African Archaeology Research Articles

Toward a politicised interpretation ethic in African archaeology

Following the Foucauldian, post-colonial and archaeological post-processual critiques of knowledge construction and more recent calls for a political ethic in archaeology, this paper furthers this discussion by advocating the introduction of a ‘politicised interpretation publication ethic’ in African archaeology. This is a response to a survey of recent African archaeology publications that suggests that ethics and politics continue to be removed from archaeological interpretation. The archaeology-as-science ethic is subsequently critiqued through a brief review of two famous African archaeology examples: the controversy over Great Zimbabwe and the practice of archaeology in apartheid period South Africa. Finally, the problematic archaeology-as-science ethic in pre-genocide Rwanda is outlined and the ethical creation of archaeology today in a post-genocide situation considered as the paper moves toward a discussion of what a ‘politicised interpretation publication ethic’ might look like in contemporary African archaeology.

Ethics in African archaeology

As custodians of an important section of Africa's past and advocates for the value of the past in the present/future, archaeologists working in universities, museums and heritage agencies or as commercial consultants are in positions of high responsibility. Most often neither the scale of the work involved, nor its significance, are matched adequately by the number of people employed or the level of remuneration. Archaeologists struggle under recurrently difficult working conditions and yet manage to deliver astonishing levels of service across Africa. This paper considers best practice in African archaeology and then asks whether this is being achieved in all sectors of the archaeological discipline. It considers the set of ethical values that should underpin good practice in African archaeology and the actions that need to be taken to enact these values more widely.

Introduction: de-centring ethical assumptions by re-centring ethical debate in African archaeology

Institute for Culture and Society, School of Social Sciences and Psychology, University of Western Sydney, Penrith, New South Wales 2751, Australia; School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 36 Beaumont Street, Oxford, OX1 2PG, United Kingdom and Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, PO Wits 2050, Johannesburg, South Africa; Archaeology, School of Social Sciences, University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia 6009, Australia and GAES, University of the Witwatersrand, PO Wits 2050, Johannesburg, South Africa

Contract archaeology in South Africa: some ethical concerns

While contract archaeology has played a significant role in South Africa, a number of ethical concerns have become evident over the years. How enabling are the legal frameworks to contract archaeologists? Whose interest are contract archaeologists serving? How well do they consult affected parties in their work? How well do they communicate their findings, with their colleagues and the public at large? What, if any, has been the role of contract archaeologists in the transformation of South African archaeology? How effective is the current accreditation system run by the Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists (ASAPA) for contract archaeology in ensuring that specialists operate within fields in which they are experienced? This paper addresses these concerns, focusing on the ethical elements relating to contract archaeology. The aim is to illustrate that while current legislation may have gone some way toward promoting the inclusion of previously excluded communities in the management of heritage resources membership of professional bodies by contract archaeologists still does not best enhance this. ASAPA's failure to ensure that all its members abide by its code of conduct is a cause for concern and it should take steps to improve this situation.

Saint Augustine of Hippo: An Intellectual Biography by Miles Hollingworth (review)

