The Origin of African Sheep: Archaeological and Genetic Perspectives

Indigenous African sheep genetic resources have been classified into two main groups, fat-tailed and thin-tailed sheep. The fat-tailed sheep are the most widely distributed, being found in a large part of North Africa (from Egypt to Algeria) and in Eastern and Southern Africa (from Eritrea to South Africa). The thin-tailed sheep are present mainly in Morocco, Sudan and in West Africa. African sheep were domesticated outside Africa. They share a common ancestry with European and Asian sheep. Archaeological information supports separate introductions and dispersion histories for the African thin-tailed and fat-tailed sheep. The first sheep entered Africa via the Isthmus of Suez and/or the southern Sinai Peninsula, between 7500 and 7000 BP. They were likely of the thin-tailed type. Fat-tailed sheep entered Africa through its northeastern part and the Horn of Africa. Mitochondrial DNA analysis supports a common maternal ancestral origin for all African sheep, while autosomal and Y chromosome DNA analysis indicates a distinct genetic history for African thin-tailed and sub-Saharan fat-tailed sheep. The main ancestral population of southern African fat-tailed sheep likely originated in East Africa. Further work is needed to assess the possible dispersion of sheep from western Africa to the southern African regions.     

West African Perspective of the World Archaeological Congress: Challenges and Aspirations

This paper looks at how the West African region was involved in the early history and formulation of the World Archaeological Congress. In particular, it describes events around the 9th Congress of the Pan-African Association of Prehistory and Related Studies, held in Jos, Nigeria, in 1983. The question of apartheid South Africa came up in the plenary session of that meting. A resolution was adopted condemning apartheid, and calling for the cessation of all contacts with South African institutions, and for the censure of colleagues and institutions maintaining links with South Africa. This later became the core of the WAC approach to South Africa, adopted by the organizers of the Southampton Congress. Looking ahead, formidable obstacles remain for West African archaeology, many of them structural in nature. Punitive visa requirements, currency crises and the scarcity of resources all prevent West African scholars from participating fully in global scholarship.     

Managing Oman's Archaeological Resource: Historical Perspectives

Abstract

This article examines the history of the development of archaeological resource management in the Sultanate of Oman. It provides an overview of past and present practices and investigates the relevance of current management to the present state of Omani society. Although archaeological resource management in Oman started only three decades ago, the government has made enormous progress in establishing archaeological organizations and in creating their administrative and legislative tools. Nevertheless, it is also evident that the national system of archaeological resource management is facing a number of challenges that need to be addressed. The significance of this study lies in the fact that it is the first attempt to review this resource management historically. It aims to fill an obvious lacuna left by the many researchers who, since starting their activities in the 1950s, have only focused on the archaeology of the resource without evaluating the system through which this resource has been managed.     

Archaeological Perspectives on the Rise of the Okinawan State

This paper presents an examination of processes of secondary state formation that occurred during the emergence of the Ryukyu Kingdom, in southwestern Japan, from the tenth to seventeenth centuries A.D. These processes include the influx of new populations, the appearance of new subsistence strategies and political groupings, shifting patterns of long-distance trade, the development of new patterns of foreign relations with China and Japan, the creation of indigenous culture and new ideology, and the transformation of gender hierarchy. I examine these processes from the perspective of political leadership and the nature of political hierarchy, concluding that the Okinawan case is distinctive in its heterarchical organization. The corporate, collective nature of Okinawan communities was overlain by a state-level network system that developed at the time of tributary linkages with China in the fourteenth century A.D.     

The Spanish Philippines: Archaeological Perspectives on Colonial Economics and Society

When scholars consider Spanish colonialism in the Philippines their impressions are based largely on documentary evidence of their 377-year colonial presence and on romanticized impressions of the larger Spanish empire. In the New World, wherever Europeans settled, there is a clear break in the archaeological sequence of pre-Columbian cultural traditions. In the systemic context these changes continue to be evidenced in architectural style, city plan, and diet. Today, however, archaeologists working in Luzon, Cebu, and Mindanao are revealing vast differences between the nature of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines and that seen in the Americas. There, the remoteness of the colony from Europe, combined with its geographical position on the doorstep of China, created a unique Spanish colonial adaptation that reveals the significance of Asia in the world economic order.     

Stringing Together Cowrie Shells in the African Archaeological Record with Special Reference to Southern Africa

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory - Archaeological explorations of the meaning of ‘trade objects’, such as glass beads and cowrie shells, remain hampered by theoretical and...     

