European University Institute Library

Five hundred years rediscovered, southern African precedents and prospects : 500 Year Initiative 2007 conference proceedings, edited by Natalie Swanepoel, Amanda Esterhuysen and Philip Bonner

eng

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non fiction

Five hundred years rediscovered

electronic resource

dictionaries

1048276983

edited by Natalie Swanepoel, Amanda Esterhuysen and Philip Bonner

Cambridge Social Sciences eBooks

southern African precedents and prospects : 500 Year Initiative 2007 conference proceedings

In the age of the African Renaissance, southern Africa has needed to reinterpret the past in fresh and more appropriate ways. The last 500 years represent a strikingly unexplored and misrepresented period which remains disfigured by colonial/apartheid assumptions, most notably in the way that African societies are depicted as fixed, passive, isolated, unenterprising and unenlightened. This period is one the most formative in relation to southern Africa’s past while remaining, in many ways, the least known. Key cultural contours of the subcontinent took shape, while in a jagged and uneven fashion some of the features of modern identities emerged. Enormous internal economic innovation and political experimentation was taking place at the same time as expanding European mercantile forces started to press upon southern African shores and its hinterlands. This suggests that interaction, flux and mixing were a strong feature of the period, rather than the homogeneity and fixity proposed in standard historical and archaeological writings. Five Hundred Years Rediscovered represents the first step, taken by a group of archaeologists and historians, to collectively reframe, revitalise and reexamine the last 500 years. By integrating research and developing transfrontier research networks, the group hopes to challenge thinking about the region’s expanding internal and colonial frontiers, and to broaden current perceptions about southern Africa’s colonial past.--, Provided by publisher

Historical archaeologies of southern Africa : precedents and prospects / Joanna Behrens and Natalie Swanepoel -- South Africa in Africa more than five hundred years ago : some questions / Neil Parsons -- Towards an outline of the oral geography, historical identity and political economy of the late precolonial Tswana in the Rustenburg region / Simon Hall ... [et al.] -- Metals beyond frontiers : exploring the production, distribution and use of metals in the Free State grasslands, South Africa / Shadreck Chirikure, Simon Hall and Tim Maggs -- DeTuin, a 19th-century mission station in the Northern Cape / Alan G. Morris -- Reinterpreting the origins of Dzata : archaeology and legends / Edwin Hanisch -- Revisiting Bokoni : populating the stone ruins of the Mpumulanga Escarpment / P. Delius and M.H. Schoeman -- The Mpumalanga Escarpment settlements : some answers, many questions / Tim Maggs -- Post-European contact glass beads from the southern African interior : a tentative look at trade, consumption and identities / Marilee Wood. -- Ceramic alliances : pottery and the history of the Kekana Ndebele in the old Transvaal / A.B. Esterhuysen -- Rediscovering the Ndwandwe kingdom / John Wright -- Swazi oral tradition and Northern Nguni historical archaeology / Philip Bonner -- Mfecane mutation in Cental Africa : a comparison of the Makololo and the Ngoni in Zambia, 1830s-1898 / Ackson M. Kanduza

500 years rediscovered