Reviewed by: Saint Augustine of Hippo: An Intellectual Biography by Miles Hollingworth Gerard O’Daly Saint Augustine of Hippo: An Intellectual Biography. By Miles Hollingworth. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2013. Pp. xx, 312. $29.95. ISBN 978-0-19-986159-0. Also available as an ebook and in Oxford Scholarship Online.) This new book on St. Augustine has to compete with some seriously good predecessors. Biographies of Augustine are of necessity also “intellectual biographies,” engaging with the development of his thought and the controversies in which he was involved. In English alone there are Peter Brown’s classic Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley, 1967, rev. 2000), which inaugurates the modern attempt to understand Augustine the individual in his life and times, and Henry Chadwick’s two short masterly studies (Augustine: A Very Short Introduction, new ed., New York, 2001; Augustine of Hippo: A Life, New York, 2009), crammed with discerning detail on his culture and theological development. In addition, Garry Wills’s Saint Augustine (New York, 1999) does eloquent justice to the man and the thinker in under 150 pages—an ideal introduction—whereas James O’Donnell’s Augustine: A New Biography (New York, 2005) is refreshingly iconoclastic and irreverent, a critical study that is firmly rooted in profound knowledge of Augustine’s writings and environment. Serge Lancel (St. Augustine, London, 2002) combines expertise in North African archaeology and history of the fourth and fifth centuries with deep knowledge of the texts, in what is perhaps now the most rounded biography of the great man. What does Hollingworth offer us? His preface provides a foretaste. He writes of the danger that Augustine puts you into as a reader … he will always begin in some ground that you share with him and thought was safe— then he’ll start pointing out the booby-traps, one by one, until the fear you taste is real, adrenal, metallic. (p. xi) But even if those of us who have failed to have goosebumps while reading Augustine are willing to let Hollingworth argue his case, the book does not deliver. Hollingworth is at his best in discussing those parts of the Confessions where Augustine deals with the themes of friendship, death, loss, and agonized conversion. In general, he is keener on anguish than on argument. This is a pity, for one of the fascinating aspects of Augustine’s writing is the way in which he can switch from narration of emotional processes to acute analysis. Hollingworth has it in for the philosophers who have, or may have, influenced Augustine, not least because he accepts at face value Augustine’s polemic against them. But Augustine’s attitude to his pagan cultural heritage is ambiguous and complex. While distancing himself from pagan thinkers and hence from his own past, he can at the same time borrow and build on their arguments—consider, for instance, his development of the theme of the self-thinking human intellect in On The Trinity. Why are some Christian theologians so nervous about labeling as Platonic those elements in Augustine’s thought that are evidently Platonic? Failure to engage with Augustine’s cultural background and development, to appreciate the generic codes of his writings, [End Page 323] or to recognize their apologetic or polemical nature leads Hollingworth to read Augustine too literally. Yet he has a good ear for the appropriate quotation, of which there are many in the book, privileging Augustine’s preaching voice. The book’s principal theme is central to Augustine’s theology: the human search for the divine and for some form of communion with God. Hollingworth writes eloquently and passionately about this, and it provides the real drama of his vivid account—it makes some sense of his assertion that Augustine often writes like a novelist. But he spoils his narrative by over-earnest appeals to the reader to accept the Christianity that he finds in Augustine as the one ideology that can satisfy all human psychological needs. Nor does it help that he engages in a persistent quasi-postmodernist polemic against the rational elements in historical scholarship. Here is a revealing statement: “The creeping, careful accuracy of scholarship has a side-effect on Augustine which a book...

An archaeological search for the emergence of early humans in West Africa

Fossils of early humans and their ancestors dating back to millions of years have not yet been found in West Africa. Tools made of bones, stones, and wood suggesting use by early humans or their ancestors have however been found in some parts of West Africa. This research investigates the possible origins and West African indigenous influences on the manufacture and use of these tools. The purpose of this research is to stimulate interest into the study of West African archaeology and palaeontology.

Rediscovering Community Archaeology in Africa and Reframing its Practice

Community archaeology and heritage work have a long history in Africa, a history embedded in the practice of ethnoarchaeology, studies of indigenous knowledge systems, and the collaborative study of oral traditions and other intangible heritage. This paper reviews some of the intellectual legacies that foreground community approaches today in Africa. Whilst top-down approaches have tended to characterize many projects in recent history, the requirements of outside development agencies often force archaeologists into collaborative compliance that communities are not ready to embrace or where histories of land alienation complicate best efforts to engage communities. An alternative community approach arising from a grassroots initiative in Northwest Tanzania is discussed to illustrate how collaboration may lead to mutual research and heritage development that contribute new knowledge to African history and archaeology and improve community well-being.

An Archaeological Investigation of the Kirfi Area, Northern Nigeria: Craft, Identity and Landscape

