi.org/10.2307/3171972Kathleen D. Morrison Foragers and forager-traders in South Asian worlds: Some thoughts from the last 10,000 years, (): 321–339.https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-5562-5_14

A number of previous modeling studies have assessed the implications of projected CO2‐induced climate change for future terrestrial ecosystems. However, although current understanding of possible long‐term response of vegetation to elevated CO2 and CO2‐induced climate change in some geographical areas (e.g., the high‐latitude regions) has been strengthened by dint of accumulating evidence from these past studies, it is still weak in others. This study examines the responses of global potential natural vegetation distribution, net primary production (NPP), and fire emissions to future changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration and climate using the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Land Model's dynamic global vegetation model. The model is run to vegetative equilibrium (i.e., with respect to leaf area index (LAI) and vegetation coverage) driven with preindustrial climate and future climate near 2100, respectively, simulated by eight general circulation models (GCMs). The simulated potential vegetation under the preindustrial control mean climate (CO2 concentration held at 275 ppm) is compared with that under the SRESA1B 2100 mean climate (CO2 concentration stabilizes at 720 ppm beyond 2100). Simulated vegetation response ranges from mild changes of the fractional coverage of different plant functional types to the rather dramatic changes of dominant plant functional types. Although such response differs significantly across different GCM climate projections, a quite consistent spatial pattern emerges, characterized by a considerable poleward spread or shift of temperate and boreal forests in the Northern Hemisphere high latitudes, and a substantial degradation of vegetation type in the tropics (e.g., increase of drought deciduous trees coverage at the expense of evergreen trees) especially in portions of West and southern Africa and South America. Despite the widespread degradation of vegetation type in the tropics, NPP, and growing season LAI are predicted to increase under most GCM scenarios over most of the globe. Carbon fluxes to the atmosphere due to fire generally increase too across the globe. Such responses of NPP and fire occurrence result from the synergistic effects of CO2 concentration changes, climate changes, and vegetation changes. In the HadCM‐driven simulation, however, extreme responses are shown in some regions: Deciduous forest is replaced by grasses in large areas in the middle latitudes, and substantial areas in northern South America and southern Africa predominantly covered by evergreen forest are replaced with grasses while NPP and fire emissions reduce drastically (by more than 100%). A future paper will examine how the biosphere response documented here influences the impact of climate change on surface hydrological conditions.

Shortwave direct aerosol radiative forcing (DARF) is derived at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) and at the surface under clear‐sky, cloudy‐sky, and all‐sky conditions using data of space‐borne CALIOP lidar and MODIS sensor. We investigate four scenarios for evaluating the DARF: clear‐sky, the case that aerosols exist above clouds, the case that aerosols exist below high‐level clouds, and the case that aerosols are not detected by CALIOP in cloudy‐sky condition. The cloudy‐sky DARF is estimated by the latter three scenarios. The all‐sky DARF is the combination of clear‐sky and cloudy‐sky DARF weighted by the cloud occurrence. They are then compared with DARF calculated by a global aerosol model, SPRINTARS. The results show that the TOA forcing over desert regions caused by dust with single scattering albedo (SSA) of 0.92 is positive regardless of cloud existence, due to high solar surface albedo. Off southern Africa, smoke aerosols with SSA of 0.84 above low‐level clouds are observed and simulated and the annual mean TOA cloudy‐sky DARF is estimated at more than +3 Wm−2, consistent with past studies. Aerosols with SSA of 0.96 within optically thin clouds cause a TOA negative forcing, while that within optically thick clouds cause a TOA positive forcing. This indicates that aerosols within optically thick clouds cause positive forcing in our radiative transfer calculation, regardless of SSA. Annual zonal averages of DARF from 60°S to 60°N under clear‐sky, cloudy‐sky, and all‐sky are −2.97, +0.07, and −0.61 Wm−2 from CALIOP and −2.78, +1.07, and −0.58 Wm−2 from SPRINTARS.

