Ann B. Stahl

Archaeological Insights into Aesthetic Communities of Practice in the Western Volta Basin

Art historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists have long expressed interest in the historic and stylistic connections between societies of the western Volta River basin and those of the Middle Niger. Oral histories and Arab chronicles point to the antiquity of connections between these regions that were linked in trade of forest products for those drawn from the Sahara and beyond from at least the early second millennium ad (Brooks 1993; Goody 1964, 1966; Wilks 1961, 1962, 1993). Recurrent questions have been raised regarding the technological and stylistic links between material traditions in these areas which, with rare exception (Posnansky 1976, 1987), have been addressed primarily through objects of “ethnographic” (including recent historical) or uncertain temporal provenance. Particular interest has focused on Mande influences on the technical and artistic practices of Voltaic peoples (Bravmann 1974; Frank 1993, 1998; McNaughton 1988; Roy 1987) and the role of so-called casted craftspeople in the transmission and maintenance of technological and artistic style (Tamari 1991, 1995; for a history, see Conrad and Frank 1995). These object-centered studies face the challenge of inferring historical process from indirect evidence. Yet as McNaughton stresses, the “difficult question of history” is crucially important to understanding the fluidity and creativity of “people in motion” and the role of objects as “vehicle(s) through which people can change the lay of their social landscapes” (1992:85). In this regard, objects in archaeological contexts—securely provenanced in time and space—hold considerable potential for lending insight into the cultural connections and dynamism among West African peoples, as demonstrated by recent ethnoarchaeological and archaeological studies of technological style in potting (Gosselain 2008; Haour et al. 2010) and the recontextualization of imported goods within local artistic and ritual practice (e.g., Ogundiran 2002, 2009). This paper reports on a set of objects and contexts from the western Volta River basin that lend insight into the conditions that shape creative adoption and adaptation of stylistic practice as enumerated by McNaughton: 1) the accessibility of institutions—their symbols, activities, and art—across sociocultural boundaries; 2) the fluidity of their components—in other words, the ability to adjust them within local contexts; 3) the “porousness of ethnicity” and the flexible nature of its patrimony; and 4) the role of individuals and groups as creators of history and culture—in other words, agency (1992:78–81). The broader region around Banda, on which this study centers (Fig. 1), has long been known as a site of interaction among diverse and porous ethnic-linguistic groups whose people have been receptive to new technologies and art forms (Bravmann 1972, 1974; see also Silverman 1983). The objects described here derive from archaeological contexts dating between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries ad and suggest participation in broader aesthetic and ritual communities of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991) that created cultural connections across broad geographic reaches of West Africa. “Communities of practice” is a conceptual frame increasingly used by archaeologists (e.g., Habicht-Mauch et al. 2006; Minar and Crown 2001) who are endeavoring to understand the dynamism of cultural practice and seek an alternative to monolithic notions of “culture” that homogenize practice in time and space. Building on the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (Lave and Wenger 1991; Wenger 1998) the concept directs attention to networks of learning and practice and their effects on knowledge transmission within shared domains (e.g., of metal-working, potting, carving, and so on). Individuals and/ or sub-groups of people may participate in multiple communi-

Africa in the World: (Re)centering African History through Archaeology

In early postcolonial decades, scholars of Africa’s pasts turned inward, endeavoring to demonstrate the independence of African achievement from the world. Archaeological research in particular was directed toward demonstrating Africa’s original and independent trajectories of technological, social, and political innovation, with little attention paid to Africa’s interrelations with areas outside the continent. Much has changed in recent years as scholars increasingly recognize the antiquity of the continent’s Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Indian Ocean connections. This paper explores how recent archaeological scholarship centered on the past two millennia in sub-Saharan Africa is transforming our understanding of the subcontinent’s relationship with other world regions and at the same time providing insight into the centrality of those relationships to the historical trajectories of regions outside Africa. A brief discussion of recent archaeological research is followed by an exploration of principles aimed at shifting the terrain of inquiry away from imagining Africa as a continent apart to one intimately bound up in the making of modern and ancient worlds.

