Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Lucia MoriDipartimento di Scienze dell'Antichità, Sapienza Università di Roma,Via del Volsci, 122,00185, – Roma, Italylucia.mori@uniroma1.it© 2014, Lucia Mori

James Denbow's book is both a monograph about archaeological research and a personal account of his experiences in doing academic archaeology and cultural heritage management (CHM) in Sub-Saharan A...

In a recent intervention, Alejandro Haber and I have questioned the extent to which discussions under the heading of ethics continue to provide a useful framework within which to conceptualise the complex and politically entangled contexts in which archaeologists work. Notwithstanding these concerns, the papers collected here show why discussions under the heading of ethics in archaeology do still matter. I briefly discuss the argument presented by each paper. In concluding, I ask: what would it mean for African archaeologists to articulate a theory of practice? And does the language of ethics best enable us to do this?

This commentary explores the intersection of the different ethical concerns raised by the contributors. In particular it discusses the need to move beyond simple rule following and regulation in order to incorporate the dual notions of ‘care of the self’ and the ‘constitution of persons through their relationships to other persons’ as fundamental to the creation of ethical subjects within the field of African archaeology.

Since the 1970s, research on the first millennium AD in the Middle Niger has shed light on a fascinating episode of the world's history. Written records and oral histories hint at the existence of large polities and great wealth, while archaeological research has documented the development of urbanism and long-distance trade networks, and attempted to locate legendary capitals and trace migrations. In contrast, we know very little about the life of non-urban localities and societies living at the edge of the great 'empires'. This thesis takes an explicitly social focus to archaeology in the Middle Niger. To this end, excavations were carried out at the medium-sized tell site of Tongo Maare Diabal (c. AD 400-1100) near Douentza, Mali. Rather than exploring the site's deep stratigraphy, which had already been done by K.C. MacDonald and T. Togola in the 1990s, these excavations opened a large area of the uppermost occupation horizon. Building on this excavation strategy, and using a household- level approach to a wide range of artefactual evidence, this thesis is able to explore themes such as sociocultural diversity, the social use of space, craft specialisation, connections and trade on a local, regional and supra-regional scale. Tongo Maare Diabal is shown to have been the densely populated home of several lineage groups, which formed part of a network of sites in a culturally diverse region. The site's inhabitants were involved in the production and processing of iron on a large scale, which they probably traded with urbanised areas in the Inland Niger Delta, and upheld a network of influences and connections spanning the Middle Niger and the Niger Bend, even reaching across the Sahara.

This paper collates and synthesises a wide range of reports concerning stone cairns and related structures from across eastern Africa. These features often enclose human burials and are common in many areas, but they have only ever been sporadically investigated. I attempt to arrange them into a preliminary typology and make the first steps towards a broader comparative analysis. While these features have often been referred to as monuments and in some instances ‘megaliths’ I urge caution in such labelling. We should first evaluate the social context of their construction before we equate them with concepts derived from other parts of the world. Understanding the construction of eastern African landscapes through features such as these may provide a broader context for studying some of the region's larger and more commonly investigated monuments.

This research was designed to test Tchernov's model of commensalism and the idea that remains of commensal species that today coexist with humans in settlement environments could be used to detect early sedentism in the archaeological record. The validity of the model has been questioned due to the lack of empirical knowledge on commensalism in a wide range of settlement environments including sedentary and more mobile ones. This study examined the commensalism model by focusing on seasonally occupied settlements of Maasai pastoralists in East Africa. Methods from ecology, ethnography, and archaeology were used to document the impact of Maasai settlements on associated communities of small rodents and shrews: micromammals), to measure the intensity of human occupation in settlements, and to relate settlement intensity to micromammalian communities. Taphonomic approaches were also used to evaluate the potential for accumulation and preservation of evidence on commensalism in the substrate of the settlements. The results of the study showed that, in contrast to what we might expect in highly sedentary settings, Maasai settlements increased rather than decreased the biological diversity of local micromammalian communities. Along a gradient of increasing duration of human occupation, but continued seasonal use of settlements, there was no manifest increase in the population of any single species that would amount to pronounced commensalism. This supports the commensalism/sedentism linkage but also suggests more broadly that it should be possible to demarcate distinct contexts of commensalism and related levels of biological diversity in relation to varying intensities of site occupation. These results call for greater investment in systematic fine-recovery and study of variability of micromammalian assemblages at archaeological excavations.

This thesis examines metal production debris with the aim of reconstructing extractive metal technologies employed around Phalaborwa during the second millennium AD. Mining and metallurgy were previously identified as exclusive pulling factors for Iron Age human settlement in this agropastoral marginal area. Several Iron Age settlements with extensive metal production evidence were previously documented. This thesis places emphasis on extractive copper metallurgy previously neglected for several reasons. The early second millennium AD site of Shankare is used as the main case study. Whilst previously excavated metallurgical assemblages from late second millennium AD sites are re-investigated to explore diachronic changes in smelting technologies. The thesis is inspired by contemporary theoretical developments by the Francophone school of thought known as the ‘Anthropology of Technology’. Standard archaeological fieldwork procedures together with post-fieldwork laboratory studies were employed. Separation of copper from iron production debris visually was impossible but a combination of field observations and archaeometric approaches offered the answer. Archaeological ores, slags, technical ceramics and metal artefacts were subjected to optical microscopy, energy dispersive x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), scanning electron microscopy energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDS). Copper smelting slags differ significantly from iron smelting slags in their chemistry and microstructure. There are subtle differences in copper slags from different archaeological sites. Earlier copper slags are heterogeneous with notable unreacted minerals fragments. Despite these differences both copper and iron slags are linked to the same ore deposit known as the Palabora Igneous Complex. The metallurgical chaines operatoires employed in the research area are reconstructed. At Shankare copper production is represented by crushed furnace slags and secondary refining ceramic crucibles. Iron slags are confined to dedicated metallurgical middens whereas copper production debris is present at low density scatters and domestic middens. This spatial configuration confirms recent observations by other archaeologists in Southern Africa. The archaeological and analytical results permit preliminary discussions of sociotechnical systems of Iron Age metal producers in the Northern Lowveld.

"Slavery in Africa: archaeology and memory." Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, 48(1), pp. 140–141