John Giblin

Post-conflict heritage: symbolic healing and cultural renewal

Heritage is invoked for post-conflict development by international organisations, governments, and sub-national groups to provide emotional and cultural, including economic, healing for individuals and societies. However, academic critiques of healing-heritage typically cite the failure of heritage to heal, either because it cannot, or because it is managed incorrectly. Thus, an anomalous situation exists between expectations and critiques, which this study describes and explores through international policies and national and sub-national post-conflict healing-heritage initiatives from Rwanda and Uganda. Drawing on concepts of heritage as a cultural process, cultural trauma, and symbolic healing, this study proposes that heritage is neither an essentially positive nor negative post-conflict development strategy to select or avoid respectively. Instead, heritage is better understood as a common element of post-conflict renewal, which becomes intensified as the past is aggressively negotiated to provide healing related to conflict traumas. By moving beyond the ‘does heritage heal or hurt?’ distraction the meaning and function of heritage in post-conflict contexts as a common element of post-conflict healing complexes is elucidated. The implication for those who wish to manage post-conflict development through heritage is that they are just the latest in a long history of symbolic healers, from whom they have a lot to learn.

Introduction: De-centring ethical assumptions by re-centring ethical debate in African archaeology

Institute for Culture and Society, School of Social Sciences and Psychology, University of Western Sydney, Penrith, New South Wales 2751, Australia; School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 36 Beaumont Street, Oxford, OX1 2PG, United Kingdom and Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, PO Wits 2050, Johannesburg, South Africa; Archaeology, School of Social Sciences, University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia 6009, Australia and GAES, University of the Witwatersrand, PO Wits 2050, Johannesburg, South Africa

Decolonial Challenges and Post-Genocide Archaeological Politics in Rwanda

Abstract This paper narrates in an autobiographical manner PhD research regarding pre-colonial Rwandan archaeology and its contemporary socio-political relevance. The paper reflects on the decolonial challenge that inspired the research and the ways in which, and reasons why, the research fell short of achieving its decolonial aims. In response to this complex personal, national, and disciplinary case study, the paper questions activist archaeologies and suggests that, whilst political engagement remains essential, the outcomes of well-intentioned approaches may actually perpetuate the undesirable political paradigms they seek to challenge. In conclusion, the paper proposes a hybrid set of decolonial responses that might be usefully employed in African Archaeology and the colonial discipline of archaeology more broadly.

Toward a politicised interpretation ethic in African archaeology

Following the Foucauldian, post-colonial and archaeological post-processual critiques of knowledge construction and more recent calls for a political ethic in archaeology, this paper furthers this discussion by advocating the introduction of a ‘politicised interpretation publication ethic’ in African archaeology. This is a response to a survey of recent African archaeology publications that suggests that ethics and politics continue to be removed from archaeological interpretation. The archaeology-as-science ethic is subsequently critiqued through a brief review of two famous African archaeology examples: the controversy over Great Zimbabwe and the practice of archaeology in apartheid period South Africa. Finally, the problematic archaeology-as-science ethic in pre-genocide Rwanda is outlined and the ethical creation of archaeology today in a post-genocide situation considered as the paper moves toward a discussion of what a ‘politicised interpretation publication ethic’ might look like in contemporary African archaeology.

The social and symbolic context of the royal potters of Buganda

This paper describes the technical activities of the contemporary makers of the royal pots of Buganda and the social context of this technology and its products, alongside the symbolic world of which these are a part. The ethnoarchaeological research presented here suggests that Ganda pottery was not only a technical and functional product, but was also socially and symbolically constructed, reflecting the moral values of society. This paper identifies pottery in Buganda as a symbolic source of health, which has resulted in the establishment of royal potters who make ritually clean royal pots by following strict taboos in order to protect the health of the kabaka (king) and the kingdom. The unfortunate archaeological implications of this work are that it may be the intangible and archaeologically elusive activities of the royal potters that make their pots royal are not necessarily the tangible ones.

Challenges for Pre-Colonial Archaeological Site Management in Rwanda

Abstract Drawing on a range of experiences as PhD researchers in Rwanda (JG, JH) and Rwandan heritage professionals (MM, AN), this paper reviews the current state of pre-colonial archaeological site management in Rwanda and identifies specific contemporary challenges related to current national priorities, demographic and subsistence pressures, and socio-economic development. The paper recognizes the difficult contemporary context in which archaeology exists in Rwanda, including a recent history of civil war and genocide, and on-going rural poverty. However, it suggests that by harnessing established government policies, which recognize the value of studying and promoting Rwandas cultural past, basic low-cost mitigation strategies may be employed to minimize damage to pre-colonial archaeological sites and maximize their potential as cultural resources.

Archaeological Ethics and Violence in Post-genocide Rwanda

This chapter reflects on the ethics of archaeological interpretation regarding the post-genocide identification of violence associated with the precolonial past, specifically a c. 400 AD potentially violent burial, which could, it is speculated, contribute toward the persistence of structural violence in the present and the return to extensive physical violence in the future. In so doing, it questions a forgotten aspect of archaeological ethics, that is, the political nature of “scientific” interpretation and whether supposedly objective, non-political, interpretation is always ethical. In conclusion, this chapter argues that archaeological interpretation should not be removed from political context but must be explicitly embedded within it wherever and whenever it is discussed and published.

International Heritage Tourism in Rwanda: Paving Over the Past at the Musanze Caves

Abstract Through a case study of the Musanze Caves, this paper describes the impact of Rwanda’s heritage tourism industry on archaeological resources. The paper outlines Rwanda’s tourism industry and describes how it privileges ‘natural heritage’ above ‘cultural heritage’, a situation which is negatively impacting upon archaeological sites such as the Musanze Caves. To create the Musanze Caves tourism experience there has been significant non-archaeological excavation and construction in the caves, which has damaged regionally significant archaeological remains that date from 1000 CE to the present. Furthermore, the Musanze Caves tourism experience does not incorporate extant archaeological information into the presented narrative, which is instead based on ‘natural heritage’ and adventure tourism. This situation is damaging rare resources that might help construct new historical narratives to replace untenable colonial and pre-genocide ones, and is generally unhelpful in communicating the knowledge that we do have about the region’s history.

Critical Approaches to Post-Colonial (Post-Conflict) Heritage

As might be implied by Orwell’s (1949, p. 88) famous lines, heritage, broadly conceived as the use of the past in the present, is a locus of power, through the appropriation of which the dominant in society may attempt to control the future by creating historical justifications for contemporary goals. Indeed, this powerful cultural mechanism was harnessed by one of the most oppressive political doctrines of Orwell’s time and recent centuries: colonialism. Subsequently, however, post-colonial independent governments have also adopted heritage rhetoric and professional practices as they reappropriate and repossess their pasts to create new, purportedly nationally unifying, heritage narratives in post-colonial, post-conflict, nation-building eras in attempting to counter the ethno-racially divisive narratives that were typically constructed under colonialism.

Attachment to abandoned heritage: the case of Suakin, Sudan

every gold-bearing deposit bore the traces of ancient exploitation. As might be expected in such an arid environment, the preservation of the remains of past occupation and industry is excellent, as is evident in the many striking images reproduced in this volume. Archaeometallurgy in Egypt may be in its infancy, but this book is certainly one of the best records of early mining for any part of the world. We should be most grateful to the authors for compiling so systematic a record of these remains. Archaeologists should waste no time in investigating these settlements before they fall prey to further mining.