Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Humans in Africa and elsewhere have always been deeply entangled with artificial and natural materials. This makes the study of materials recovered from archaeological sites a cornerstone of archaeological sciences. The integration of earth and engineering science approaches with archaeology and anthropology opened a new horizon in temporal and spatial explorations of the skills, knowledge, cognition, values, and beliefs of past human societies. Within their textural and compositional structures, materials contain partial histories of the cultural and natural processes that created them. This makes it possible to ask big questions about the African past—what, where, when, how, and why materials were made. The identification of constituents of materials, where the raw materials were sourced and processed into final products, and the time when the technology used to produce them was available are answerable through materials analysis (Sibilia, 1996 ). The reasons why certain materials and technologies were invented and the socio-cultural and economic roles of materials are central to explorations of interactions, changing values, and continuity and change across space and time. Such information is accessible through the application of engineering and earth science techniques, making it possible to reconstruct technology and how societies and materials co-shaped each other. Research to date has contributed to our understanding of the histories of specific materials and their entanglements with diverse societies—from ancient Egypt to Ethiopia, ancient Ghana and Mali, and Great Zimbabwe, to Swahili settlements on the Indian Ocean coast. However, challenges with laboratory facilities in many parts of Africa mean that materials analysis, in particular, and archaeological science in general, are poorly developed. This calls for the erasure of barriers through collaboration within Africa and between Africa and different areas of the Global South and Global North.
Source: African Archaeological Review
Author: Shadreck Chirikure
Institution: University of Oxford
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology (arts and humanities)
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,090
OpenAlex ID: W4388774289