‘Route Work’ through Alternative Archives: Reflections on Cross-Disciplinary Practice

ABSTRACT The Five Hundred Year Initiative stresses the value of cross-disciplinary perspectives in investigating the antecedents of contemporary southern African societies, with archaeological sources playing a prominent role in its associated projects. To produce effective histories, these projects require analytical attention to both the processes that gave rise to contemporary societies and those that shape history making in the present. In this article, I build on Paul Gilroys notion of ‘route work’ (by comparison to ‘root work’) to explore the value and methodological challenges of constructing historical understandings that simultaneously attend to the dynamics of past cultural practice and the processes through which our understandings of those practices are produced. Drawing on examples from Ghana, I argue that a methodological engagement with the negotiated quality of historical understanding – an approach that brings into view our processes of ‘coming to know’ – lays the groundwork for an ethically engaged and responsive, at the same time as empirically grounded, understanding of past socio-historical processes.ABSTRACT The Five Hundred Year Initiative stresses the value of cross-disciplinary perspectives in investigating the antecedents of contemporary southern African societies, with archaeological sources playing a prominent role in its associated projects. To produce effective histories, these projects require analytical attention to both the processes that gave rise to contemporary societies and those that shape history making in the present. In this article, I build on Paul Gilroys notion of ‘route work’ (by comparison to ‘root work’) to explore the value and methodological challenges of constructing historical understandings that simultaneously attend to the dynamics of past cultural practice and the processes through which our understandings of those practices are produced. Drawing on examples from Ghana, I argue that a methodological engagement with the negotiated quality of historical understanding – an approach that brings into view our processes of ‘coming to know’ – lays the groundwork for an ethic...

Circulations Through Worlds Apart: Georgian and Victorian England in an African Mirror

A wealth of recent research has documented the distinctive responses of colonized peoples to colonizing forces. Case studies demonstrate that the goods that circulated through emerging capitalist networks were recontextualized as people consumed them according to their own logics. Important as this work is, our focus on the distinctive character of “local responses” can inadvertently reinforce a view of colonized regions (e.g., Africa) as places apart. By replicating an earlier anthropological gaze—outward and downward on the “peripheries” of an emerging capitalist system—broader circulations and connections disappear beneath the surface of particularized responses. The central argument of this chapter is that our increasingly robust understanding of the materiality of colonial processes in the colonies is not balanced by an equally robust appreciation of metropolitan materialities. Using cowries and ivory as exemplars, the chapter explores analytical strategies that bring into view how their circulations contributed to the emergence of the Victorian ecumene through which “us” and “other” were mutually constituted. Attending to these circulations provincializes Europe at the same time as they bring into view the profoundly reciprocal, enmeshed and mutually entangled quality of our life worlds that appear separate for their distinctive qualities.

‘Theory in Africa, Africa in Theory’. Taking stock and looking forward

Contemporary practices of archaeology in Africa differ from those of earlier decades, but do so in ways that resist the tidy textbook categories of ‘culture history,’ ‘processual’ and ‘post-processual’ theory. Readers are well familiar with the disciplinary narrative of how culture history yielded to processual archaeology and how it yielded in some quarters to post-processual archaeology, with each shift galvanised by an archaeological culture hero. So too are African archaeologists familiar with the critique that these theories and their succession took form in the metropolitan academy, that their imposition in colonial and neocolonial contexts configured and disfigured Africa’s pasts and that African archaeology would be better served by theory grounded in African experience (see Pikirayi 2015 for a recent discussion). In their introduction to Theory in Africa, Africa in Theory: Locating Meaning in Archaeology, editors Stephanie Wynne-Jones (University of York) and Jeffrey Fleisher (Rice University) present a case for why this overarching narrative would benefit from nuance and a deeper understanding of archaeological theory’s relational formation. In short, they argue against the view that theory has been ‘firmly located in the West, and then applied elsewhere’ (p. 7) and press us to consider how archaeological theory has long been configured through ‘the interaction of Africa and the West’ (p. 6). In this first issue ofAzania’s next fifty years, the editors have invitedme to use a review of Wynne-Jones and Fleisher’s volume as a springboard for reflecting more broadly on theory in African and global archaeology. I have taken mymandate to build upon— and to widen — the scope of theory considered in the volume in order to highlight promising future directions that connect with African experience at the same time as they hold value for archaeologists working in other world areas. I do so with the recognition that the future of African archaeology rests with a younger generation and that my reflections take shape through the particular problems and contexts that have configured my interests over the decades. As such, I do not mine the full potential of this interesting volume and I encourage others to read the collection with the same imaginative assignment in mind. But first, some details