Brian M. Fagan

The Date of the Ingombe Ilede Burials

AN account of archaeological excavations at Ingombe Ilede has recently been published by one of us.1 The site in question is situated on the Zambian bank of the Zambezi some thirty miles downstream of Kariba Dam. Excavations demonstrated the presence of an Iron Age midden deposit up to 8 ft. in depth. In I960 eleven richly adorned human skeletons were recovered from the site during rescue operations following a chance discovery by the Northern Rhodesia governments Water Affairs Department. No comparable burials were found during the controlled excavations which were subsequently conducted. The greatest interest of the Ingombe Ilede burials has centred around their supposedly early date. At the time of the initial discovery an age of 300-500 years was postulated, based partly on the exceptionally fine state of preservation of organic materials associated with the burials and partly on external evidence for the date of the Zambezi trade with the east coast of

Early trade and raw materials in South Central Africa

Three raw materials were essential to Iron Age peoples in South Central Africa: iron, copper and salt. This paper discusses some of the archaeological evidence for the development of regional and long-distance trade in these commodities during the earlier Iron Age. A distinction is drawn between regional trade in items for which there is local demand, and longer distance commerce in raw materials, which may have been conducted with the aid of some standardized units of monetary significance. The big question for future research is that of assessing the degree to which the more sophisticated centres of metallurgy and trade affected those societies, living outside the immediate area, whose technologies and economies were less highly developed.

Ivuna: Ancient Salt-Working in Southern Tanzania

Dr. Fagan is now Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In this article, written in collaboration with a colleague from Harvard University who joined in the excavations, he describes the Iron Age sequence from the Ivuna salt pans in the Rukwa Trough. The research was carried out when Dr. Fagan was Director of the Bantu Studies Project of the Institute.

The House of the Sea: An Essay on the Antiquity of Planked Canoes in Southern California

The Chumash tomol, a sophisticated planked canoe, came into use in the Santa Barbara Channel region of Southern California about 1,500 years ago. It is often assumed that planked watercraft were first developed in the region at about that date. This paper argues, on theoretical grounds, that planked canoes were developed much earlier in Southern California, perhaps as early as 8,500 years ago.

The Greefswald Sequence: Bambandyanalo and Mapungubwe

The Iron Age sites known as Mapungubwe and Bambandyanalo on the farm Greefswald, 55 miles west of Messina in the northern Transvaal, South Africa, have aroused world-wide speculation ever since their discovery in the early 1930s. This international interest has been considerably stimulated by the publication of the second volume of the Mapungubwe report in late 1963. Much unnecessary confusion as to the significance of The Mapungubwe and Bambandyanalo sites has been caused by the long delay in the publication of this second volume, and this has made a critical leview of the Iron Age sequence in this desolate corner of the Middle Limpopo valley a matter of some urgency. The Greefswald sequence is of vital importance to South African history, for the sites have been held to show that the earliest Iron Age population of South Africa was non-Negro. In addition, they have been used to provide a fairly accurate indication of the date at which Bantu-speaking peoples first crossed the middle reaches o the Limpopo.

The Iron Age Sequence in the Southern Province of Northern Rhodesia

The Iron Age cultures of Northern Rhodesia have until fairly recently remained unknown, whilst work in Southern Rhodesia and in South Africa has revealed a long sequence in both those territories. Mr R. R. Inskeep undertook some excavations in 1958, and since 1959 Iron Age research has expanded considerably. Work has been concentrated in the Southern Province of the territory with the aid of a grant from the Nuffield Foundation, and a number of large scale excavations have been carried out. This paper gives an outline of our general conclusions as they appeared at the completion of the fieldwork.

Education is what's left : some thoughts on introductory archaeology

In over 30 years of graduate and undergraduate teaching, I have taught everything from large introductory offerings with an audience of 300, to advanced undergraduate seminars, even a graduate course for two people on writing about archaeology. In all these years, I am struck by two constants: the general enthusiasm of my students for archaeology and their startling lack of ability to think for themselves and be intellectually self-reliant, something found in every academic discipline. These same 30 years have encompassed a period of remarkable change in archaeology-new theoretical paradigms, the increasing emphasis on stewardship and management, startling and sometimes dramatic discoveries, and a quantum jump in our ability to extract fine-grained information from the archaeological record. Yet, every winter, when I step into the classroom to address another audience of impressionable undergraduates, I find everything is the same. The expectations of my colleagues and students, the university regulations surrounding testing and scoring, the questions students ask, even the distinctive aroma in the classroom on a wet day.

Early Iron Age Pottery in Eastern and Southern Africa

In this article Dr Fagan reviews the archaeological evidence in relation to the origins and migrations of the early Iron Age peoples of Eastern and Southern Africa.

Anthropology 3: An Experiment in the Multimedia Teaching of Introductory Archaeology

The introductory archaeology course at the University of California at Santa Barbara has undergone a dramatic metamorphosis in the past two years. The course has gone from a largely passive, lecture-centered learning experience to a much more student-centric one. One aspect of that shift has been the incorporation of interactive computer exercises and simulations. While a substantial change in itself, the incorporation of computer exercises is only a small part of the total transformation of the course. The key to the successful use of the new technology in the course was a fundamental shift in our approach to teaching the material. Some elements of that shift include: reducing lecture time; increasing opportunitiesfor one-on-one interaction between instructors and students; mixing small-group and individual exercises; and creating a more democratized information network incorporating instructors, teaching assistants, computer resources, readings, and students into a learning community.

Pre-European Ironworking in Central Africa with Special Reference to Northern Rhodesia

THE more spectacular types of iron tools found in Central Africa have long been the subject of discussion by travellers and scientists, but few attempts have been made to discuss the problems of pre-European ironworking in Central Africa as a whole. As early as I694, a woman striking an iron gong is illustrated in the German edition of the travels of P. Joanne Antonio Cavazzi in the Congo, Angola and Matamba.1 Livingstone published several illustrations of iron weapons and instruments,2 as did Stanley.3 Archaeological investigations began with Theodore Bent who described gongs and other objects from the Acropolis at Zimbabwe.4 Hall illustrated iron tools and instruments from Zimbabwe5 and described them in some detail, unfortunately without much stratigraphical information. The contributions of these early workers were followed by an increasingly large number of publications which mention iron tools, but no attempt at a synthesis of the evidence for early ironworking was undertaken until Walter Cline wrote his classic study.6 Subsequently, a great deal of new information has come to light, which makes a new synthesis of the ironworking evidence in Northern Rhodesia in particular long overdue. This summary of the available evidence is set out for the benefit of historians, linguists, and other workers in fields which border on archaeology, who may need an up-to-date account to fill in gaps in their work.