African Archaeological Review最新文献

Gishimangeda Cave, near Lake Eyasi in northern Tanzania, exemplifies many challenges inherent in studying poorly documented “legacy collections” in African archaeology. The archaeological assemblage of at least twelve human individuals and associated artifacts was excavated in 1967 for primarily physical anthropological purposes. However, it has been difficult to link the materials to archaeological contexts or chronology. Recently, ancient DNA analysis of eleven individuals, eight of whom yielded direct dates of the later third millennium and early second millennium BP, has reinvigorated interest in what the site can reveal about social processes during the Pastoral Neolithic era (~5000–1200 years before present) and the transition to food production in eastern Africa. Here, we present an in-depth investigation of the history of research and excavation, and we provide descriptions of the human skeletal remains and material culture at Gishimangeda Cave and their archaeological contexts reconstructed using archival documents and photographs. Osteological analyses reveal individuals’ lived experiences and health. Three individuals have bilateral lesions on their petrous pyramids consistent with chronic otitis media, a condition that has yet to be archaeologically documented in eastern Africa. Through the analysis of the artifacts, we establish connections between Gishimangeda Cave and broadly contemporaneous herder and forager communities in the Lake Eyasi Basin. This case study illustrates the challenges and potential benefits of working with legacy collections in African archaeology. The article contributes to wider discussions in archaeology and museum studies about museum collections and the evolving ethical and scholarly obligations to them.

Peki is an Ewe-speaking community in present-day southeastern Ghana. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this community became a hub for the trade in enslaved people. To take charge of the Atlantic economy, the Peki invited the North German Missionary Society to their community in 1847, intending to use them to gain direct access to European merchants on the coast. They also established a franchise of the influential Dente deity of Krachi at Dzake, one of eight Peki settlements. This paper explores the archaeology of the Dente shrine and its role in the historical memory of the Peki community’s entanglements in the Atlantic trade. We employ archaeological, historical, and ethnographic evidence to show how the Peki elites leveraged African indigenous spiritualism to control the post-abolition trade in people. We highlight how contemporary memories of the Atlantic trade in Peki have been constructed through selective processes of remembering and silencing in the face of burgeoning roots and heritage tourism in Ghana. The paper underscores the contradictory roles of an African indigenous religious institution in the complex and syncretic responses to the Atlantic trade in people. It helps us to understand the distinctive power-building strategies that a local community of the West African hinterland adapted to survive in the shadows of expansionist states during the Atlantic trade.

As archaeologists, we are often asked what it was like to live in the past. By blending a fictional narrative with factual archaeological evidence, we offer an interpretation of what a typical day may have been like living at Sai, a town on an island in the River Nile during the second millennium before the common era (BCE), in what is now Sudan. We focus on the question at different levels, thinking about the day-to-day life of the residents of an ancient town, activities that took place, and its broader historical, geographical, and cultural contexts. We also explain how archaeologists work and interpret some of the evidence we discuss, focusing on a range of methods. These include recent advances in virtual 3-D reconstruction, which offer a unique perspective on our interpretation of the past. Many themes covered in this article are highly relevant today and can be linked to several UN Sustainable Development Goals (in particular, 9, 11, and 12). We encourage readers to think about some of the things we discuss in relation to their own lives and experiences and have provided a number of call-out questions in speech bubbles throughout the article to get some of these discussions started.

Farming has changed the face of the earth in Africa as much as elsewhere. But histories of African farmscapes, shaped by millennia of agriculture, are obscured by narratives of pristine landscapes, whether of forests or savanna, and the role of farming in transforming African farmscapes is seldom taught in schools. We present examples of farming strategies and systems from western and southern Africa, which we hope are inspiring and maybe, at times, even surprising. Our exploration of the farmscapes, structured along the classical elements of Earth, Fire, Water, and Air, describes how plants and people deal with the influence these elements have on successful farming and how these influences show up in farmscapes. We hope these stories of flexibility, adaptation, and success and failure motivate teachers and students to think out of the box in grappling with the challenges our world is facing. These stories also provide opportunities for teaching about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly the goals of Zero Hunger (SDG 2), Responsible Consumption and Production (SDG 12), and Life on Land (SDG 15).

