African Archaeology

Mombo and the Mkomazi Corridor

by Jonathan Walz

In Salvaging Tanzania's Cultural Heritage. Pp. 198-213. Dar es Salaam University Press.
2005

Toward an Archaeology of the Other African Diaspora: The Slave Trade and Dispersed Africans in the Western Indian Ocean

by Jonathan Walz

Co-authored w/Steven A. Brandt
In African Regenesis. Pp. 246-268. University College London Press.
2006

Archaeopolitics and Postage Stamps in Africa

by Jonathan Walz

Commentary:
African Arts 38(2): 8, 88 & 96.
2005

Archaeologies of Disenchantment

by Jonathan Walz

In Postcolonial Archaeologies in Africa. Pp. 21-38. School for Advanced Research Press.
2009

The prehistory of the northern Mandara Mountains and surrounding plains

by Scott MacEachern

2012  . In Metals in Mandara Mountains’ society and culture, edited by Nicholas David, pp. 29-67. Red Sea Press, Trenton NJ.

Exploring agriculture, interaction and trade on the eastern African littoral: preliminary results from Kenya

by Dorian Fuller

Richard Helm, Alison Crowther, Ceri Shipton, Amini Tengeza, Dorian Fuller & Nicole Boivin. In Azania 47(1): 39-63 (2012)

There is a growing interest in transoceanic connections between prehistoric communities occupying the Indian Ocean... more There is a growing interest in transoceanic connections between prehistoric communities occupying the Indian Ocean rim. Corroborative and well-sequenced archaeological data from eastern Africa have, however, been notably lacking. Recent excavations by the Sealinks Project in the coastal region of Kenya has sought to redress this imbalance by collecting base-line data on the local communities occupying this region between c. 1000 BC and AD 1000. Although our analyses are still preliminary, the quality of faunal and botanical material recovered demonstrates considerable potential for exploring local interactions and transitions between early hunter-forager and food-producing communities. A key finding in this regard was the identification of a suite of African crops (Sorghum, Pennisetum and Eleusine) at first millennium AD farming and hunter-forager sites, providing the first significant evidence for early agriculture on the Kenyan coast and the role of crops in forager-farmer trade. Other material data, notably the transfer of marine shell and glass beads inland, and the use of ceramics, indicate a tentative correspondence between the increased intensity of such local interactions in the latter half of the first millennium AD and the emergence of wider Indian Ocean connections

Histoire du décor à la roulette en Afrique subsaharienne

by Alexandre Livingstone Smith

2007, Journal of African Archaeology:189-216

Imported ceramic finds from the 2004 season of surface survey of Andaro, Madagascar

by Seth Priestman

In M. Parker Pearson (ed.) Pastoralists, Warriors and Colonists: The Archaeology of Southern Madagascar. British Archaeological Reports, S2139 (2010): Oxford.

Mosquées swahilies dans REMMM

by Pradines Stéphane

Timbuktu und die selbstorganisierenden Gesellschaften der Vorzeit

by Douglas Park 

Douglas P. Park (2012). WESPENNEST Vol. 162.

This is an article written for popular consumption and published in German in the widely circulated Austrian publication WESPENNEST. Official print publication will be available in May 2012:

Article title in English is: Timbuktu and the Self-Organizing Societies of the Ancient World Article title in English is: Timbuktu and the Self-Organizing Societies of the Ancient World

El urbanismo en la costa de los Esclavos Nuevos datos arqueológicos revelan la estructura y funcionamiento de las ciudades africanas entre los siglos xvii y xix

by J. Cameron Monroe

INVESTIGACIÓN Y CIENCIA, marzo 2012, pp. 2-11

Geomorphic Setting & Archaeology of the Cunene River, Namibia

by Kathleen Nicoll

cite as: Nicoll, K. 2011a. Geomorphic Setting & Archaeology of the Cunene River, Namibia. Vignette supporting textbook: Bierman, P. and Montgomery, D. (Eds.) Key concepts in Geomorphology. W.H. Freeman, Vermont. Online at http://serc.carleton.edu/59964

This vignette presents a virtual tour of the Cunene River, and a prehistoric archaeological site located on a fluvial... more This vignette presents a virtual tour of the Cunene River, and a prehistoric archaeological site located on a fluvial terrace in northern Namibia. The plein-air site preserves an artefact assemblage of Levallois–Mousterian points.

General/Specific, Local/Global: Comparing the Beginnings of Agriculture in the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia/Eritrea) and Southwest Arabia (Yemen)

by Michael Harrower

Pre-Aksumite and Aksumite Settlement of Eastern Tigrai, Ethiopia

by Michael Harrower

Archaeology at the micro-scale: micromorphology and phytoliths at a Swahili stonetown

by Federica Sulas

Co-authored with M. Madella. Published in 'Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences' 2012.