This doctoral research presents the first sustained archaeological investigation of Kirfi, Bauchi state, northern Nigeria. As part of this work, test pits were excavated at three sites and research was carried out into modern craft practices. These yielded good chronological sequence and allowed the development of a pioneering pottery typology. One central question explored is to what degree the Hausa world just to the north-west of the study area impacted on Kirfi in the past 1000 years. It is argued that theories of technological styles and society can be usefully deployed to understand cultural developments and territorial expansion in African societies. Ideas about economic systems, settlement and social factors resulting in population movements and the definition of cultural identities are key to exploring the complex cultural make- up of the last millennium. I also show that oral tradition is valuable to studies of later African societies when carefully critiqued, in view of the dearth of early written and historical scripts. This thesis will also show how external influences were to alter a native system by the integration of Islam into the socio-political development of Kirfi, including it in a world system that shaped the evolution of the Bauchi region, which then became a principal actor in the spread of a political system in the early part of the 19th century after the jihad of Shehu Uthman Fodio. The influence of Islam (as opposed to formerly practiced ritual systems), long distance trading systems and the role of slaves as a commodity, ‘Hausaness’, craft and economic specialisations are all put forward as factors that played out in the settlements under study here. This finally transformed ancient socio-political systems leading to the ways of life of today. It is hoped that the present research, through its collaborative use of archaeological methods and ethnoarchaeological study, will help improve our understanding of an area that has up to now been a virtual terra incognita and make a wider contribution to African archaeology by interpreting the impact of ‘Hausaisation’ on the southern Bauchi area.

Gordon John Howes 1938-2013 (Fish Systematist)

Gordon John Howes 1938-2013 (Fish Systematist)

Fearless Archaeologist: Susan Kent’s Vision for Ethnoarchaeology

Susan Kent was a remarkable archaeologist who died in 2003 at the age of 50. That she died in her hotel room in Milwaukee while attending the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) meetings rather adds to her mystique leading Kehoe (2006) to refer to her as an ‘anomalous archaeologist.’ In the decade since her death, the American Anthropological Association published a special volume on Sue Kent and her work in their Archaeological Papers series (Ashmore et al. 2006), containing numerous tributes to her and retrospectives on her life and work. It is hard to imagine that anything else needs to be said, but Susan Kent was truly a classic whose work dominates ethnoarchaeology, and she is most deserving of being placed permanently in the pantheon of ethnoarchaeological forebears in the Ethnoarchaeology Classics series. I had the pleasure of knowing Sue, although I did not know her well. Obviously, I knew her work and had heard her give papers at conferences, but I first started speaking with her when she invited me to present a paper in her session on gender at the Society of Africanist Archaeologists meetings in 1996. I was unable to attend the conference but I did contribute a chapter to what would become her edited volume Gender in African Prehistory (Kent 1998a). Sue ran the editorship of the book like a military campaign, demanding that all contributors meet strict deadlines and threatening them with expulsion if they did not comply. At this point Sue had a lot of excellent edited volumes under her belt. She seems to always have had the power to draw big names to her volumes, a power that encouraged everyone to comply with her orders, especially junior scholars like me who were anxious to be associated with the luminaries. In those days, email was just beginning and much of Sue’s cajoling and threatening had to be done by regular mail and by phone. Sue had very little financial support at Old Dominion University, and she had to pay for all her long distance phone calls and all her mail out of her own pocket, making her dedication to producing edited volumes all the more impressive. When I discovered this, I called her back whenever she phoned me so that we could talk at length on my institution’s dime. Sue was full of ideas, a lively conversationalist and very funny. She was a terrifically generous colleague, very interested in networking people, and I have her to thank for several introductions and opportunities that have come my way. The shadow over her life however, was her state of chronic ill health. In the mid 1990s

Is monumentality in the eye of the beholder? Lessons from constructed spaces in Africa

Archaeological investigations in Africa have revealed numerous structures and other architectural features whose purposes transcended daily domestic activities. Compared to prototypical instances of monumental architecture (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, the Andes), many public structures in Africa appear in unusual economic circumstances (herding without farming) or amidst less extreme social differentiation. Although often smaller in scale and employing different structural elements, African constructions combine open and restricted spaces to shape human experience. Examining these public structures and spaces is leading Africanist archaeologists, like those on other continents, to reconsider definitions of monumentality, the causes for its inception and the purposes that it served.

Early monumentality in North America: another comparative perspective for Africa

This article briefly considers early monumental constructions in North America, including Mesoamerica, presenting similarities and differences with the African examples in this special issue. Comparing monumentality in Africa with another major world area expands the potential types of archaeologically visible processes involved in building monumental or quasi-monumental structures, while still recognising their different material and historical trajectories. Such comparison reveals the great variety of types of monumental constructions and of the theoretical approaches that are being engaged to investigate them. What the selected examples of early North American monumentality discussed here have in common, which can be of value for African archaeologists, is attention to building as a form of social practice, rather than to the design forms or functions of built structures, or the intentions of their makers.