Use of inoculant-based technologies in legume production has been practiced for over a century but in Africa, the technology is relatively new and especially to smallholder farmers. The introduction of these technologies has enabled increased legume productivity as well as increased soil fertility in other countries. The inoculant-based technologies have been disseminated in Western Kenya by various organizations and projects including: Sustainable Intensification of Maize-Legume cropping systems for food security in Eastern and Southern Africa (SIMLESA) project through the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO)-Kakamega and Embu, Nitrogen 2 Africa (N2AFRICA), United States Department of Agriculture- National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA), and Non-governmental organizations such as Appropriate Rural Development Agriculture Program (ARDAP). The dissemination targeted several counties including Bungoma, Busia and Kakamega. While past studies have assessed the adoption of inoculant technology as a single package, the effect of different inoculant- based technologies on bean yield remains unknown. There is also lack of information on the role inoculant-based technologies on bean output market participation. This study examined the use and effect of inoculant-based technologies on smallholder field bean farm households in western Kenya. A multivariate probit (MVP) model was applied to assess factors affecting farmers‟ decision on use of alternative inoculant-based technologies. In v addition, a Tobit regression was estimated to assess the effect of the use of inoculant-based technologies on household output commercialization, measured by the share of sales, among project participating households and non-participating households. Data was collected from 248 farmers stratified by participation in projects that promote inoculant-based technologies. The information was collected in August and September 2014 and included farm and farmer characteristics; household endowment with physical, financial, social and human capital; market participation and institutional factors; field bean production and input usage; and farmer knowledge/awareness and information sources. Descriptive results indicate that years of experience, total value of non-land assets and distance to the road significantly and positively affected adoption at 1percent, 5percent and 10percent error level respectively. Out of the five inoculant-based technologies demonstrated to farmers, only three were found to be widely adopted. These are: inoculant only, inoculant and farm yard manure and inoculant and fertilizer. Results from the multivariate probit regression analysis showed that the distance to agricultural extension office, group membership, project participation, wealth (proxied by the total value of non-land assets), age and gender significantly affected the use of the inoculant-based technologies. The Tobit regression analysis results showed that transaction costs (proxied by the distance to group office and group and project participation), age, years of schooling, totals assets, access to information (proxied by extension visits) and total bean production area significantly influenced the commercialization of beans by the small holder farmers.

Shortwave direct aerosol radiative forcing (SWDARF) at the top-of the atmosphere (TOA) under clear-sky, cloudy-sky, and all-sky conditions are calculated using data of space-borne CALIOP lidar and MODIS sensor and simulation result of a global aerosol model, SPRINTARS. We investigate four scenarios for evaluating the SWDARF using both an observational and model approach: clear-sky, the case that aerosols exist above clouds, the case that aerosols exist below high-level clouds, and the case that aerosols are not detected by CALIOP in cloudy-sky condition. The cloudy-sky SWDARF is estimated by the latter three scenarios. The all-sky SWDARF is the combination of clearsky and cloudy-sky SWDARF weighted by the cloud occurrence. The results show that the TOA forcing over desert regions caused by dust with single scattering albedo (SSA) of 0.92 is positive regardless of cloud existence, due to high solar surface albedo. Off southern Africa, smoke aerosols with SSA of 0.84 above low-level clouds are observed and simulated and the annual mean cloudy-sky SWDARF is estimated at more than +2 Wm−2, as consistent with past studies. Annual zonal averages of SWDARF from 60°S to 60°N under clear-sky, cloudy-sky, and all-sky are −3.72, −1.13, and −2.07 Wm−2 from CALIOP, and −2.78, +1.07, and −0.58 Wm−2 from SPRINTARS. The difference of aerosol loading and occurrence probability in the case that aerosols exist above clouds changes the sign of all-sky and cloudy-sky SWDARF.

The study of the archaeology of farming communities in southern Africa is an inherently political activity but there has been little critical analysis of the role of social context in forming problems and in shaping answers. It is argued in this chapter that the history of Iron Age research south of the Zambezi shows the prevalent influence of colonial ideologies, both in the earliest speculations about the nature of the African past and in the adaptations that have been made to contemporary archaeological methodologies in their application to the subcontinent. Concepts such as ethnicity have acquired specific meanings in southern Africa that contrast with the use of similar ideas in other contexts such as Australasia. Such relativity reinforces the view that specific, detailed critiques of archaeological practice in differing social environments are necessary for an understanding of the manner in which the present shapes the past. In those countries where descendants of the colonizers mostly practise the archaeology of those colonized, the study of the past must have a political dimension. This has become overt in Australasia where, as one Aboriginal representative has put it, the colonizers ‘have tried to destroy our culture, you have built your fortunes upon the lands and bodies of our people and now, having said sorry, want a share in picking out the bones of what you regard as a dead past’ (Langford 1983: 2). In African countries, such opinions have been less explicit and consequently archaeologists have not frequently been faced with political accountability. Schmidt (1983) points out that there is some awareness that the intellectual constructs of Western archaeologists may have little meaning to African communities, but current literature describing research south of the Zambezi River of precolonial farming societies (by convention, termed the Iron Age) shows little acknowledgement that the social environment of the investigator may play a part in defining issues and colouring interpretations, or indeed, that the results themselves may have diverse political implications.

The study of the archaeology of farming communities in southern Africa is an inherently political activity but there has been little critical analysis of the role of social context in forming problems and in shaping answers. It is argued in this paper that the history of Iron Age research south of the Zambezi shows the prevalent influence of colonial ideologies, both in the earliest speculations about the nature of the African past and in the adaptations that have been made to contemporary archeological methodologies in their application to the subcontinent. Concepts such as ethnicity have acquired specific meanings in southern Africa that contrast with the use of similar ideas in other contexts such as Australasia. Such relativity reinforces the view that specific, detailed critiques of archaeological practice in differing social environments are necessary for an understanding of the manner in which the present shapes the past.