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Historians, are Archeologists Your Siblings?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Jan Vansina
Jan Vansina*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin—Madison
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The historian of pre-nineteenth century Africa…cannot get far without the aid of archaeology.

Nevertheless, historians have good reason to be cautious about historical generalisations by archaeologists and about their own use of archaeological material…: it would be a rash historian who totally accepted the conclusions of Garlake and Huffman with the same simple-minded trust as I myself accepted the conclusions of Summers and Robinson.

In the beginning, historians of Africa put great store by archeology. Was its great time depth not one of the distinctive features of the history of Africa, a condition that cannot be put aside without seriously distorting the flavor of all its history? Did not the relative scarcity and the foreign authorship of most precolonial written records render archeological sources all the more precious? Did not history and archeology both deal with the reconstruction of human societies in the past? Was the difference between them not merely the result of a division of labor based on sources, so that historical reconstruction follows in time and flows from archeological reconstruction? Such considerations explain why the Journal of African History has regularly published regional archeological surveys in order to keep historians up to date.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 22 , January 1995 , pp. 369 - 408
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1995

References

Notes

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10. Ibid., 99, 100.

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35. For his treatment of gold see Devisse, , Vallées du Niger, esp. 344-57, 503–11.Google Scholar

36. Devisse, “Recherche,” esp. note 29, where he inveighs both against hasty hypotheses, citing Phillipson on Bantu migration, and against models as perhaps suited for relativistic Anglo-minds, but as poison for absolutistic Franco-minds.

37. Devisse, , Vallées du Niger, 280-86, 342, 426-30, 456–63.Google Scholar

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41. McIntosh, , “Changing Perceptions,” 186.Google Scholar

42. For the situation at Koumbi Saleh see Devisse, J. and Diallo, Boubacar, “Le seuil de Wagadu” in Devisse, , Vallées du Niger, 108–14.Google Scholar For the latest foray in Gao, Ingersoll, T., “Archaeological Research in Gao, the Republic of Mali.” Saharan Studies Association Newsletter 2/1 (1994), 8–11.Google Scholar

43. E.g., Fagan, Brian M., Iron Age Cultures in Zambia (2 vols.: London, 1967–1969).Google Scholar

44. E.g., de Maret, P., Fouilles archéologiques dans la vallée du Haut-Lualaba, Zaire, I. Textes (Tervuren, 1985).Google Scholar

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47. E.g., Schmidt, P.R., Historical Archaeology: A Structural Approach in an African Culture (Westport, 1978), for smelting sites.Google Scholar

48. E.g., Connah, G., Three Thousand Years in Africa (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar, the Daima mound in northern Nigeria.

49. E.g., Chittick, N., Manda: Excavations at an Island Port on the Kenya Coast, (Nairobi, 1984)Google Scholar; or Babacar, A.O.et al., Tegdaoust III: Campagnes 1960/65: enquêtes générales (Paris, 1983), one of six volumes devoted to Tegdaoust.Google Scholar

50. McIntosh, , “Changing Perceptions,” 179.Google Scholar

51. Phillipson, , African Archaeology, 226Google Scholar, where he argues that a sharp break occurred there between earlier ceramics and the Luangwa-tradition ushering in a Later Iron Age in this region. But see his report, “Excavations at Twickenham Road, Lusaka,” Azania 5 (1970), 77–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Most of the LIA material came from two adjacent pits (103-08) each about one meter in diameter and containing mostly tiny shards (shown on a scale of10 cm). Twelve shards were EIA, and about 100 LIA. Pits mean a disturbed stratigraphy and small shards are susceptible to movement in the soil after deposit. Under these circumstances one cannot hope for a clear stratigraphy, and hence one cannot claim a sharp break between LIA and EIA. One should also be wary of claiming that objects at the same level in one of the pits were contemporary with each other. Two dates stemming from the waterlogged deposits at the bottom of one of these pits are later than two others from a pit adjudged to have been EIA, but all four dates can overlap at a tenth century (now after further correction an eleventh century) date, which makes all the material in all the pits contemporary.

52. Denbow, J., “Cenchrus ciliaris: An Archeological Indicator of Iron Age Middens Using Aerial Photography in Eastern Botswana,” South African Journal of Science 76 (1979), 405–08.Google Scholar

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54. Dembelé, Mamadiet al., “Prospections de sites archéologiques dans le delta intérieur du Niger” in Devisse, , Vallées du Niger, 218–32Google Scholar; R. and S. McIntosh in ibid., 234-48.

