Material Explorations in African Archaeology

Material Explorations in African Archaeology
Author: Timothy Insoll
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2015
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199550069

How people engaged with materials such as clay or stone, why people dug features such as pits, why they decorated their bodies, or treated their dead in certain ways, were all meaningful in the African past. However, these are subjects that have been generally neglected by archaeologists working in Africa until recently. Material Explorations in African Archaeology examines materiality in African archaeology by exploring concepts of material agency and material engagement and entanglement in relation to their manifest presence in persons, animals, objects, substances, and contexts. It investigates the magnificent and complex world of past African materiality by considering a range of case studies. These include, for example, why standing stones were erected, the potential meanings of bodily alteration practices such as scarification and dental modification, and why, recurrently, Africans in the past gave ritual importance to objects, materials, and locations thought of as exotic or different. Adopting a multidisciplinary focus, the volume draws not only on archaeology but also, among other areas, ethnography and history, discussing themes such as bodies, landscape, healing and medicine, and divination, as well as concepts such as memory and biography, transformation, and metaphor and metonym.

Material Explorations in African Archaeology

Material Explorations in African Archaeology
Author: Timothy Insoll
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2015-10-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0191062227

How people engaged with materials such as clay or stone, why people dug features such as pits, why they decorated their bodies, or treated their dead in certain ways, were all meaningful in the African past. However, these are subjects that have been generally neglected by archaeologists working in Africa until recently. Material Explorations in African Archaeology examines materiality in African archaeology by exploring concepts of material agency and material engagement and entanglement in relation to their manifest presence in persons, animals, objects, substances, and contexts. It investigates the magnificent and complex world of past African materiality by considering a range of case studies. These include, for example, why standing stones were erected, the potential meanings of bodily alteration practices such as scarification and dental modification, and why, recurrently, Africans in the past gave ritual importance to objects, materials, and locations thought of as exotic or different. Adopting a multidisciplinary focus, the volume draws not only on archaeology but also, among other areas, ethnography and history, discussing themes such as bodies, landscape, healing and medicine, and divination, as well as concepts such as memory and biography, transformation, and metaphor and metonym.

Spatial Approaches in African Archaeology

Spatial Approaches in African Archaeology
Author: Cameron Gokee
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2023-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9811973806

This book explores the interplay between African archaeology and geospatial methods from three broad perspectives. First, several contributors examine the technical possibilities and limits of using satellite imagery to detect archaeological sites and model their physical environs. A second perspective is the integration of new geospatial data and methods into site- and landscape-scale analyses to better address questions about social organization and subjective experience in African pasts. A final perspective considers the interplay between geospatial technologies and community archaeology in Africa. Recognizing that GIS and RS supersede traditional divisions in African archaeology, such as different periods, geographic regions, and theoretical orientations, the chapters aim to be widely applicable. Arranged by methodological emphasis, the case studies move from technical discussions of specific geospatial tools to general applications for addressing specific sociohistorical topics. Each chapter clearly explains the links between their archaeological questions and analytical methods, as well as how their results advance our understanding of African pasts and heritage resources. Many of the chapters can serve as learning models for archaeologists who are new to GIS or curious about its applications to their work. Others represent recent advances in geospatial applications of greater interest to more seasoned GIS practitioners, demonstrating the potential for African scholarship to contribute to methodological innovations. This book is of interest to students and researchers of African and historical archaeology and anthropology. Previously published in African Archaeological Review Volume 37, issue 1, March 2020

The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology

The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology
Author: Peter Mitchell
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 1077
Release: 2013-07-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0191626147

Africa has the longest and arguably the most diverse archaeological record of any of the continents. It is where the human lineage first evolved and from where Homo sapiens spread across the rest of the world. Later, it witnessed novel experiments in food-production and unique trajectories to urbanism and the organisation of large communities that were not always structured along strictly hierarchical lines. Millennia of engagement with societies in other parts of the world confirm Africa's active participation in the construction of the modern world, while the richness of its history, ethnography, and linguistics provide unusually powerful opportunities for constructing interdisciplinary narratives of Africa's past. This Handbook provides a comprehensive and up-to-date synthesis of African archaeology, covering the entirety of the continent's past from the beginnings of human evolution to the archaeological legacy of European colonialism. As well as covering almost all periods and regions of the continent, it includes a mixture of key methodological and theoretical issues and debates, and situates the subject's contemporary practice within the discipline's history and the infrastructural challenges now facing its practitioners. Bringing together essays on all these themes from over seventy contributors, many of them living and working in Africa, it offers a highly accessible, contemporary account of the subject for use by scholars and students of not only archaeology, but also history, anthropology, and other disciplines.

