When knowledges meet: Engagements with clay and soil in southern Africa

Abstract

In what ways do meetings between differing knowledges of the material world involve change to people's engagements with their immediate, everyday surroundings? And may our insights from studies of such dynamics inform archaeological thinking and practice in fruitful ways without unwillingly projecting ideas and concepts specific to western post-Enlightenment thinking? By combining archaeological and anthropological insights with African philosophical critique, this article presents an approach which aims to enable understanding of the materiality of dwelled-in spaces which is context dependent, seeks symmetry in human/non-human interaction instead of asymmetry, contests the continued prioritizing of cognitive dimensions of knowledge, and acknowledges feminist and Africanist critique of universalist notions of science. Sensitive to epistemological and ethical concerns with ethnoarchaeology, the article discusses certain contrasts that emerged from two field studies in Botswana, and how these insights may inform our archaeological interpretations of the Later Iron Age in southern Africa.

Public archaeology, knowledge meetings and heritage ethics in southern Africa: an approach from Mozambique

“…Menkiti employs what he terms an expanded notion of material causation. The implication is that humans and nonhumans alike share the ability for action, belonging to the same undivided plane of material causation (see also Fredriksen 2011). Viewing necropolitics as a version of Menkiti's symmetrical expanded notion may inform our approach to engagements between differing knowledges in our Manica case.…”

“…For many rural communities on the sub-continent this involves at least one mis-categorization: of the members of the local community that are seen as fundamental to any decision-making of importance, namely the dead. By questioning conventional understanding of the notion of politics we relate to recent analyses of how meetings between differing knowledges of the material world involve changes to people's engagement with their physical surroundings (Fredriksen 2011(Fredriksen , 2012. This challenges the way we think of and engage with material and immaterial heritage.…”

A northern Neolithic? Clay work, cultivation and cultural transformations in the boreal zone of north‐eastern Europe, c.5300–3000 bc

“…Such perceptions are at least partly embedded in the material properties of clay, which make it feel like a living substance and capable of engendering a range of responses, sensations and emotions in people. This character of clay presumably contributed to the animistic–shamanistic and magical associations proposed for prehistoric clay work (Fredriksen ; Herva et al . , 147–9).…”

“…Several scholars have also observed that clay was a special substance in the Stone Age world owing to its specific properties. Clay is an ambiguous or ‘indeterminate’ material ranging between fluid and solid; it is malleable and can be worked directly by hand; it can be worked by adding (and not only reducing) material and reworked endlessly; and it turns into a different kind of substance when fired (Wengrow ; Gheorghiu ; Timmons and MacDonald ; Fredriksen ). These very properties of clay promoted, in Boivin's () view, the Neolithic explosion of symbolism.…”

“…The description of the Neolithic as the ‘age of clay’ (Stevanovic ) captures the material and symbolic importance of clay after the introduction of ceramic technology (Boivin ; Gheorghiu ). Diverse cultural meanings and spiritual or other special properties have been assigned to clay in different times and places, including the myths of Man being shaped from clay (Timmons and MacDonald ; Fredriksen ). Such perceptions are at least partly embedded in the material properties of clay, which make it feel like a living substance and capable of engendering a range of responses, sensations and emotions in people.…”