55. M. R. MacLean, “Late Stone Age and Early Iron Age Settlement Patterns in Rakai District, South-Western Uganda,” Azania, forthcoming.

56. Denbow, J., “Congo to Kalahari: Data and Hypotheses About the Political Economy of the Western Stream of the Early Iron Age” AAR 8 (1990), 140, figure 1Google Scholar; Huffman, , “Ceramics,” 161, figure 3.Google Scholar

57. Kirkman, J., The Arab City of Gedi (London, 1954)Google Scholar was the first among these volumes. Note also that until recently only the stone ruins of urban settlements in Zimbabwe were mapped, again showing odd gaps between structures, until further research plotted the clay floors of ordinary houses which filled most of the urban space.

58. Something similar also holds for Axum. Cf. Michels, J. W., “Review Article: Excavations at Axum,” AAR 8 (1990), 177–88, and figures 1-4.Google Scholar

59. The latest synthesis is that of N.M. Katanekwa, “The Iron Age in Zambia: Some New Evidence and Interpretations,” Azania forthcoming, and is once again entirely devoted to a discussion of ceramic styles.

60. Huffman, “Ceramics.”

61. Shaw, Igbo Ukwu, is a model site report.

62. Clist, B., “A Critical Reappraisal of the Chronological Framework of the Early Urewe Iron Age Industry,” Muntu 6 (1987), 35–62Google Scholar, reviews the issues involved in establishing reliable carbon 14 and thermoluminescence dates in a particular situation. It underlines the difficulties of establishing a secure association between a carbon sample and an artefact, as well as the uncertainties deriving from the techniques themselves and their conversion to calendar dates. In practice there is plenty of scope for subjective evaluations.

63. E.g., Haaland, R., “Excavations at Dakawa, an Early Iron Age Site in East-Central Tanzania,” Nyame Akuma no. 40 (1993), 50–51Google Scholar, argues that the type of furnace found there is similar to one at Samaru West in Nigeria “with no similar remains in intervening regions” and describes this as “puzzling.”

64. Phillipson, , African Archaeology, 194Google Scholar, about sites excavated by Katanekwa on the upper Zambezi, where pottery and bones of domestic animals were found. He generalizes (196) and the general rule then (202) allows him to claim that wherever ceramics and stone tools are associated, the sites belong to nomadic foragers who borrowed shards or pots for their curiosity or prestige value.

65. McIntosh, , “Changing Perceptions,” 182–86, for West Africa.Google Scholar

66. E.g., Herbert, E., Iron, Gender, and Power: Rituals of Transformation in African Societies (Bloomington, 1993).Google Scholar The work establishes a general paradigm of iron-smelting as ritual transformation, using ethnographic data, and discusses the application of the paradigm to earlier periods (ibid., 121-26). For a list of recent experiments in iron-smelting, ibid., 239-40.

67. Cornevin, , Archéologie africaine, 76–79Google Scholar, still repeats this nonsense and defends it by an appeal to the “extraordinary social and religious conservatism of Africa societies” which she still observed in the 1950s.

68. Phillipson, , African Archaeology, 202–03.Google Scholar

69. Denbow, J., “A New Look at the Later Prehistory of the Kalahari,” JAH 27 (1986), 3–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also his “Congo to Kalahari” for a different reconstruction valid for northwestern Botswana, in which additional evidence for the eastern Kalahari reconstruction is presented.

70. Huffman, T.N., “Archaeology and Ethnohistory of the African Iron Age,” Annual Review of Anthropology 5 (1982), 133–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., “Archaeological Evidence and Conventional Explanations of Southern Bantu Settlement Patterns,” Africa 56(1986), 280-98. The argument rests on Kuper's claim that the plans have symbolic dimensions and express fundamental features of social organization. Kuper, A., “Symbolic Dimensions of the Southern Bantu Homestead,” Africa 50 (1980), 8–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., “The House and Zulu Politics in the Nineteenth Century,” JAH 34 (1993), 473-74. Hall, M., “The Myth of the Zulu Homestead: Archaeology and Ethnography,” Africa 54 (1984), 65–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar and idem., The Changing Past (Cape Town, 1987), 72, criticizes the approach as “ahistoric,” i.e., anachronistic. Yet there exists continuity in the settlement plans since the seventh century or even earlier, which explains why most scholars accept the pattern and most of the social organization inferred from it. Studies using the technique of “words and things” could be quite helpful in checking the validity of such inferences.