Death Rituals and Social Order in the Ancient World

Death Rituals and Social Order in the Ancient World
Author: Colin Renfrew
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 469
Release: 2016
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107082730

This volume, with essays by leading archaeologists and prehistorians, considers how prehistoric humans attempted to recognise, understand and conceptualise death.

The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes

The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes
Author: Alan James Christian Mayne
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2001-12-13
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780521779753

A 2001 investigation of the historical archaeology of urban slums, including eleven case studies.

Traces of the Future

Traces of the Future
Author: Wenzel Geissler
Publisher: Intellect (UK)
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: SOCIAL SCIENCE
ISBN: 9781783207251

This book presents a close look at the vestiges of twentieth-century medical work at five key sites in Africa: Senegal, Nigeria, Cameroon, Kenya, and Tanzania. The authors aim to understand the afterlife of scientific institutions and practices and the "aftertime" of scientific modernity and its attendant visions of progress and transformation. Straightforward scholarly work is juxtaposed here with altogether more experimental approaches to fieldwork and analysis, including interview fragments; brief, reflective essays; and a rich photographic archive. The result is an unprecedented view of the lingering traces of medical science from Africa's past.

Temporalising Anthropology

Temporalising Anthropology
Author: Timothy Insoll
Publisher: Africa Magna Verlag
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 3937248358

This volume contains the results of significant fieldwork completed in the Tong Hills of Northern Ghana, an area currently inhabited by the Talensi ethno-linguistic group. Although made anthropologically renowned by the anthropologist Meyer Fortes, the archaeology and material culture of the Talensi Tong Hills had largely been neglected until the research initiated by the authors. Extensive archaeological surveys and excavations were completed allied with ethnoarchaeological and ethnobotanical research on shrines, sacrifice, and indigenous medicine. The data is presented and described, and a settlement chronology for the region reconstructed. The results of the geological, organic geochemical, petrographic, and archaeometallurgical analysis are provided. The function of shrines and the meaning of 'shrine' as a concept are evaluated, and indigenous medicinal practices, their links with shrines, and their substances, materiality, and archaeological implications assessed with reference to the primary empirical material gathered. Ritual, performance, and its inter-relation with the past and the archaeological record are also considered so as to question the 'timelessness' of previous anthropological presentations. The Tong Hills are also discussed with reference to their place in the wider history and archaeology of the region. This book will be useful to anyone interested in the archaeology and anthropology of African indigenous religions and ritual practices, as well as those interested in West African history, and the relationship between archaeology and anthropology.

Out of Many, One People

Out of Many, One People
Author: James A. Delle
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2011-06-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0817356487

As a source of colonial wealth and a crucible for global culture, Jamaica has had a profound impact on the formation of the modern world system. From the island's economic and military importance to the colonial empires it has hosted and the multitude of ways in which diverse people from varied parts of the world have coexisted in and reacted against systems of inequality, Jamaica has long been a major focus of archaeological studies of the colonial period. This volume assembles for the first time the results of nearly three decades of historical archaeology in Jamaica. Scholars present research on maritime and terrestrial archaeological sites, addressing issues such as: the early Spanish period at Seville la Nueva; the development of the first major British settlement at Port Royal; the complexities of the sugar and coffee plantation system, and the conditions prior to, and following, the abolition of slavery in Jamaica. The everyday life of African Jamaican people is examined by focusing on the development of Jamaica's internal marketing system, consumer behavior among enslaved people, iron-working and ceramic-making traditions, and the development of a sovereign Maroon society at Nanny Town. Out of Many, One People paints a complex and fascinating picture of life in colonial Jamaica, and demonstrates how archaeology has contributed to heritage preservation on the island.