Unit information: Archaeology of Africa in 2012/13

Unit name	Archaeology of Africa
Unit code	ARCH20020
Credit points	20
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
Unit director	Professor. Mark Horton
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	none
Co-requisites	none
School/department	Department of Anthropology and Archaeology
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

A history and anthropology seminar unit providing a review of the themes and issues in African Archaeology from the late Stone Age to late pre-colonial times.

Aims:

• Provide a broad understanding of the later prehistory and prehistoric archaeology of sub-Saharan Africa;

• Link the African past to broader themes, such as trade, urbanism and state formation, migration, the relationship between history and archaeology and the politics of archaeological interpretation;

• Provide exposure to current debates within African archaeology. These disciplinary arguments show how archaeologists actively engage in the construction of a nuanced and rich prehistory of the people that lived on the African continent;

• Explore the unique methodologies that African archaeology employs, bringing together data from ecological reconstructions, material culture, oral traditions, historical linguistics and historical documents;

• Challenge the popularly-received wisdom about the precolonial African past, an image born of the colonial period itself, and one used to legitimize and construct those hegemonies.

Assessment Information

This is a 20Cps unit. The mark for the unit will be divided equally between two essays.

Essay 1 (50% of final mark) Essay 1 is a thematic piece. This should not be based on a single lecture or topic, but should demonstrate a grasp of wider issues within African archaeology. The titles are deliberately angled towards this, and are broad in their approach; you will nonetheless be required to use case studies to illustrate your argument. The list of titles will be circulated in the first seminar, but if there is a theme that you would particularly like to pursue, I am happy to consider your own suggestions for a topic.

Essay 2 (50% of final mark) Essay 2 will be based on your seminar presentation. The seminars are mainly case studies, and focus on individual sites or groups of sites. Your presentation/essay will be expected to demonstrate a grasp of the data relating to those sites and to put them in their wider context.

The deadline for Essay 1 is: 12pm (noon) on Friday 5 November. (Returned 26 November)

The deadline for Essay 2 is: 12pm (noon) on Friday 3 December. (Returned 8 January)

2nd Year essays should be 2,250 – 2,750 words in length, and the text should be double-spaced. Essays should be properly referenced, with a bibliography and – if necessary – illustrations. Essays will be submitted via Blackboard. Web interface. You will be instructed in the use of Blackboard at the start of the unit.

Please note that I will NOT accept work after the deadlines unless you have arranged this in advance (with Alex Nash or Jo Purdie) for medical or serious personal reasons.

Reading and References

Any of the introductory texts on the bibliography will provide a good basis for this class. In particular, though, you might want to look at:

Phillipson, D.W. 2005. Introduction, in D.W. Phillipson African Archaeology, pp. 1 – 14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Third Edition).

Stahl, A.B. 2005. Introduction: Changing Perspectives on Africa’s Past, in A. Stahl (ed.) African Archaeology: a critical introduction, pp. 1 – 23. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Keim, C. 2009. The Origins of “Darkest Africa” (Chap. 3) and “Our Living Ancestors”: Twentieth Century Evolutionism (Chap. 4), in Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mind, pp. 35-62. Boulder, CO: Westview Press*.

Robertshaw, P. 1990. A history of African archaeology: an introduction, in P. Robertshaw (ed.) A History of African Archaeology, pp. 3 – 12. Oxford: James Currey Publishing*.

Agorsah, E. K. “Ethnoarchaeology: the search for a self-corrective approach to the study of past human behaviour.” African Archaeological Review 8, no. 1 (1990): 189–208.

Atherton, J. H. “Ethnoarchaeology in Africa.” African Archaeological Review 1, no. 1 (1983): 75–104.

Cunningham, J. J. “Transcending the “Obnoxious Spectator”: a case for processual pluralism in ethnoarchaeology.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 22, no. 4 (2003): 389–410.

MacEachern, S. “Foreign countries: the development of ethnoarchaeology in sub-Saharan Africa.” Journal of World Prehistory 10, no. 3 (1996): 243–304.