71. McIntosh, , “Changing Perceptions,” 179Google Scholar; Tamari, Tal, “Les castes au Soudan occidental: étude anthropologique et historique” (Ph.D., Université de Paris X, 1988)Google Scholar, established on the basis of vocabulary studies that the caste system in western Sudan is quite old, although the date of its inception remains unknown. See also Tamari, , “The Development of Caste Systems in West Africa,” JAH 32 (1991), 221–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where she dates their appearance among the Malinke to no later than 1300.

72. E.g., Robertshaw, History.

73. For the great lakes see Clist, , “Critical Reappraisal,” 40–42Google Scholar: sources of possible discrepancies; 45: rejection of both late and early dates by the excavator; 48: refusal to accept early dates in Burundi because corresponding early dates for Tanzania had been rejected; 50-55: discussion of large numbers of dates treated together with the elimination of both isolated early and late dates. For West Africa, McIntosh, “Changing Perceptions,” 173Google Scholar, dismisses early dates for iron-smelting in the Termit massif as due to “fossil charcoal,” according to Killick, J.D., “On the Dating of African Metallurgical Sites,” Nyame Akuma, no. 28(1987), 29–30.Google Scholar But Paris, F.et al., “Peuplements et environnements holocènes du bassin de l'Azawagh oriental (Niger)” in Devisse, , Vallées du Niger, 388Google Scholar, accept even earlier dates which were recently obtained from organic material included as temper in the clay of the tuyères. Was this organic material that turned to charcoal as the tuyère was baked or was it already “fossil charcoal” when used as temper? Apparently McIntosh believes the latter since she does not accept the dating.

74. McIntosh, , “Changing Perceptions,” 170, 178Google Scholar, and note the later disappearance of a distinct “Mechtoid” type of people.

75. Communication with Northern Africa existed since about the beginning of the Christian era, as the recovery of a few North African beads at Jenne-Jeno and in Niger of a metal figurine from the second century A.D., which was the base of a second-century A.D. mirror from Cyrenaica, tell us. Cf. Devisse, , Vallées du Niger, 546, #81.Google Scholar Exports of gold to North Africa probably began by ca. 300 A.D. Cf. Garrard, T.F. “Myth and Metrology: The Early Trans-Saharan Gold Trade,” JAH 23 (1982), 443–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

76. McIntosh, R. J. and McIntosh, S. K., “Jenne-Jeno and the Inland Niger Delta.” JAH 22 (1981), 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., “Cities without Citadels: Understanding Urban Origins Along the Middle Niger” in Shaw, Archaeology, 627-34. The town covered 33 ha in ca. 800 A.D.

77. Gado, Boube, “Un ‘village des morts’ à Bura en République du Niger” in Devisse, . Vallées du Niger, 365–74Google Scholar, and illustrations, 550-56, #96-130. More dating is needed.

78. Ibid., 572, #209, for an illustration and bibliography.

79. The presence of domestic fowl at Jenne-Jeno, ca. 450-850 A.D. could be a further indication of pre-Islamic contacts with the Mediterranean world. Cf. MacDonald, K.C. and Edwards, D.E., “Chicken in Africa: the Importance of Qasr Ibrim,” Antiquity 67 (1993), 588.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

80. Garrard “Myth and Metrology.”

81. McIntosh, R.J. and McIntosh, S.K., “Finding West Africa's Oldest City,” National Geographic Magazine, 162/3 (March 1982), 407 (graph and illustration).Google Scholar

82. Devisse, , Vallées du Niger, 356–57.Google Scholar One date around 1400 A.D. has been reported so far.

83. Insoll, T., “Archaeological Research in Gao,” Saharan Studies Association Newsletter 2/1 (1994), 8–11Google Scholar, found a cache of hippopotamus ivory dated to before the eleventh century. Unaware of Regnoult's findings, he suggests that Gao's wealth was at least in part derived from the export of ivory, but gold from the Sirba valley seems an even more likely candidate for this role.

