Mobility and African archaeology: an introduction

Ashley, Ceri Z.; Antonites, Alexander; Fredriksen, Per Ditlef

doi:10.1080/0067270x.2016.1233766

Cited by 18 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…Now we might ask, if things were not as unstable as assumed, whether and to what degree cattle raiders should still be characterized as destabilizing. It further opens the possibility of querying the causal connections between violence and mobility associated with raiding, in keeping with recent drives to see movement as a social strategy rather than a response to stimulus (Ashley, Antonites and Fredriksen 2016). With the linkage between cattle raiding, violence and distress weakened, we need to interrogate precisely what sorts of violence raiding denoted: what ontologies of violence does cattle raiding – in all its forms and experiences – disclose?…”

Section: The Raidermentioning

confidence: 80%

In praise of outlaws

King¹

2018

Arch. Dial.

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Abstract‘Outlaw’ is not a common category of archaeological thought but it is perhaps more useful than meets the eye. ‘Outlaws’ are typically viewed as contingent on legal and capitalist systems; they are, I suggest, also material, affective phenomena that draw our attention to how transgression, dissent and disorder are conceived through archaeological thinking. Here, I outline some ways in which ‘outlaw’ figures are ‘good to think with’, particularly for historical and colonial contexts but also for broader, more global frontier situations. Through three sketches of archetypal ‘outlaws’ in southern Africa's recent past, I consider where these disruptive figures draw attention to how mobility, violence, rebellion and state imagination (and the limits thereof) have been imagined through material misbehaviours.

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Section: The Raidermentioning

confidence: 80%

In praise of outlaws

King¹

2018

Arch. Dial.

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“…What is the basis for assuming how people experienced and perceived these stressors? These are questions we can ask of the pre-colonial past as well as the colonial, especially as recent work on the southern African Iron Age has explored how settlement and mobility were significant constituents of social identity (Ashley et al 2016).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Living on Edge: New Perspectives on Anxiety, Refuge and Colonialism in Southern Africa

King¹

2017

CAJ

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Archaeologies of colonialism have have called for exploring the culturally dynamic entanglements of people and objects while acknowledging the violence that accompanied these entanglements. Heeding these calls requires attention to how the state and state power were materialised, particularly in settler colonies where state apparatuses advanced unevenly, insidiously, and clumsily. Here, I explore how the (mis)understandings and (mis)apprehensions of people and places that accompanied the halting expansion of colonial frontiers were materialised. Focusing on southern Africa's Highveld and Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains, I offer anxiety as a framework for conceiving of colonialisms as epistemic encounters: processes of 'making sense' of new people, things, and places based on material practices, empirical experience, and desire. Through a narrative of the nineteenth-century Maloti-Drakensberg told with archival, archaeological, and ethnographic materials, I re-visit a longstanding trope of southern African archaeology and historiography: refugia from social distress. I argue that refuge can be taken as a sense-making practice rather than as reaction to stress. I close with thoughts on what an anxiety framework can offer the still-developing field of African historical archaeology.

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“…The method successfully predicted the location of both known and previously unrecorded deposits with an accuracy of over 95%. Africanist archaeologists are well-positioned to lead the way on the integration of anthropological models and theories into applications of remote sensing, given the long tradition of theorizing population movements, the emergence of complex social, political and economic forms, regional interaction and other landscape-scale behaviors (e.g., Anquandah 1987;Ashley et al 2016;Breunig et al 1996;Harlan and Stemler 1976;Stahl 1985;Wynne-Jones and Fleisher 2015).…”

Section: Future Directions For Remote Sensing In African Archaeologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Aerial and Spaceborne Remote Sensing in African Archaeology: A Review of Current Research and Potential Future Avenues

Davis

Douglass

2020

Afr Archaeol Rev

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Africa represents a vast region where remote sensing technologies have been largely uneven in their archaeological applications. With impending climate-related risks such as increased coastal erosion and rising sea levels, coupled with rapid urban development, gaps in our knowledge of the human history of this continent are in jeopardy of becoming permanent. Spaceborne and aerial remote sensing instruments are powerful tools for producing relatively complete records of archaeological settlement patterns and human behavior at landscape scales. These sensors allow for massive amounts of information to be recorded and analyzed in short spans of time and offer an effective means to increase survey areas and the discovery of new cultural deposits. In this paper, we review various case studies throughout Africa dealing with aerial and satellite remote sensing applications to landscape archaeology in order to highlight recent developments and highlight future research avenues. In particular, we argue that (semi)automated remote sensing methods stemming from machine learning developments will prove vital to expanding our knowledgebase of Africa's archaeological record. This is especially important for coastal and island regions of the continent where climate change threatens the survival of much of the archaeological record.

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Mobility and African archaeology: an introduction

Cited by 18 publications

References 76 publications

In praise of outlaws

In praise of outlaws

Living on Edge: New Perspectives on Anxiety, Refuge and Colonialism in Southern Africa

Aerial and Spaceborne Remote Sensing in African Archaeology: A Review of Current Research and Potential Future Avenues

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