Geoarchaeological and archaeobotanical techniques are increasingly applied to the study of urban and domestic space.... more Geoarchaeological and archaeobotanical techniques are increasingly applied to the study of urban and domestic space. However, they are seldom performed as part of an integrative approach, where the soil and botanical micro-records are used together. This paper presents the preliminary results of ongoing research at Songo Mnara in Tanzania that combines customised intra-site soil macro- and micromorphological analyses, chemical analysis and the study of phytoliths. The research is part of a multidisciplinary project on the use of urban space in Swahili stonetowns. By eliciting multiple datasets from Songo Mnara, this paper illustrates the potential of integrating geoarchaeology and archaeobotany to investigate the use of space in urban contexts. The approach is a novelty within the context of Swahili archaeology and an emerging one in Africa.

Sheltering experience in underground places

by Tim Clack

Questions centring on the significance, occupation and renovation of subterranean features have remained largely... more Questions centring on the significance, occupation and renovation of subterranean features have remained largely unasked and unanswered by archaeologists. This is cause for great concern considering the importance of ‘underground’ elements in archaeological landscapes of diverse periods. This paper examines how insights derived from ethnographic and ethnohistoric study among the Chagga of Mount Kilimanjaro, Northern Tanzania, who extensively utilized underground fastnesses in precolonial times, might be used to inform cave archaeologies. These features were used to shelter people and provisions during episodes of conflict between rival chiefdoms and patrilineages and were also ritually significant. Today these features have fallen into disuse but they retain significance in local traditions. It is posited that cave archaeologies should explicitly consider the meaningfulness of the ‘cave experience’ in their reconstructions of the past and also take advantage of such reconstructions to challenge the primacy too often afforded the ocular.

Excavations and Surveys in Mursiland

by Tim Clack

co-authored with Dr Marcus Brittain (CAU, University of Cambridge, UK)

This brief article represents an interim statement on the first season of field survey and excavation carried out... more This brief article represents an interim statement on the first season of field survey and excavation carried out between May and July 2009.

When Climate Changes: Megaliths, Migrations and Medicines in Mursiland

by Tim Clack

co-authored with Dr Marcus Brittain (CAU, University of Cambridge, UK)

Over the past two summers Timothy Clack and Marcus Brittain
have directed the first archaeological teams in the... more Over the past two summers Timothy Clack and Marcus Brittain
have directed the first archaeological teams in the Lower Omo Valley, a remote part of south-western Ethiopia, to research long-term human responses to environmental change. What did they find there?

Place-making, participative archaeologies and Mursi megaliths

by Tim Clack

co-authored with Dr Marcus Brittain (CAU, University of Cambridge, UK)

Here we present the context and nature of findings from the first season of archaeological survey and trial excavation... more Here we present the context and nature of findings from the first season of archaeological survey and trial excavation in an area of Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley. With the exception of well-documented early hominin discoveries, the region has previously been overlooked as a wilderness absent of human inhabitation. Such an outlook has fostered various consequences for strategies of legal, research and conservation policy within the regional boundaries of Mursiland in particular. In this paper recent discoveries of megalithic circular platforms and other archaeological remains are introduced against their dynamic
local and regional placement within present-day understandings of place. Furthermore, we emphasise the value of a participative archaeology research framework in which accountability is directed towards common ground between multiple ‘‘stake-holders’’ within the design and dissemination of the research agenda. This demonstrates important possibilities for intricate understandings of wilderness and landscape linked to heritage, conservation, development and tourism.

Rethinking the Mandara political landscape: enslavement, climate and an entry into history in the second millennium AD.

by Scott MacEachern

In Power and Landscape in Atlantic West Africa, edited by Akin Ogundiran and J. Cameron Monroe, pp. 309-338. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

The mid-second millennium AD is often seen as a period of transformation around the northern Mandara Mountains of... more The mid-second millennium AD is often seen as a period of transformation around the northern Mandara Mountains of Cameroon and Nigeria, with increasing involvement of expansionist Sudanic states in the area, abandonment of long-established plains habitation sites, the first significant evidence of settlement of the Mandara highlands themselves, and the first substantial written references to the region, from as far away as Europe. These changes are also correlated with a period of drought in the southern Lake Chad Basin. This confluence of events has frequently led researchers to conceptualize state formation in the Mandara area as a ‘gift of outsiders’ – a poisoned gift, perhaps, borne by domination and enslavement, but introduced from beyond the region nevertheless. However, available evidence indicates a more complex picture, where indigenous elements with deep local roots combined with outside influences to produce the constellation of political relations and structures found in the region today.