84. McIntosh, , “Changing Perceptions,” 178–79.Google Scholar

85. Bedeaux, , “Tellem Research Project,” 34–36.Google Scholar

86. McIntosh, “Changing Perceptions,” 178Google Scholar (Mema, Dia, Jenne-Jeno, Timbuktu).

87. Levtzion, N., Ancient Ghana and Mali (London 1973), 16–28Google Scholar, is still authoritative. Note that in part two of this work (105-217) his reconstructions fuse both Ghana and Mali. Levtzion's views on the beginnings of Mali and on the Susu kingdom are beginning to be challenged. Cf. Lange, Dierk, “Das alte Mali und Ghana. Der Beitrag der Oraltraditionen zur Kritik einer Historiographischen Fiktion,” Historisches Zeitschrift 255 (1992), 587–623Google Scholar; Bühnen, Stephan, “In Quest of Susu,” HA 21 (1994), 1–47.Google Scholar

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89. McIntosh, S.K., “A Reconsideration of Wangara/Palolus, Island of Gold,” JAH 22 (1981), 145–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar, asserts this in convincing fashion.

90. The recent exploration of the closest Sahel area south of Ghana tells us that the valley was not inhabited in the first millennium A.D. MacDonald, K.C. and Jones, P. Allsworth, “A Reconsideration of the West African Macrolithic Conundrum: New Factory Sites and an Associated Settlement in the Vallée du Serpent, Mali,” AAR 12 (1994), 77.Google Scholar All around Kumbi Saleh in the other directions only very limited settlement was possible, whether in the few towns such as Awdaghast or not. Devisse, /Diallo, , “Seuil de Wagadu,” 103–15.Google Scholar

91. The boots and trousers found are of a later date, contemporary with Mali. Is there a link between these articles of clothing and cavalry? They are not represented on equestrian ceramic figures. de Grunne, C. B., “Heroic Riders and Divine Horses: an Analysis of Ancient Soninke and Dogon Equestrian Figures From the Inland Niger Delta Region in Mali,” Bulletin of the Minneapolis Institute of Art 60 (1983–1986), 78–96.Google Scholar

92. Bedeaux, , “Tellem Research Project,” 16–34Google Scholar, for the objects. Many are also illustrated in his contributions in Devisse, , Vallées du Niger, 280–86Google Scholar (known distribution of footed bowls, map, 285), 425-30, and 456-63.

93. McIntosh, /McIntosh, “Cities Without Citadels,” 631–34.Google Scholar The “craft associations” (632) are an expression of the caste system.

94. Phillipson, , African Archaeology, 187–205.Google Scholar The second edition adds material relating to various “streams” of the Chifumbaze complex and on its further development in southern Africa (192-95), as well as some data about cultivated plants (188, 197), and the layout of settlements (197, 198), and it mentions the controversy over the technological sophistication of early iron smelters in Buhaya (188). It also accepts the alleged similarity of pottery at Benfica (near Luanda) with early potteries in Zambia, despite the exiguity of the evidence (193-94), and it takes no account of reservations made by others about the grouping of all the ceramics into a single stylistic whole.

95. Vansina, J., “A Slow Revolution: Farming in Subequatorial Africa,” Azania 30 (1994).Google Scholar

96. Phillipson, , African Archaeology, 238Google Scholar, agrees and adds that “remnant populations” were now rapidly absorbed. The evidence is strongest for the Mawogola area in Uganda, the east African coast, the Manda area near lake Nyasa in Tanzania, central Zambia, the Lualaba depression in Shaba, eastern Botswana, and portions of Transvaal.

97. Especially in the Lualaba depression, at Feti in central Angola, and at Nqoma, west of the Okavango delta. Unfortunately, no serious comparative study of these metalwares has been undertaken.

98. Vansina, “Slow Revolution,” details this process. The evidence involves the changing proportions of game/domestic animals in diets, a standardization of diet, the introduction of fowls and new crops from the Indian Ocean. The increase of the incidence in which remnants of domestic plants occur on sites is not stressed, however, because such remains occur on so few sites overall that to build a trend out of so few cases might be quite artificial.

99. One may well ask whether such complex regional systems also developed concurrently in west-central and equatorial Africa. Far too little archeological research has been conducted there to speculate fruitfully, even in the parts of Gabon, Congo, Cameroun, and Zaire where some research has been conducted.

100. Horton, M., “The Swahili Corridor,” Scientific American 25/2 (Feb., 1987), 86–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar His full excavation report is in press.

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102. Maggs, Tim and Whitelaw, G., “A Review of Recent Archaeological Research on Food-Producing Communities in Southern Africa,” JAH 32 (1991), 15 (late eighth century)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and G. Whitelaw, communication at the Cambridge conference.