Animal Genetics and African Archaeology: Why It Matters

This article introduces the special issue of African Archaeological Review on the relevance of African livestock genetics to archaeology on the continent. It shows how modern and ancient animal genetic research in Eurasia has substantially revised archaeological scenarios for the origins and spread of food production there. It argues that, in contrast to colleagues in Europe and Asia, Africanist archaeologists have generally been slow to engage in truly collaborative research with archaeogeneticists, with some notable exceptions. It builds a case that animal introductions and domestication are as much social, cultural, and economic processes as they are ecological in nature. Through examples, it outlines some profound selective effects that animal keeping has had on humans themselves. Building on the concepts of taste and embodied practice in Stahl’s (2002) discussion of artifacts and differently scaled encounters with non-local commerce, it develops suggestions for archaeologically studying genetically distinctive domestic animals as part of local and long-distance economic systems. Finally, it comments on the issue’s review articles and offers suggestions for ways to encourage stronger collaboration between archaeologists and genetic researchers.

Marijke Van der Veen, Consumption, Trade and Innovation. Exploring the Botanical Remains from the Roman and Islamic Ports at Quseir al-Qadim, Egypt (Journal of African Archaeology Monograph Series 6)

Marijke Van der Veen, Consumption, Trade and Innovation. Exploring the Botanical Remains from the Roman and Islamic Ports at Quseir al-Qadim, Egypt (Journal of African Archaeology Monograph Series 6)

Vers Une Réduction Des Préjugés et la Fonte Des Antagonismes: Un Bilan de L'expansion de la Métallurgie du Fer En Afrique Sud-Saharienne

E. Zangato’s 2007 book on the Oboui archaeological site in the Central African Republic has been read and commented. This contextualised reading leads to questioning some of the data published in the Journal of African Archaeology in 2010. At that time a very old date for the earliest iron smelting south of the Sahara was suggested. However, a detailed examination of chronological data from West, Central and East Africa leads one to date the more robust evidence for the start of iron smelting after 800 cal BC. Furthermore, important ideas are brought up, amongst others, about the reliability of radiocarbon dating, the required degree of accuracy during archaeological field work and problems of stratigraphy.

Some Thoughts on a ‘Useable’ African Archaeology: Settlement, Population and Intensive Farming among the Pokot of Northwest Kenya

The desirability of a ‘useable’ African past which engages with the social and economic conditions of the present has been expressed many times but has yet to be fully realised. This paper presents new archaeological data on long-term settlement, demography and land-use in the Pokot region of northwest Kenya which engages with a number of present-day socio-economic and development concerns.

Graham Connah: an archaeologist's life in Africa and in Australia

This special issue of Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa contains papers written in honour of Graham Connah, one of the most widely known and widely respected of Africanist archaeologists an...

Diverse connections: the 21st conference of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists, Toronto, 20–23 June 2012

Diverse connections: the 21st conference of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists, Toronto, 20–23 June 2012

Decolonial Challenges and Post-Genocide Archaeological Politics in Rwanda

This paper narrates in an autobiographical manner PhD research regarding pre-colonial Rwandan archaeology and its contemporary socio-political relevance. The paper reflects on the decolonial challenge that inspired the research and the ways in which, and reasons why, the research fell short of achieving its decolonial aims. In response to this complex personal, national, and disciplinary case study, the paper questions activist archaeologies and suggests that, whilst political engagement remains essential, the outcomes of well-intentioned approaches may actually perpetuate the undesirable political paradigms they seek to challenge. In conclusion, the paper proposes a hybrid set of decolonial responses that might be usefully employed in African Archaeology and the colonial discipline of archaeology more broadly.

African Archaeology, Multidisciplinary Reconstructions of Africa’s Recent Past, and Archaeology’s Role in Future Collaborative Research

African Archaeology, Multidisciplinary Reconstructions of Africa’s Recent Past, and Archaeology’s Role in Future Collaborative Research