Peter R. Schmidt

Social memory and trauma in northwestern Tanzania Organic, spontaneous community collaboration

This essay assesses current oral social memory near the best documented ancient sacred site in Africa, the ‘Olduvai Gorge of the Iron Age’ (as locals now call it), located just west of Lake Victoria. Marked by Kaiija tree, this site is known for its antiquity and the rich panoply of myth and history attached to it. However, the deaths of older care-takers and tradition-keepers caused by HIV/AIDS and the destruction of once sacred shrines have permanently changed how history is now kept and remembered. A spontaneous initiative taken by local residents - a kind of therapeutic healing through heritage - is revitalizing the shrines and leading to a community re-examination of oral traditions to establish how the loss of these powerful mnemonics and older keepers of history has affected historical knowledge.

Urban precursors in the Horn: early 1st-millennium BC communities in Eritrea

Eritrea fought a war of liberation for three decades between the early 1960s and 1991. While professional research stagnated because of the war, amateur archaeologists provided the sole source of information for ancient material culture in the country during this era. With the coming of independence in 1993, awareness of the potential value of Eritrea’s heritage resources began to grow, leading to an initiative in 1997 to teach archaeology and heritage management at the University of Asmara. Out of the combined training and research programmes conducted by the University of Asmara have come several major discoveries that change the way that the rise of urbanism is seen in the Horn of Africa. We highlight research showing that between 800 BC and 400 BC the greater Asmara area of Eritrea supported the earliest settled agropastoralist communities known in the highlands of the Horn. These communities pre-date and are contemporaneous with Pre-Aksumite settlements in the highlands of southern Eritrea and northern Ethiopia.

Rediscovering Community Archaeology in Africa and Reframing its Practice

Abstract Community archaeology and heritage work have a long history in Africa, a history embedded in the practice of ethnoarchaeology, studies of indigenous knowledge systems, and the collaborative study of oral traditions and other intangible heritage. This paper reviews some of the intellectual legacies that foreground community approaches today in Africa. Whilst top-down approaches have tended to characterize many projects in recent history, the requirements of outside development agencies often force archaeologists into collaborative compliance that communities are not ready to embrace or where histories of land alienation complicate best efforts to engage communities. An alternative community approach arising from a grassroots initiative in Northwest Tanzania is discussed to illustrate how collaboration may lead to mutual research and heritage development that contribute new knowledge to African history and archaeology and improve community well-being.

Silences and Mentions in History Making

Until historical archaeologists accept the historicities of societies lying partially or wholly outside the orbit of Western influences, they will not confront the anthropological conundrum of silencing others’ pasts. History making—framing archaeological practice with questions that count and critically analyzing the conflicts and congruencies among sources—transcends disciplinary boundaries and accounts for any moment in which historical representation unfolds. Several scholars have recently suggested different perspectives on archaeology applied to historical questions in Africa, including representations about the methods and theoretical views of historical practice in Africa. Given the more than a century of historical archaeology in Africa, it is compelling to evaluate key statements for both shortcomings as well as productive insights. Disjunctive and supplemental practice as well as critical interrogation of local historiographies and materialities have a long application in Africa and best realize the ultimate goal of history and anthropology, making new pasts and exposing the potentialities of a truly historical archaeology.

Hardcore Ethnography: Interrogating the Intersection of Disease, Human Rights, and Heritage

Abstract Heritage preservation and development initiatives by Haya villagers in NW Tanzania have led to a collaboration that has produced important insights into change in heritage meanings over the last several decades. The impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic has been profound, nearly eliminating an older generation of male keepers of oral traditions—one of two heritage domains valorized by the Haya today. Male keepers of oral testimonies have been replaced by women who are now elevated to a new status that recognizes their mastery of oral history about community affairs. As villagers cope with the daily stresses of making a living from an increasingly impoverished landscape, they make human rights claims to food, shelter, and economic opportunity. Mixed with these stated needs are discourses about heritage lost, and a need to recuperate respect for the past, for ancestors, and for the senses of place associated with embodied rituals performed at shrines. These claims to human rights play out in performances such as shrine reconstructions and heritage tours that amplify embodied experiences while simultaneously enhancing economic opportunities for alienated youth who also gain knowledge of their once rich heritage.

Historical archaeology in East Africa: past practice and future directions

This forum article explores the major intellectual trajectories in the historical archaeology of Eastern Africa over the last sixty years. Two primary perspectives are identified in historical archaeology: one that emphasizes precolonial history and oral traditions with associated archaeology, and another that focuses mostly on the era of European contact with Africa. The latter is followed by most North American practice, to the point of excluding approaches that privilege the internal dynamics of African societies. African practice today has many hybrids using both approaches. Increasingly, precolonial historical archaeology is waning in the face of a dominant focus on the modern era, much like the trend in African history. New approaches that incorporate community participation are gaining favor, with positive examples of collaboration between historical archaeologists and communities members desiring to preserve and revitalize local histories.