103. Allen, J. de Vere, Swahili Origins: Swahili Culture and the Shungwaya Phenomenon (Nairobi, 1993), 24–25.Google Scholar

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105. E.g., Phillipson, D., The Later Prehistory of Eastern and Southern Africa (New York, 1977), 125, 129, 132, 136, 151.Google Scholar Since 1977 cowrie shells have also turned up in Malawi and at new sites in Zambia.

106. Robertshaw, P., “Archaeological Survey, Ceramic Analysis, and State Formation in Western Uganda,” AAR 12 (1994), 110.Google Scholar Beads and cowrie shells dating to around the thirteenth century were found at Ntusi, however, and one bead “of uncertain date” stems from Munsa.

107. Bisson, M.S., “Trade and Tribute: Archaeological Evidence for the Origin of States in South Central Africa,” Cahiers d'études africaines 87/88 (1982), 349–58Google Scholar, argues, however, for a limited copper trade and the use of copper both for trade and tribute payments. But the existence of tribute payments is only inferred and lacks any substantiation so far.

108. For crops see Watson, A.M., Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World: The Diffusion of Crops and Farming Techniques, 700-1100 (Cambridge, 1983).Google Scholar For fowl see McDonald, , “Chickens in Africa,” 588.Google Scholar Known early dates for eastern and southern Africa are all around 800-1000, except for chickens at Kwagandaganda, ca. 630.

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115. See note 70, and Sinclair, P., Space, Time and Social Formations Territorial Approach to the Archaeology and Anthropology of Zimbabwe and Mozambique, c. 0-1700 A.D. (Uppsala, 1987), 122–24Google Scholar, for site hierarchy.

116. Denbow, , “Congo to Kalahari,” 168–70.Google Scholar

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120. Cf. my own presentation in Curtin, P.et al., A History of Africa (Boston, 1978), 1–2.Google Scholar By p. 2, “Once people became sedentary…A history of society and a history of culture now become meaningful.”

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122. Brooks, A.S. and Smith, C.C., “Ishango Revisited: New Age Determinations and Cultural Interpretations,” AAR 5 (1987), 65–78.Google Scholar The relevant dates seem to lie between 20,000 and 30,000 bp.

123. Saxon, E.et al., “Results of Recent Investigations at Tamar Hat,” Libyca 22 (1974), 49–51Google Scholar; Wendorf, F. and Schild, R., eds., The Prehistory of Wadi Kubbaniya (Dallas, 1989).Google Scholar Incidentally, this seems to be earlier than comparable developments in the Middle East. By 12,000 B.C. wild barley was harvested on the floodplain of the Nile at Esna. Cf. Phillipson, , African Archaeology, 104.Google Scholar

124. Ibid., 112; Devisse, , Vallées du Niger, 97 and 96 (illustration).Google Scholar

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127. For a map on the putative spread thereafter see Breunig, P.et al., “Report on Excavations at Gajiganna, Borno State, Northeast Nigeria,” Nyame Akuma no. 40(1993), 37.Google Scholar

128. Muzzolini, “Boeuf”

129. Idem., “L'origine des chèvres et moutons domestiques en Afrique. Reconsidération de la thèse diffusioniste traditionelle,” Empuries 48/50 (1993), 160-71. For a recent overview of animal domestication in general see Clutton-Brock, J., “The Spread of Domestic Animals to Africa” in Shaw, , Archaeology, 61–70Google Scholar (The title gives the diffusionist argument away) and R. Blench, “Ethnographic and Linguistic Evidence for the Prehistory of African Ruminant Livestock, Horses, and Ponies” in ibid., 71-103. It is worth noting that Clutton-Brock is now more guarded about the issue of diffusion, given the first results of recent DNA studies on cattle from Senegal.

130. McIntosh, , “Changing Perceptions,” 169Google Scholar; Harlan, J., “Wild-Grass Seed Harvesting in the Sahara and Sub-Sahara of Africa” in Harris, D.R., and Hillman, G.C., eds., Foraging and Farming: The Evolution of Plant Exploitation (London, 1989), 79–96.Google Scholar

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134. These conclusions and this model are not new. Cf. Hodgen, M.T., Anthropology, History, and Cultural Change (Tucson, 1974)Google Scholar, which sums up the comparison of the author's many studies of well-documented innovations and distributions in literate societies with existing models as a case of “Historical Process versus Natural Law” (65-93). But her demonstrations were not heeded.

