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- Blundell, Geoffrey, 1970-
(författare)
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Nqabayo’s Nomansland: San Rock Art and the Somatic Past
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The most significant challenge facing modern southern African rock art research is the integration of rock paintings into the construction of San history. This challenge is made all the more difficult because of poor chronological control over the images. In the absence of reliable dating techniques, the challenge to interdigitate image and history becomes a profoundly theoretical one. Drawing on theoretical studies of body and embodiment, this work takes up the challenge of incorporating rock paintings into the production of the past. Primarily concerned with a small area, previously known as Nomansland, in the south-eastern mountains of South Africa, the work uses embodiment as a tool for extending present interpretations of the art before moving on to arguing that a focus on body allows us to detect change in certain images in Nomansland. Finally, embodiment is used to re-evaluate present understandings of the social consumption of the paintings. In using embodiment to investigate issues of meaning, change and the production and consumption of San rock art, it becomes clear that this theoretical concept offers a way of incorporating rock paintings into the writing of San history in Nomansland. This work, then, contributes to the broader field of southern African San historiography, where the question of San interaction with other peoples is sometimes treated too simply and in a manner that is not consistent with broader postcolonial writing.
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| 2. |
- Ekblom, Anneli, 1969-
(författare)
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Changing Landscapes : An Environmental History of Chibuene, Southern Mozambique
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis analyses the dynamics of environmental change and its embeddedness in the long term interactions of social history and rainfall variability through the building of an environmental history of the Chibuene locality, the coastal plain of southern Mozambique, 5 km south of the town Vilanculos, from 400 AD to present day. Land-use practices over time are discussed on the basis of vegetation and land-use history based pollen analysis, charcoal influx and diatom analysis. It is shown that the savanna vegetation is a long term feature of the Chibuene landscapes and that there have been several expansions of savannas and subsequent retractions of forests through time, linked primarily with rainfall variation. Written sources and archaeological material are drawn upon for a discussion on changing practices of environmental management and it is argued that as the Chibuene landscape is marked by a high degree of environmental insecurity, it is the competent management of resources that has enabled the continuous occupation of Chibuene from c. the 7th century AD, through management of natural resources, flexible farming practices and wide reaching social networks. The last two decades have seen a marked change in land-use patterns, reflected in a decrease in forests of the Chibuene area, the reasons for which are complex and needs to be further studied. Interviews with individual elders in the village community provide alternative ways of understanding environmental degradation as merely the loss of disappearance of forests, or the failure of crops due to droughts, but also as the erosion of local power, wars and social unrest. In a similar way, through a long-term perspective this study stresses that socio-political life, climatic variability and environmental dynamics are interlinked, highlighting the importance of the complimentarity of different forms of knowledge and ways of knowing the Chibuene landscape.
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| 3. |
- Juma, Abdurahman, 1970-
(författare)
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Unguja Ukuu on Zanzibar : An archaeological study of early urbanism
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study describes archaeological excavations carried out at Unguja Ukuu on the main island of Zanzibar, Tanzania. The site has long remained obscure, oral histories do not mention it and no particular group among the living community of the island describes its origin from the site. A stone well at Unguja Ukuu together with several other early monuments of the east African coast that survive on the site have been attributed to the Wadebuli, suspected by early scholars to be people of Arab descent from their colonies in India or elsewhere on the Islands of eastern Indian Ocean. Surface survey and the drilling of more than 200 cores have defined the lateral extent and the stratigraphy of the site. Unguja Ukuu is a large site (c.16–17 ha) and the study reveals that it is a major center of an African iron-using farming community who occupied it from c. 500 AD. Radiocarbon dating and pottery provide the basis for this chronology. The study addresses an old controversy whether some of the pre-stone built settlements that developed on the east African coast could be indications of urbanization. Knowledge of the functional specialization of the settlement prior to its abandonment c. 900 AD is based on the evidence on the density of craft activity, community engagement in the regional trade with the mainland African continent, as far away as Roman Egypt, and in the interregional trade connected to the Indian Ocean, as well as redistribution of foreign merchandise to other sites and areas in the region. These as well as the location of the site linking the external trade and the mainland resource base indicate that Unguja Ukuu was a key urban centre built of mud and timber structures. This challenges our previous understanding of 8–9th centuries AD as the onset of early urbanism on the east African coast. The study proposes cycles of urbanism and emphasizes the need to reassess the problem of early urban identity and the use of wide range of criteria to overcome limitations of previous early urban investigations south of the Sahara and beyond. The results of the investigation given in this study are relevant to the history and archaeology of Zanzibar and the rest of East Africa and make a contribution particularly to extending the known time depth of the early urban tradition often conceived to occur in the late first millennium ad.
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| 4. |
- Källén, Anna, 1973-
(författare)
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And Through Flows the River : Archaeology and the Pasts of Lao Pako
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This is a story about Lao Pako. Lao Pako is located on a small hill on the southern bank of the river Nam Ngum in central Laos. Four seasons of archaeological fieldwork have yielded considerable amounts of pottery, metallurgical remains, glass beads, stone artefacts, spindle whorls as well as other material and structural information that have created a foundation for interpretation. The archaeological interpretation presents Lao Pako as a place where people came to perform rituals c. 1500 years ago. In these rituals, sophisticated combinations of pottery depositions, infant burials and iron production produced a narrative about what it means to be in the world. Things in and on the ground created, and continue to create, non-verbal sentences about life and death, fertility, decay and worldly reproduction. The archaeological interpretation is, however, not the only valid story about Lao Pako. This is a place where spirits are; it is also a tourist resort and a national treasure. These other stories all work to create Lao Pako as a place of interest and are used in this thesis to define the archaeological story, and to visualize the aims and agendas inherent in the production of archaeological knowledge. Using the conceptual apparatus of postcolonial and other critical theory, the thesis aims to critically deconstruct the archaeology performed by the author and others. It entails an explicit critique of the deterministic temporal unilinearity that is inherent in the archaeological narrative of the evolution of humankind, as well as against essentialist notions of culture and the dissociation of the past as exotic otherness. Thus, the stories about Lao Pako demonstrate the need to critically revise the role of archaeology in a postcolonial world, and create archaeological stories by which we are touched, moved and disturbed, without resorting to imperialist notions of time and progress.
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| 5. |
- Sinclair, Paul, et al.
(författare)
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The Swahili City State Culture
- 2000
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Ingår i: A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures. - 8778761778 ; , s. 463-482
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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