A Reconsideration of Rwandan Archaeological Ceramics and their Political Significance in a Post-Genocide Era

Giblin, John

doi:10.1007/s10437-013-9144-1

Cited by 26 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…The Urewe ceramic culture dominated the Great Lakes region of Africa from at least 500 bc to ad 800 (Ashley, 2010; Clist, 1987; Giblin, 2013; Giblin, Clement, & Humphris, 2010; Van Grunderbeek, 1992). Consisting of small, settled communities, the people who made and used Urewe ceramics are believed to have been amongst the first farmers in the region, practicing a subsistence agriculture based on millet, cowpea and sorghum with livestock rearing that likely included cattle, goats and sheep (Crowther, Prendergast, Fuller, & Boivin, 2018; Giblin & Fuller, 2011; Van Grunderbeek & Roche, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deposition of modified human remains as evidence for complex mortuary treatment in East Africa during the first millenniumAD

Watts

Mugabowagahunde²,

Ntagwabira³

et al. 2020

Intl J of Osteoarchaeology

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In 2019 partial, disarticulated human remains with evidence of perimortem fractures and tool marks were excavated from the site of Kabusanza in southern Rwanda (first millennium AD). The nature and location of these modifications demonstrate that some elements were subject to intentional dismemberment and defleshing, whereas the arrangement of the remains in the burial feature indicates that natural skeletonization had also occurred before final deposition. Human remains with similar patterns of modification and deposition have previously been recovered from the same site, and here we consider the potential behaviours that may have produced this suite of evidence. By comparing the remains with assemblages that have been produced through violence and through ritual activity, we demonstrate that the evidence from Kabusanza is more consistent with complex, multistage mortuary practices than other forms of processing. This may have involved some initial reduction of the body, followed by the retention or circulation of the disarticulated remains before their eventual deposition.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deposition of modified human remains as evidence for complex mortuary treatment in East Africa during the first millenniumAD

Watts

Mugabowagahunde²,

Ntagwabira³

et al. 2020

Intl J of Osteoarchaeology

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“…In the Rwandan case that he cites (Giblin 2013), the interpretations are so directly relevant to government plans to revise history curricula in the schools, plans that are intimately related to potential social consequences, that transparency would seem to require a discussion of the political referents of the archaeology. However, one wonders how he would have dealt with a set of findings that supported, rather than denied, earlier conclusions regarding an ethno-racial migration model of Rwandan history.…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

Commentary: what are archaeological ethics?

McGhee¹

2014

Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa

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Remaking the Late Holocene Environment of Western Uganda: Archaeological Perspectives on Kansyore and Later Settlers

Schmidt,

Walz,

Besigye

et al. 2024

Afr Archaeol Rev

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Archaeological and environmental research by an international and interdisciplinary team opens new perspectives into the settlement histories of Kansyore, Early Iron Age, and Bigo period peoples in the once forested regions of the Ndali Crater Lakes Region (NCLR) of western Uganda. The research examines the role of Kansyore agropastoralists and their Early Iron Age and Bantu-speaking contemporaries in remaking a once forested environment into a forest-savannah mosaic from circa 500 BC to the end of the first millennium AD. Archaeological settlement and subsistence evidence is examined within a framework of social interaction of Sudanic speakers with Bantu speakers, drawing on historical linguistics and environmental studies to arrive at a new synthesis of late Holocene history in western Uganda. This perspective also unveils the significance and chronology of Boudiné ware, a long enigmatic ceramic tradition that we identify as contemporary to Transitional Urewe and deeply influenced through social interactions with those making Kansyore ceramics and inhabiting the same landscape. Using archaeological evidence from fifteen sites and multiple burials spanning from 400 to 1650 calAD, new views of ceramic histories, lifeways, and symbolic values are revealed, including Bigo period settlements that arose in what was an environmental refugium beginning in the early fourteenth century AD. This research also shows that the Kansyore of the forested region east of the Rwenzori Mountains had greater affinities to late Holocene archaeological evidence from western Equatoria, in the southern South Sudan, and Kansyore Island, Uganda, than it does to the Kansyore in eastern Kenya.

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A Reconsideration of Rwandan Archaeological Ceramics and their Political Significance in a Post-Genocide Era

Cited by 26 publications

References 28 publications

Deposition of modified human remains as evidence for complex mortuary treatment in East Africa during the first millenniumAD

Deposition of modified human remains as evidence for complex mortuary treatment in East Africa during the first millenniumAD

Commentary: what are archaeological ethics?

Remaking the Late Holocene Environment of Western Uganda: Archaeological Perspectives on Kansyore and Later Settlers

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A Reconsideration of Rwandan Archaeological Ceramics and their Political Significance in a Post-Genocide Era

Cited by 26 publications

References 28 publications

Deposition of modified human remains as evidence for complex mortuary treatment in East Africa during the first millenniumAD

Deposition of modified human remains as evidence for complex mortuary treatment in East Africa during the first millenniumAD

Commentary: what are archaeological ethics?

Remaki﻿n﻿g the Late Holocene Environment of Western Uganda: Archaeological Perspectives on Kansyore and Later Settlers

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Product

Resources

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Remaking the Late Holocene Environment of Western Uganda: Archaeological Perspectives on Kansyore and Later Settlers