Knowledge about archaeological field schools in Africa: the Tanzanian experience

Despite the increase number of African professionals in archaeology over the last three decades, knowledge about the history and state of contemporary archaeological field schools and how Africans are trained in the discipline is poor. This paper argues that close examination and open discussion of past and current archaeological field schools are a must if transformations of archaeological practices in Africa are expected to take place. Using the Tanzanian experience, it presents the history and current state of archaeological field training. The paper focuses on the ethics of training Africans in archaeology introduced in the 1980s and the changes that occurred between then and now, concluding with the successes and issues that arise from these pedagogies.

Preface to special series

The papers that make up the first set of this special series on community archaeology and heritage studies in Africa are a natural outcome of the influence of Prof. Merrick Posnansky’s work in African archaeology and heritage. Posnansky’s ‘Reflection’ here captures the verve and commitment he brought to the inclusion of local Africa residents in the museum programmes that he supervised, as well as research that he initiated in rural areas of Uganda. His integration of oral traditions into archaeological narratives marked a new departure for African archaeology. It privileged local views of history while also examining material and archival evidence. Posnansky went on to inspire me and my peer group to be mindful of what indigenous voices could add to the fabric of history. As a university teacher with similar disposition, I shared such views with my students, among them Kathy Weedman Arthur, John Arthur, and Matt Curtis (all co-authors of a contribution in this issue) focused on Ethiopia. So, three intellectual generations of community archaeology are represented here and in future papers – an extraordinary legacy that speaks to the long-term engagement that Africanists have had with African communities. Posnansky shares his background in English archaeology and extramural engagements with local people, a perspective that he took with him to Uganda with brilliant results that challenged conventional practices some 60 years ago. It was my good fortune to study with him at Makerere University in Kamapa in the mid-1960s, visiting many sites that had rich oral traditions associated with them. His methods were very much ethnographic, digging into local beliefs and practices to gain more diverse and powerful insights into the African past. Given his influence on our practice, it is only natural that ethnographic inquiry – with guidance from local participants – is central to research among the Haya in northwestern Tanzania. So, too, it is the primary method used by the group of co-authors (including Ethiopian collaborators) who examine sacred space and belief systems among the Gamo of Ethiopia. Much of the richness of these studies arises from the knowledge systems of those among whom we work and study, for we become students of local history. Only by becoming participants in local culture can we hope to gain an appreciation of what heritage means to local people. We must rub shoulders with them as they live their heritage in sacred places and daily activities, listening to their discourse about what they mean by heritage. Other papers in this series will follow. Some will have a different flavour, and step away from longterm engagement with communities to assess community needs for professional assistance in archaeological inquiry and heritage development. Together, the entire set of papers will provide a broad spectrum of how archaeologists and heritage managers are approaching community participation in Africa today.

Contests between heritage and history in Tanganyika/Tanzania: Insights arising from community-based heritage research

ABSTRACT Ongoing collaborative heritage research in northwestern Tanzania engages partners from diverse backgrounds, from craftsmen and common folk to a sitting king and his royal clan. Such diversity has revealed intangible heritage in two adjacent kingdoms. In Kihanja Kingdom, the physical structures of Kanazi Palace appear to dominate the heritage landscape, yet, ethnographic and archaeological collaborations revealed that Kihanja kings engaged in heritage performances that preserved ritual knowledge the Christian church erased. Written records further misrepresented these subaltern practices, and were at odds with heritage values enshrined in practice and the archaeological record. In Bukara Kingdom, the ravages of HIV/AIDS led to the loss of oral traditions, thus obscuring a significant massacre by German troops over a century ago. By revisiting oral accounts recorded 48 years ago, we (with local participants) were able to correct the written record and justify their efforts to preserve and interpret human remains at Mazinga cave.

Ancestors and Archaeology in Africa

Africans need to be aware not just of the fact that the past exists in the presentbut how and where and why precisely their pasts exist[s] in their presents [and] what value such presence holds for their future meaningful existence. We very much need to acquire a synchronous sense of tune which encourages as well as enables us to see ourselves co-existing peacefully, creatively, harmoniously and truthfully in all spheres oflife, at all stages and times with our ancestors and our descendants, and thus with all of our neighbours-past, present and future (Andah, 1990, 3).