Five Hundred Years Rediscovered

Five Hundred Years Rediscovered PDF Author: Natalie Swanepoel
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1776142284
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 521

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Book Description
In the age of the African Renaissance, southern Africa has needed to reinterpret the past in fresh and more appropriate ways. The last 500 years represent a strikingly unexplored and misrepresented period which remains disfigured by colonial/apartheid assumptions, most notably in the way that African societies are depicted as fixed, passive, isolated, un-enterprising and unenlightened. This period is one the most formative in relation to southern Africa’s past while remaining, in many ways, the least known. Key cultural contours of the sub-continent took shape, while in a jagged and uneven fashion some of the features of modern identities emerged. Enormous internal economic innovation and political experimentation was taking place at the same time as expanding European mercantile forces started to press upon southern African shores and its hinterlands. This suggests that interaction, flux and mixing were a strong feature of the period, rather than the homogeneity and fixity proposed in standard historical and archaeological writings. Five Hundred Years Rediscovered represents the first step, taken by a group of archaeologists and historians, to collectively reframe, revitalise and re-examine the last 500 years. By integrating research and developing trans-frontier research networks, the group hopes to challenge thinking about the region’s expanding internal and colonial frontiers, and to broaden current perceptions about southern Africa’s colonial past.

Five Hundred Years Rediscovered

Five Hundred Years Rediscovered PDF Author: Natalie Swanepoel
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1776142284
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 521

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the age of the African Renaissance, southern Africa has needed to reinterpret the past in fresh and more appropriate ways. The last 500 years represent a strikingly unexplored and misrepresented period which remains disfigured by colonial/apartheid assumptions, most notably in the way that African societies are depicted as fixed, passive, isolated, un-enterprising and unenlightened. This period is one the most formative in relation to southern Africa’s past while remaining, in many ways, the least known. Key cultural contours of the sub-continent took shape, while in a jagged and uneven fashion some of the features of modern identities emerged. Enormous internal economic innovation and political experimentation was taking place at the same time as expanding European mercantile forces started to press upon southern African shores and its hinterlands. This suggests that interaction, flux and mixing were a strong feature of the period, rather than the homogeneity and fixity proposed in standard historical and archaeological writings. Five Hundred Years Rediscovered represents the first step, taken by a group of archaeologists and historians, to collectively reframe, revitalise and re-examine the last 500 years. By integrating research and developing trans-frontier research networks, the group hopes to challenge thinking about the region’s expanding internal and colonial frontiers, and to broaden current perceptions about southern Africa’s colonial past.

Forgotten World

Forgotten World PDF Author: Tim Maggs
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1868148114
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
If you drive through Mpumalanga with an eye on the landscape flashing by, you may see, near the sides of the road and further away on the hills above and in the valleys below, fragments of building in stone as well as sections of stone-walling breaking the grass cover. Endless stone circles, set in bewildering mazes and linked by long stone passages, cover the landscape stretching from Ohrigstad to Carolina, connecting over 10 000 square kilometres of the escarpment into a complex web of stone-walled homesteads, terraced fields and linking roads. Oral traditions recorded in the early twentieth century named the area Bokoni – the country of the Koni people. Few South Africans or visitors to the country know much about these settlements, and why today they are deserted and largely ignored. A long tradition of archaeological work which might provide some of the answers remains cloistered in universities and the knowledge vacuum has been filled by a variety of exotic explanations – invoking ancient settlers from India or even visitors from outer space – that share a common assumption that Africans were too primitive to have created such elaborate stone structures. Forgotten World defies the usual stereotypes about backward African farming methods and shows that these settlements were at their peak between 1500 and 1820, that they housed a substantial population, organised vast amounts of labour for infrastructural development, and displayed extraordinary levels of agricultural innovation and productivity. The Koni were part of a trading system linked to the coast of Mozambique and the wider world of Indian Ocean trade beyond. Forgotten World tells the story of Bokoni through rigorous historical and archaeological research, and lavishly illustrates it with stunning photographic images.

Theory in Africa, Africa in Theory

Theory in Africa, Africa in Theory PDF Author: Stephanie Wynne-Jones
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317506839
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Theory in Africa, Africa in Theory explores the place of Africa in archaeological theory, and the place of theory in African archaeology. The centrality of Africa to global archaeological thinking is highlighted, with a particular focus on materiality and agency in contemporary interpretation. As a means to explore the nature of theory itself, the volume also addresses differences between how African models are used in western theoretical discourse and the use of that theory within Africa. Providing a key contribution to theoretical discourse through a focus on the context of theory-building, this volume explores how African modes of thought have shaped our approaches to a meaningful past outside of Africa. A timely intervention into archaeological thought, Theory in Africa, Africa in Theory deconstructs the conventional ways we approach the past, positioning the continent within a global theoretical discourse and blending Western and African scholarship. This volume will be a valuable resource for those interested in the archaeology of Africa, as well as providing fresh perspectives to those interested in archaeological theory more generally.