135. Phillipson, , African Archaeology, 130.Google Scholar

136. The debaters about the origins of Pharaonic Egypt and of Egypt's significance for leucoderms and melanoderms alike would do well to remember this. Known inputs into late predynastic Egypt, ca. 3500, involve time depths by then of 2500 years directly, and over 10,000 indirectly, and in areas as remote from each other as the central Sahara, the middle Nile, and Mesopotamia.

137. Controversies over the early dates reflect uneasiness for two reasons: that metallurgy would have been invented independently, and that it did not spread rapidly. But even those who favor late dates cannot avoid the issue completely. Thus Phillipson, , African Archaeology, 188Google Scholar, speaks “of the middle of the last millennium B.C.” for the first appearance, and dates the extension to “early in the Christian era,” which allows him to avoid the conclusion that metallurgy was an independent invention here, but it does not address the issue of diffusion. The available dates are set forth by Van Grunderbeek, M.C. “Chronologie de l'âge du fer ancien au Burundi, au Rwanda et dans la région des Grands Lacs,” Azania 27 (1992), 53–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

138. Clist, B., “Synthèse régionale sur l'âge du fer ancien” in Lanfranchi, R. and Clist, B., eds., Aux origines de l'Afrique centrale (Libreville, 1991), 225.Google Scholar

139. McIntosh, , “Changing Perceptions,” 173–77Google Scholar; Devisse, , Vallées du Niger, 33n16Google Scholar; Okafor, , “New Evidence on Early Iron-Smelting from Southeastern Nigeria” in Shaw, , Archaeology, 432–48.Google Scholar On dating see Childs, S. Terry and Killick, D., “Indigenous African Metallurgy: Nature and Culture,” Annual Review of Anthropology 22 (1993), 320CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who hedge by dating all the early sites to “the interval 500-1000 ca. 1 BC but then (ibid., 321) doubt the possibility of independent invention (too difficult) and blithely invoke a reason (old wood) to distrust all dates older than 500 B.C.

140. Connah, , Three Thousand Years, 146–47.Google Scholar

141. For archeology see, for instance, Phillipson, , African Archaeology, 1–23Google Scholar, and, more blatantly, Cornevin, Archéologie africaine, 17-33, which jumps from a tale of biological evolution straight to ca. 9000 B.C. In historical textbooks and works of reference the practice is general, except for Curtin et al., African History. For a recent example see Oliver, R., The African Experience (London, 1991), 1–26.Google Scholar

142. One should remember that natural evolution occurs in discrete quantum jumps and not along a changing continuum. Although we do not exactly know what the last jump to full humanity entailed, the capacity to symbolize and the language instinct are certainly involved.

143. Phillipson, , African Archaeology, 100.Google Scholar This concludes a paragraph summarizing results derived from mitochondrial DNA. Note his unwarranted leap from a biological category to a cultural (post-Acheulian”) one.

144. McIntosh, , “Changing Perceptions,” 181Google Scholar; Shinnie, P.L. and Kense, F., Archaeology of Gonja, Ghana: Excavations at Daboya (Calgary, 1989)Google Scholar; Stahl, A.B., “Innovation, Diffusion, and Culture Contact: The Holocene Archaeology of Ghana,” Journal of World Prehistory 8 (1994), 51–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

145. E.g., DeCorse, C., “Culture contact, Continuity, and Change on the Gold Coast, AD 1400-1900,” AAR 10 (1988), 163–96.Google Scholar For an instance of dramatic change see Mgungundlovu, Dingane's capital, and especially its military barracks. Parkington, J.E. and Cronin, M., “The Size and Layout of Mgungundlovu, 1829-1838,” South African Archaeological Society: Goodwin Series, 3 (1979), 133–48.Google Scholar

146. McIntosh, , “Changing Perceptions,” 172–73.Google Scholar

147. Agorsah, E. Kofi, “Ethnoarchaeology: The Search for a Self-Corrective Approach to the Study of Past Human Behaviour,” AAR 8(1990), 189–208Google Scholar, sidesteps the whole question.

148. Cf Bassani, E., Un Cappucino nell'Africa nera del seicento: I disegni dei Manoscritti Araldi del Padre Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi da Montecuccolo (Milan, 1987)Google Scholar, which presents drawings executed from sketches made in Angola before 1667. For hoes see drawing #20, and #52 for a recent specimen. Cavazzi also drew a woman hoeing her field as an illustration in his Istorica descrizione de tre Regni Congo, Matamba e Angola (Bologna, 1687).Google Scholar

149. Vansina, , Paths in the Rainforests, 11–16.Google Scholar