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.     

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.     

Ethnographic Clay Sourcing Practices: Insights for Archaeological Assemblage Interpretations

This paper uses examples of ethnographic clay sourcing strategies from coastal and central Kenyan communities (Digo, Jomvu, Chonyi, Tigania and Mbeere), and potsherds from the Manda archaeological site in Kenya (seventh-fourteenth centuries AD), to illustrate archaeological clay variability and discuss cultural and social behaviour which may contribute to paste inconsistences in an archaeological assemblage. I demonstrate that while function and environmental constraints influence the potters’ decision in the selection of clay sources/treatment, the choice may also be influenced by other factors such as aesthetics, which are dependent on the values of the customer, and in some cases, societal taboos. I also argue that clay sources are not always indicators of production centres, and that heterogeneity and homogeneity in paste composition could imply production centres and customer homesteads respectively.     

Between Memory and Materiality: An Archaeological Approach to Studying the Nazi Concentration Camps

Abstract

By its very nature, historical narrative that is rooted exclusively in textual sources is destined to be more linear, more univocal, and less equipped to deal with the problematic. On the other hand, due to its unique abilities and approaches, historical archaeology thrives on the tensions inherent to any attempt to understand past and present experience. In this article I negotiate between two approaches to studying the concentration camps of the Third Reich—one canonical the other experimental. It is suggested that when studying the camps, we are faced with a series of tensions: between past and present, between remembering and forgetting, and between live human actors and the material record. This article explores two research paradigms: first, the traditional text-centric historical approach, and second, an approach that might be called 'historical archaeological'. I embrace the inherent tensions between the two approaches, and put forward some innovative ways for coming to terms with these places of internment.     

Struggling Pasts: A Commentary

This commentary is organized into three parts. The first discusses the papers presented in this volume, notably divided into two themes: those that looked at past struggles and those that look at struggling in the present. The second part deals more critically with the unifying analytical theme of the papers: a dialectical approach to historical archaeology and how it can be implemented through the theory of internal relations. The final section of this commentary takes this idea and applies it to the archaeology of landscape and the production of social space.     

Establishing Best Practices for Photogrammetric Recording During Archaeological Fieldwork

Archaeologists have recently embraced photogrammetry as a low-cost, efficient tool for recording archaeological artifacts, active excavation contexts, and architectural remains. However, no consensus has yet been reached about standard procedures for reliable and metrically accurate photogrammetric recording. The archaeological literature describes diverse equipment and approaches to photogrammetry. The purpose of this article is to open a discussion about when and how photogrammetry should be employed in archaeology in an effort to establish “best practices” for this new method. We focus on the integration of photogrammetry within a comprehensible research plan, the selection of equipment, the appropriate apportionment of labor and time on site, and a rubric for site photography that is conducive to successful and efficient modeling. We conclude that photogrammetric modeling will soon become an indispensable tool in most archaeological applications but should always be implemented in ways that do not place undue burdens on project personnel and budgets and that aid research goals in well-defined ways.     

Introduction to Webs of Memory,Frames of Power: Collective Remembering in the Archaeological Record

Over the past few decades, archaeologists have increasingly viewed collective memory as critical to the establishment and legitimation of power relations. For societies in the past and present, collective memory can be drawn on to clarify group identity, justify or subvert hierarchies, invent traditions, and define behaviors. The contributors to this special issue focus on the process of remembering, how it produced multiple archaeologically visible understandings of the past, and how these viewpoints impacted power-laden social negotiations. To better elucidate this process, this introduction situates the concept of collective remembering within recent materialist frameworks that emphasize the integration of human and nonhuman actors into webs of interaction. We suggest that by viewing collective memory from the standpoint of interactions, multiple viewpoints can be recognized. We argue in turn that accounting for the diverse actors invested in memory production provides archaeologists a means to delineate how the past becomes a site of contested values that social groups are constantly reworking to define membership, justify social hierarchy, and validate resistance.     

Synthetic Histories: Possible Futures for Papuan Pasts

This article considers the case for synthetic histories—broad narratives of historical process that critically combine the insights and perspectives of research from multiple disciplines. Drawing on the 28 contributions to the edited volume Papuan Pasts, on the deep history of the Papuan peoples, a brief synthesis of findings is offered in the form of a narrative. This enables the identification of a series of gaps, not just in the spatial and temporal coverage of research but also in the range of perspectives employed. The absence of Papuan voices is particularly challenging, and suggests that the future of Papuan histories lies in the closer articulation of a concern for deep time and questions of the genesis and immediate past of living Papuan communities.     

No Compensation Needed: On Archaeology and the Archaeological

The archaeological is regularly perceived in negative terms as lacking and deficient. It is fragmented, static, and crude, a residue of past living societies. Accordingly, much of archaeologists’ efforts are directed toward the amendment of these flaws. The present paper, however, argues that these so-called deficiencies are in fact constitutive absences. Whatever the archaeological lacks, it lacks by definition. It thus follows that working to render the archaeological “complete” is in fact an effort to undo it, to convert it into something else. For the sake of discovering the past, archaeological practice is a sustained effort to rid itself of the very phenomenon that defines it, consequently setting in motion self-perpetuating circularity predicated on deficiency and compensation. The reason for this, it is suggested, is the otherness of the archaeological, being at one and the same time a cultural phenomenon and a fossil record, a social construct and a geological deposit. This condition is so baffling that it is approached by transforming it into something familiar. The paper argues that understanding the archaeological should be archaeology’s first priority. Insofar as it is also the study of the past, this should be predicated on the understanding of the archaeological present.     

Monitoring Islamic Archaeological Landscapes in Ethiopia Using Open Source Satellite Imagery

The African landscape is set to change dramatically in the coming years, and will have a detrimental impact on the inherent archaeological and cultural heritage elements if not monitored adequately. This paper explores how satellite imagery, in particular open source imagery (Google Earth, multispectral satellite imagery from Landsat and Sentinel-2), can be utilized to monitor and protect sites that are already known with particular reference to Islamic archaeological sites in Ethiopia. The four sites used are in different geographic and geomorphological areas: three on the Somali Plateau (Harlaa, Harar, and Sheikh Hussein), and one on the edge of the Afar Depression (Nora), and have varied histories. The results indicate that open source satellite imagery offers a mechanism for evaluating site status and conservation over time at a large scale, and can be used on data from other areas of Africa by heritage professionals in the African continent at no cost.     

试论考古报告的几个问题

考古调查、发掘和研究成果的重要载体———考古报告 ,是考古学研究的资料信息库。考古学界对什么是理想的考古报告、考古报告的分类、考古报告生产中的问题等 ,尚有不同的见解 ,因此被学术界所关注。本文拟对这些方面的问题进行讨论。     

Vagueness and Archaeological Interpretation: A Sensuous Approach to Archaeological Knowledge Formation through Finds Analysis

The rapid development of natural scientific methods coupled with the recent popularity of new materialist philosophies in archaeological theory has raised discussion about the possibility of a return to empiricism in archaeology. While empiricism as a pragmatic philosophy is in line with archaeology’s hands-on character, the recent development has left some concerned about the vanishing role of vagueness and ambiguity in archaeological interpretation. In this setting, the exactitude of natural scientific methods is seen as a process of simplification that compromises the tacit dimensions of archaeological knowledge. This article discusses vagueness as an elementary part of all archaeological knowledge formation, with a particular emphasis on the role of perception and senses in finds analysis. Archaeological finds analysis is explored as an example of epistemologically vague and creative hypothesis formation.