How can we use the past to help us solve today’s urgent climate change concerns? Archaeology provides one way forward by providing a long-term view of what worked and what did not work in the past. Indigenous knowledge systems have long curated a range of survival strategies that provide powerful inspiration for thinking differently about sustainability. Inspired by Africanfuturism—or how writers of African descent have creatively reimagined Black futures—we explore how creative writing can mobilize the past to rethink climate change responses. We have designed this piece for use in middle and secondary school science, history, or literature classes. An introductory explanation and “what we know” sections provide teachers with the necessary framing and background knowledge. The two short stories could be assigned to 13–18-year-old students to illustrate the kind of reimagining they might pursue based on archaeological and oral historical information.

Archaeology holds great potential to enrich and enhance culturally responsive school learning within and beyond Africa. Archaeology reveals hidden and forgotten history and brings long-term perspective to contemporary issues like those foregrounded by the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Through inquiry that combines scientific methods with cultural understandings, archaeology sheds light on how people in past societies related to one another and with communities around them. It provides evidence of how people sustained well-being, interacted with resources on which they relied, and engaged with wider landscapes. It lends insight into daily practices as well as long-term perspectives on how people affected their environments and how environments shaped people’s actions. Given its wide scope and interdisciplinary foundations, archaeology holds recognized potential to engage young learners in cross-curricular areas including social studies, literary works, language, sciences, mathematics, and the arts. Archaeology should therefore contribute substantively to Quality Education (SDG 4), particularly when archaeologists braid western knowledge with other perspectives grounded in the communities and places where archaeologists work. As a source for culturally responsive teaching, archaeology provides powerful knowledge that helps learners to understand diverse cultures and perspectives and to appreciate how the past can inform the present and set appropriate courses for the future. Realizing this potential requires that archaeologists and educators communicate and collaborate in new ways if we are to provide students with engaging and meaningful learning opportunities.

Burial assemblages inform us about the biology of past societies, social relations, and ritual and symbolic behavior. However, they also allow us to examine the circumstances of death and social violence. A high level of intergroup violence among prehistoric hunter-gatherers is well-documented in some times and places but is extremely rare in others. Here we present an analysis of the perimortem injury to skeleton PD8 at the site of Sphinx in Central Sudan. This burial, attributed to the Early Khartoum (Khartoum Mesolithic) culture, radiocarbon dated between 8637 and 8463 cal BP, bears evidence of a perimortem sharp force trauma caused by penetration of an unshaped, fractured non-human bone between the right scapula and the rib cage. Among more than 200 anthropologically assessed human burials from the early Holocene Nile Valley reviewed in this paper, PD8 provides the only documented evidence of violence resulting in death. This rare case of death differs from the numerous cases of intergroup conflict documented in terminal Pleistocene burial grounds in Lower Nubia. This suggests different patterns of violence and strategies of conflict resolution in the pre-Neolithic (terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene) Nile Valley. We attribute this difference in the prevalence of interpersonal trauma to climatic and environmental conditions, territorial boundary defense, and post-marital residence practices before and after the Younger Dryas’ arid millennium (~ 12,800–11,600 BP).

This article presents the Early and Middle Holocene pottery repertoire of the Takarkori archaeological site, a rockshelter in the Tadrart Acacus massif in southwestern Libya, Central Sahara. This long sequence, extending from 10,200 to 4300 cal BP, is one of the best preserved Holocene contexts in North Africa, recording much of Holocene cultural evolution and chronologically framed by a large number of radiocarbon dates. The study of the assemblage resulted in a well-defined seriation of the pottery sequence, supported by statistical and comparative methods. Following an integrated approach, the study identifies continuities and changes in ceramic production that enhance our understanding of the human occupation of Takarkori and its cultural variations. The multi-scalar and multi-dimensional perspectives highlight technological traditions and cultural dynamics and provide new insights into the origin and use of pottery, first among Late Acacus hunter-gatherers and later among Pastoral Neolithic herders and their regional interconnections. This study clarifies the position of the Takarkori ceramic sequence within the broader regional and interregional contexts from the Early to the Middle Holocene. By indicating contacts and interrelationships among different areas of the Sahara and neighboring regions, from the massifs of Central Algerian Sahara to the plains of the Eastern Sahara, the study adds new insights into North Africa’s prehistory. It contributes to an increasingly accurate reconstruction of the Holocene’s chronological and cultural sequences.