The World Archaeological Congress: Extending the vision

Este artículo resume la historia reciente, los logros y las trayectorias futuras del World Archaeological Congress. Tras esbozar la estructura organizativa del WAC, cuyos miembros son elegidos a partir de 14 regiones globales, la autora recoge el programa de publicaciones del WAC y los fúturos inter-congresos, animando a individuos de todo el mundo a participar. Se?ala asimismo que el WAC ha tomado un papel del liderazgo a la hora de respaldar a los arqueólogos locales para apoyar la conservación y la práctica ética de la arqueología. Además, ha secundado la nutrición y el crecimiento de comunidades y valores arqueológicos en áreas en las que las condiciones económicas y políticas dificultan su sustentación. El compromiso del WAC de ser multi-vocal se evidencia en la diversidad de personas que asisten a las conferencias del WAC—por ejemplo, al WAC-5 celebrado en Washington asistieron participantes de 75 países. Estas ramificaciones no son sólo en términos de la diversidad global, sino también en términos de desarrollar una habilidad de escuchar y una voluntad de respetar las voces de grupos dispares dentro de los diversos países, como por ejemplo las voces de las poblaciones Indígenas. El compromiso del WAC de ser multivocal es ampliado por medio de su dedicación a la justicia social, evidente no sólo en los puestos políticos del WAC sino también en la forma en que WAC hace frente a tales cuestiones en la teoría, el método y la práctica arqueológica. Trabajando juntos, los miembros de WAC logran una arqueología más rica, mejor, más erudita y más equitativa. Más aun, WAC sirve como un modelo para la descolonización de otras disciplinas. Durante su período de vigencia, el Ejecutivo actual espera ayudar al WAC a ser más cohesivo, a conseguir mejor financiación y a ser más efectivo políticamente, así como a ser más capaz de poner en contacto a arqueólogos de todo el mundo y apoyarlos con medidas prácticas que beneficien a sus comunidades regionales. DE este modo, esperan ampliar las miras de los fundadores del WAC.      

Office Cultures and Corporate Memory: Some Archaeological Perspectives

It is only when one moves home or office that one really thinks about what gets left behind, what is discarded, and what we decide to keep. How we deal with this in our personal lives is interesting enough, where senses of loss and discard are potentially heightened given the intimate heritage which many familiar objects and items possess. But what happens when the transition is corporate, when an organisation moves? Here, briefly, is an archaeological perspective on the move English Heritage made in 2006, from its long-time HQ in Savile Row (London, UK) to new accommodation in Holborn and elsewhere.     

Teaching Archaeological Pasts in South Africa: Historical and Contemporary Considerations of Archaeological Education

This paper discusses the history and trending of archaeological education in South Africa, a set of frameworks wherein primary and secondary level students instrumentalize archaeology to investigate and debate their pasts. Archaeological education has existed thus far as a conversation among archaeologists and a footnote in the national curriculum. I present the first cohesive treatment of these projects. I examine attendant conflicts and obstacles, drawn partly from my involvement in two South African projects but illustrating issues that I believe have global resonance. I submit that archaeological education entails engagements that hold serious ramifications for archaeological ethics, practice, and epistemology.     

Disappearing from the World: An Archaeological Perspective on Neanderthal Extinction

This paper is concerned with the statistical precision of radiocarbon dating at the earlier range of its efficacy – the period into which falls the extinction of the Neanderthals. The many potential problems affecting accuracy of this technique are discussed as a caveat as to what one might expect of future research and development in this field. The main aim of the paper, however, is to examine exactly what our chronological precision is in the period 30–40 ka BP, i.e. at around five to seven half lives of radiocarbon. If mathematical models of Neanderthal extinction are correct, the whole process could have occurred within the error of one radiocarbon date at two standard deviations, which does not bode well for understanding what must have been a complex set of processes. The assumptions made by palaeoanthropologists working with this problem are discussed, particularly in relation to how dates are actually used, and how sedimentology affects chronology. These problems aside, a coarse and necessarily provisional attempt to interpret the existing archaeological database is made, with the assumption that Late Middle Palaeolithic and 'transitional' industries are proxy indicators of Neanderthal presence in a region. From this, it is suggested that the processes of Neanderthal extinction began by c. 40 ka BP in the Balkans and Central Europe, radiating out from there, leaving Neanderthals on the periphery of their old distribution (southern Iberia, southern Italy, Crimea, Siberia, and one might predict the United Kingdom) as late as c. 29 ka BP. The processes differ in signature (and therefore by extension nature and quite possibly cause) region to region, and because of this, the role of anatomically modern humans in the extinction of Neanderthals is questioned.     

