The African Archaeology Network

Investigating how ancient African societies exploited resources, developed settlements, and established trade networks, this Pan-African project aims to develop new models to understand how ancient communities adjusted and responded to political and environmental upheavals.

This journal has been produced by the African Archaeology Network since 2001. However, by 2014, the Network became defunct, following end of funding contract with Sida Sweden. The department of Archaeology and Heritage of the University of Dar-es-Salam in which the Network was based, in the meeting of 2013 decided to take the journal and continue maintaining it at the request of the General Coordinator of African Archaeology Network. Volume 12 is therefore the first issue of the journal under the Department of Archaeology and Heritage, University of Dar-es-Salaam. The head of the department and the chief editor would like to inform all colleagues that the journal will continue to serve the interests of African Archaeology Network in publication as it did before. It is through such means that the Network can be kept alive. The journal is still international and members from different countries are invited to contribute papers, assist in reviewing, and help in editorial work. Efforts have started being made to request other international members to assist in the editorial work in order to raise the quality of our journal.

From the exodus of early modern humans to the growth of African diasporas, Africa has had a long and complex relationship with the outside world. More than a passive vessel manipulated by external empires, the African experience has been a complex mix of internal geographic, environmental, sociopolitical and economic factors, and regular interaction with outsiders. Peter Mitchell attempts to outline these factors over the long period of modern human history, to find their commonalities and development over time. He examines African interconnections through Egypt and Nubia with the Near East, through multiple Indian Ocean trading systems, through the trans-Saharan trade, and through more recent incursion of Europeans. The African diaspora is also explored for continuities and resistance to foreign domination. Commonalities abound in the African experience, as do complexities of each individual period and interrelationship. MitchellOs sweeping analysis of African connections place the continent in context of global prehistory and history. The book should be of interest not only to Africanists, but to many other archaeologists, historians, geographers, linguists, social scientists and their students.

This volume investigates the material production and expression of colonial experiences in Africa. It combines archaeological, historical, and ethnographic sources to explore the diverse pathways, practices, and projects constructed by Africans in their engagement with the forces of colonial modernity and capitalism. This volume is situated in ongoing debates in archaeological and anthropological approaches to materiality. In this respect, it seeks to target archaeologists interested in the conceptual issues provoked by colonial enfoldments. It is also concerned with increasing the visibility of relevant African archaeological literature to scholars of colonialism and imperialism laboring in other fields. This book brings together an array of junior and senior scholars, whose contributions represent a rich sample of the vibrant archaeological research conducted in Africa today, blending conceptual inspiration with robust fieldwork. The chapters target a variety of cultural, historical, and colonial settings. They are driven by a plurality of perspectives, but they are bound by a shared commitment to postcolonial, critical, and material culture theories. While this book focuses on western and southern Africa – the sub-regions that boast the deepest traditions of historical archaeological research in the continent – attention was also placed on including case-studies from traditionally less well-represented areas (East African and Swahili coasts, Madagascar), whose material pasts are nevertheless essential to a wider comprehension of variability and comparability of ‘modern’ colonial conditions. Consequently, this volume lends a unique wide-ranging look at African experiences across the tangle of imperial geographies on the continent, with case-studies focusing on Anglophone, Francophone, and Dutch-speaking contexts. This volume is an exciting opportunity to present this work to wider audiences and foster conversations with a wide community of scholars about the material fashioning of colonial life, relations, and configurations of power.

Confronting national, linguistic and disciplinary boundaries, contributors to African Archaeology Without Frontiers argue against artificial limits and divisions created through the study of ‘ages’ that in reality overlap and cannot and should not be understood in isolation. Papers are drawn from the proceedings of the landmark 14th PanAfrican Archaeological Association Congress, held in Johannesburg in 2014, nearly seven decades after the conference planned for 1951 was re-located to Algiers for ideological reasons following the National Party’s rise to power in South Africa. Contributions by keynote speakers Chapurukha Kusimba and Akin Ogundiran encourage African archaeologists to practise an archaeology that collaborates across many related fields of study to enrich our understanding of the past. The nine papers cover a broad geographical sweep by incorporating material on ongoing projects throughout the continent including South Africa, Botswana, Cameroon, Togo, Tanzania, Kenya and Nigeria. Thematically, the papers included in the volume address issues of identity and interaction, and the need to balance cultural heritage management and sustainable development derived from a continent racked by social inequalities and crippling poverty. Edited by three leading archaeologists, the collection covers many aspects of African archaeology, and a range of periods from the earliest hominins to the historical period. It will appeal to specialists and interested amateurs.

The African Diaspora Archaeology volume is compiled by Chris Fennell, organizer of the African Diaspora Archaeological Network (ADAN): www.diaspora.uiuc.edu. This publication includes an introduction by Fennell that reviews the field and 23 articles selected from Historical Archaeology. Including studies from Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and both the northern and southern US, this volume provides a fascinating look at African culture, sites, and artifacts and the traces the transition of African peoples from the Old World to the New. For a complete Table of Contents, please view http: //pastfoundation.org/lulu/m7b0h5.jpg, or visit the publication's homepage and click "preview" beneath the large image of the cover, which will display the first few pages of the book.

Through interdisciplinary approaches to material culture, the dynamics of a comparative transatlantic archaeology is developed.