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This book focuses on a forgotten place—the Khami World Heritage site in Zimbabwe. It examines how professionally ascribed values and conservation priorities affect the cultural landscape when there is a disjuncture between local community and national interests, and explores the epistemic violence that often accompanied colonial heritage management and archaeology in southern Africa. The central premise is that the history of the modern Zimbabwe nation, in terms of what is officially remembered and celebrated, inevitably determines how that past is managed. It is about how places are experienced and remembered through narratives and how the loss of this heritage memory may mark the un-inhe...
Understanding Cultural Landscape at Great Zimbabwe: Realms of Power by Ashton Sinamai engages with archaeology through Karanga/Kalanga concepts of cosmology and philosophy to understand the landscape at Great Zimbabwe, the medieval city and cultural heritage site. Sinamai un-disciplines and decolonializes archaeology and highlights aspects of the landscape that have been impacted by colonial legislations, nationalization, and internationalization. This book provides new perspectives on the landscape, and it addresses debates among African and Western archaeologists in reforming the practice, interpretation, and construction of archaeological narratives in Africa. Sinamai debunks Western myth...
Earthen architecture constitutes one of the most diverse forms of cultural heritage and one of the most challenging to preserve. It dates from all periods and is found on all continents but is particularly prevalent in Africa, where it has been a building tradition for centuries. Sites range from ancestral cities in Mali to the palaces of Abomey in Benin, from monuments and mosques in Iran and Buddhist temples on the Silk Road to Spanish missions in California. This volume's sixty-four papers address such themes as earthen architecture in Mali, the conservation of living sites, local knowledge systems and intangible aspects, seismic and other natural forces, the conservation and management of archaeological sites, research advances, and training.
Offering a unique and original perspective on the rise and fall of indigenous states of southern Zambezia, The Zimbabwe Culture analyzes the long contentious history of the remains of the remarkable cyclopean masonry, ranging from mighty capitals of traditional kings to humble farmsteads. Forming a cornerstone of the geographical lore of Africa in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, debate on the origins, development, and collapse of the Zimbabwe culture has never ceased, and with increasing archaeological research over the twentieth century, has become more complex. Thoroughly examining the growth and decline of pre-colonial states on the entire Zimbabwean Plateau and southern Zambezia, Dr. Pikirayi has contributed tremendously towards the archaeological understanding of this extraordinary culture. The Zimbabwe Culture is essential reading for all students and avocationalists of African archaeology, history, and culture.
This handbook is a foundational reference point for critical heritage research about Africa and its diaspora. Foregrounding the diversity of knowledge systems needed to examine heritage issues in such a diverse continent, the contributors to this volume: argue for an understanding heritage that is at once both natural and cultural, tangible and intangible, political and dissonant, going beyond the physical and objective to include subjective narratives, performances, rituals, memories and emotions examine the pre-coloniality, coloniality, post-coloniality, and decoloniality of current African heritage discourses and their consequences analyse how heritage legislation derived from colonial la...
Remembering Popular Music’s Past capitalizes on the growing interest, globally, in the preservation of popular music’s material past and on scholarly explorations of the ways in which popular music, as heritage, is produced, legitimized and conferred cultural and historical significance. The chapters in this collection consider the spaces, practices and representations that constitute popular music heritage to elucidate how popular music’s past is lived in the present. Thus the focus is on the transformation of popular music into heritage, and the role of history and memory in this process. The cultural studies framework adopted in Remembering Popular Music’s Past encompasses unique approaches to popular music historiography, sociology, film analysis, and archival and museal work. Broadly, the collection deals with the precarious nature of popular music heritage, history and memory.
Presenting a story of art and artists in Gunbalanya, western Arnhem Land between the years 2001 and 2005, this book explores the artistic community surrounding the primary place of art creation and sale in the region, Injalak Arts, an art centre established in the remote Aboriginal community of Gunbalanya. Using a variety of disciplinary approaches including archaeological analysis and material culture studies, anthropology, historical research, oral histories, and reflexive ethnography, the social context of art creation is explored. May argues that Injalak Arts as a place activates and draws together particular social groupings to form a sense of identity and community. It is the nature of...
Dissatisfaction has matured in Africa and elsewhere around the fact that often, the dominant frameworks for interpreting the continent's past are not rooted on the continent's value system and philosophy. This creates knowledge that does not make sense especially to local communities. The big question therefore is can Africans develop theories that can contribute towards the interpretation of the African past, using their own experiences? Framed within a concept revision substrate, the collection of papers in this thought provoking volume argues for concept revision as a step towards decolonizing knowledge in the post-colony. The various papers powerfully expose that 'cleansed' knowledge is not only locally relevant: it is also locally accessible and globally understandable.
Archaeological sites opened to the public, and especially those highly photogenic sites that have achieved iconic status, are often major tourist attractions. By opening an archaeological site to tourism, threats and opportunities will emerge.The threats are to the archaeological record, the pre-historic or historic materials in context at the site that can provide facts about human history and the human relationship to the environment. The opportunities are to share what can be learned at archaeological sites and how it can be learned. The latter is important because doing so can build a public constituency for archaeology that appreciates and will support the potential of archaeology to co...
Ever since the signing of the World Heritage Convention 40 years ago and ratified by 33 African countries, to date, only 43 cultural heritage sites have been successfully proclaimed as World Heritage Sites in Africa. These include archaeological and historical sites, religious monuments and cultural landscapes. This book is a re-evaluation of the nomination and management of cultural World Heritage sites in Africa from the late 1970s when the Island of Gorée of Senegal and the Rock-Hewn Churches of Ethiopia were first inscribed on the WHL until today. It considers whether a credible and well balanced WHL has been attained, especially in regards to the nomination of more sites in Africa. The book also examines the roles and contribution of various heritage organizations and African governments to the nomination and management of cultural World Heritage sites in Africa. Lastly, the volume also scrutinizes economic development, which may result from the nomination and successful management of cultural World Heritage sites in Africa.