A History of Water: Series III, Volume 3

A History of Water: Series III, Volume 3 PDF Author: Terje Tvedt
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 178673138X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 591

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Book Description
Major changes in policy and management , across the entire agricultural production chain, will be needed to ensure the best use of available water resources in meeting growing demands for food and other agricultural products. This new volume in the successful History of Water Series focuses on the African continent to address this key issue. Humanity has its roots in Africa and many of our food systems developed there. All types of agricultural production are present and the sheer size of the continent offers wide ecological variation from extreme desert to dense rainforest. Drawing together leading international contributors from a wide variety of disciplines Water and Food offers new insights into the evolution of food systems, from early hunter gatherers to the global challenges of the modern world.

Mapungubwe Reconsidered

Mapungubwe Reconsidered PDF Author: MISTRA MISTRA
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 1928509037
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
The Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape is one of the profound treasures of southern Africas social and archaeological history, appropriately declared a World Heritage (Unesco) in 2003. Contained within this landscape is indispensable information on precolonial state formation, social hierarchies, architecture of stone-walled towns, mineral processing and intercontinental trade. And yet, the Mapungubwe state rose, towered over its environs, and then declined long before European colonial incursions. What exactly were the social dynamics in this polity? What technologies did it utilise? How did it relate to neighbouring unable to sustain itself? In this combined edition of two MISTRA publications, now jointly titled Mapungubwe Reconsidered: A Living Legacy, MISTRA seeks to contribute to the body of knowledge about Mapungubwe, straddling such issues as the relationships between humans and the environment, management of mineral endowments and the form and impact of southern Africas global intercourse in this historical period.

A Millennium of Cultural Contact

A Millennium of Cultural Contact PDF Author: Alistair Paterson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315435713
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
Alistair Paterson has written a comprehensive textbook detailing the millennium of cultural contact between European societies and those of the rest of the world. Beginning with the Norse intersection with indigenous peoples of Greenland, Paterson uses case studies and regional overviews to describe the various patterns by which European groups influenced, overcame, and were resisted by the populations of Africa, the Americas, East Asia, Oceania, and Australia. Based largely on the evidence of archaeology, he is able to detail the unique interactions at many specific points of contact and display the wide variations in exploration, conquest, colonization, avoidance, and resistance at various spots around the globe. Paterson’s broad, student-friendly treatment of the history and archaeology of the last millennium will be useful for courses in historical archaeology, world history, and social change.

Safari Nation

Safari Nation PDF Author: Jacob S. T. Dlamini
Publisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 0821440888
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Safari Nation opens new lines of inquiry in the study of national parks in Africa and the rest of the world. The Kruger National Park is South Africa’s most iconic nature reserve, renowned for its rich flora and fauna. According to author Jacob Dlamini, there is another side to the park, a social history neglected by scholars and popular writers alike in which blacks (meaning Africans, Coloureds, and Indians) occupy center stage. Safari Nation details the ways in which black people devoted energies to conservation and to the park over the course of the twentieth century—engagement that transcends the stock (black) figure of the laborer and the poacher. By exploring the complex and dynamic ways in which blacks of varying class, racial, religious, and social backgrounds related to the Kruger National Park, and with the help of previously unseen archival photographs, Dlamini’s narrative also sheds new light on how and why Africa’s national parks—often derided by scholars as colonial impositions—survived the end of white rule on the continent. Relying on oral histories, photographs, and archival research, Safari Nation engages both with African historiography and with ongoing debates about the “land question,” democracy, and citizenship in South Africa.

Archives of Times Past

Archives of Times Past PDF Author: Cynthia Kros
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1776147286
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
This volume critically examines sources of evidence and material from the archive that historically have been used to tell southern Africa’s pre-colonial story.

Colonial Survey and Native Landscapes in Rural South Africa, 1850 - 1913

Colonial Survey and Native Landscapes in Rural South Africa, 1850 - 1913 PDF Author: Lindsay F. Braun
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004282297
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
In Colonial Survey and Native Landscapes in Rural South Africa, 1850 - 1913, Lindsay Frederick Braun explores the technical processes and struggles surrounding the creation and maintenance of boundaries and spaces in South Africa in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The precision of surveyors and other colonial technicians lent these enterprises an illusion of irreproachable objectivity and authority, even though the reality was far messier. Using a wide range of archival and printed materials from survey departments, repositories, and libraries, the author presents two distinct episodes of struggle over lands and livelihoods, one from the Eastern Cape and one from the former northern Transvaal. These cases expose the contingencies, contests, and negotiations that fundamentally shaped these changing South African landscapes.

The Global History of Paleopathology

The Global History of Paleopathology PDF Author: Jane E. Buikstra
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195389808
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 817

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Book Description
The first comprehensive global history of the discipline of paleopathology