Early African America: Archaeological Studies of Significance and Diversity

This article examines archaeological studies of the cultural heritage and social dynamics of African descendant populations in the United States and Canada from AD 1400 through 1865. European colonial enterprises expanded in Africa and the Americas during that time span, effecting an accompanying movement of free and captive Africans into North America. Archaeological investigations of early African America are remarkable for the diversity of analytic scales and research questions pursued. This diversity of research efforts has yielded a highly productive, interdisciplinary expansion of knowledge concerning African diaspora histories.     

Domesticating Animals in Africa: Implications of Genetic and Archaeological Findings

Domestication is an ongoing co-evolutionary process rather than an event or invention. Recent zooarchaeological and animal genetics research has prompted a thorough revision of our perspectives on the history of domestic animals in Africa. Genetic analyses of domestic animal species have revealed that domestic donkeys are descended from African ancestors, opened a debate over the contribution of indigenous aurochs to African domestic cattle, revealed an earlier and possibly exogenous origin of the domestic cat, and reframed our vision of African dogs. Genetic diversity studies and mapping of unique traits in African cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens indicate adaptations to regional environmental challenges and suggest hitherto unknown and complex patterns of interactions both among Africans and with Southwest Asia and other Asian regions on the Indian Ocean. This article argues against the static perspective on domestication as invention and for viewing it as a dynamic, locally based and continuing process.     

South Africa and the African Renaissance

This article addresses the question of the new South Africa's relationships with other countries in Africa in the context of the idea of an 'African Renaissance' which has recently gained currency. The authors identify two opposing conceptions of Africa's development, which they call 'globalist' and 'Africanist' respectively, and explore the tensions besetting South Africa's participation in an 'Africanist' project. They discuss the dilemma of South Africa's role on the continent as both an obvious and an impossible candidate for leadership, and argue for an 'Africanist' and post-structuralist approach to the political, economic and cultural development of the African continent.     

The History of African Village Chickens: an Archaeological and Molecular Perspective

The history of the introduction and dispersal of village chickens across the African continent is a subject of intense debate and speculation among scholars. Here, we synthesize and summarise the current scientific genetic and nongenetic knowledge in relation to the history of the species on the continent. Sociocultural, linguistic, archaeological and historic data all suggest a complex history for the species in Africa, characterized by multiple maritime and/or terrestrial introductions over time and several dispersal routes towards and within Africa. Molecular genetics information supports these observations and in addition suggests possible Asian centers of origin for African domestic chickens, including South Asia and Island Southeast Asia. However, both sets of data were until now too limited in their geographic scope, both within Africa and in comparison with chickens from Asia, to unravel the history of the species in detail. We anticipate that further continent-wide studies combining archaeological, ancient and/or modern genetic information may shed new insights on the history of the species. These will contribute to a deeper understanding of the history of trading networks and human interactions within Africa and between African and Asian societies, at the root of the development and expansion of African civilizations.     

Management Plans for Archaeological Sites: A World Heritage Template

Abstract

A failed attempt to produce a Management Manual for World Heritage Archaeological Sites and Monuments brought together a body of experts in 2002 at Ma'agan, Israel. This paper aims to make the general recommendations of the Ma'agan meeting more widely known among those concerned with the management of archaeological sites. The paper summarizes the outcomes of the meeting, including ideas on the structure of a management plan, the planning process, team building and public participation, site significance, conservation, monitoring, maintenance, presentation and interpretation, tourism and action plans; and includes a select bibliography.     

Archaeological Heritage Management and Site Inventory Systems in Africa

Abstract

Archaeological Heritage Management in West Africa is hampered by lack of adequately trained personnel, lack of funds, and lack of appropriate equipment such as computers. It is suggested that organizations such as the World Bank should consider supporting training programs for Third World archaeologists, with internships at U.S. universities with appropriate expertise, and in areas where the World Bank has development projects, providing equipment which would be most efficient for archaeological survey and testing. Most particularly needed are intensive surveys in all African countries; one cannot “manage” if one does not know what the resource base contains.