- Department of Anthropology
Queens College (CUNY)
65-30 Kissena Boulevard
312A Powdermaker Hall
Flushing, NY 11367 - +1 (718) 997-5529
- I am an anthropological archaeologist whose research is centred on re-imagining Africa’s place, and its diaspora in w... moreI am an anthropological archaeologist whose research is centred on re-imagining Africa’s place, and its diaspora in world prehistory. My primary area of interest is sub-Saharan Africa, with an active research program that focuses on understanding the early history of ancient civilizations such as Great Zimbabwe, Nyanga, and Chumnungwa. Additionally, I explore Africa's contributions to other world civilizations through trans-Atlantic and Indian Ocean-based networks.edit
Most of the ceramic ethnoarchaeological studies that have been undertaken in southern Africa's Iron Age have been biased towards the life cycle of household clay pots. To this end, an increased literature and understanding has been... more
Most of the ceramic ethnoarchaeological studies that have been undertaken in southern Africa's Iron Age have been biased towards the life cycle of household clay pots. To this end, an increased literature and understanding has been generated about their sociology. This chapter attempts to bridge this divide by providing aspects of consumption and symbolism that possibly influenced the life cycle of ritual vessels in the prehistory of the Nyanga archaeological complex which thrived in the second millennium AD. Using an emic approach, it explores two assemblages of complete and partially broken pots from the archaeological site of Mount Muozi and those produced and consumed by the contemporary Saunyama dynasty which are both situated in northeastern Zimbabwe. The comparison suggests that specific vessels had their functions exclusively embedded in ritual proceedings that ranged from chief's ordination to rain-petitioning and harvesting ceremonies. Furthermore, the study demonstrates symbolism of ritual vessels as dual, since it emanates from both producers and the consumers. Consequently, the Saunyama experience proposes ceramic sociology as probably situational in the archaeological past as it varies with space and time.
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In southern Zambezia, the early second millennium AD witnessed socio-political transformations within local agropastoralist societies. Research continues to unearth evidence of multiple places that likely functioned as the centres of... more
In southern Zambezia, the early second millennium AD witnessed socio-political transformations within local agropastoralist societies. Research continues to unearth evidence of multiple places that likely functioned as the centres of state-based polities. This paper reports on surveys and excavations undertaken at Mtanye, located about 50 km east of Gwanda in southwestern Zimbabwe and approximately 90 km north of the Shashi-Limpopo Confluence Area where Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe meet. Fieldwork identified local expressions of prestige such as stone walling, exotic items such as glass beads and evidence of long-term occupation with a successive layering and mix of K2, TK2 and Mapungubwe facies. Based on this evidence, it is therefore suggested that the similarities in material culture between Mapungubwe, Mtanye and other neighbouring sites like Mapela and Mananzve reflect social networks of shared ideas and practices rather than the existence of a single hegemonic state. Furthermore, the community at Mtanye deployed different strategies to survive and thrive in seemingly inhospitable drylands.
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Throughout the world, the entanglement of humans and landscapes varies from area to area depending on the time scale. In southern Africa, the impact of humanity on the physical environment is largely discussed in the context of modern... more
Throughout the world, the entanglement of humans and landscapes varies from area to area depending on the time scale. In southern Africa, the impact of humanity on the physical environment is largely discussed in the context of modern rural and urban societies, and, usually, most contributions come from human geography, agriculture, and earth sciences. Very limited research is usually extended into the deep past, yet the archaeological record is replete with valuable information that gives a long-time depth of past human land use practices. Consequently, the contribution of the physical environment to the development of complexity over time remains poorly understood in most parts of Iron Age (CE 200–1900) southern Zambezia, particularly in Mberengwa and other gold-belt territories that have often received cursory research attention. What remains obscured is how did inhabitants of these gold-belt territories transform their landscapes in the long and short-term and how did these tran...
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Archaeological explorations of the meaning of ‘trade objects’, such as glass beads and cowrie shells, remain hampered by theoretical and methodological limitations in both their analyses and interpretations. In this paper, we develop a... more
Archaeological explorations of the meaning of ‘trade objects’, such as glass beads and cowrie shells, remain hampered by theoretical and methodological limitations in both their analyses and interpretations. In this paper, we develop a methodology for critically engaging in multi-scalar questions of the circulation, exchange, and value of cowrie shells in African archaeological contexts. Species, size, dorsal modifications, and depositional contexts were compared across five sites from South Africa dating between 750 and 1350 CE. These results were positioned within a review of cowries from archaeological sites in the region and compared to the documented distribution of cowries from wider African archaeological contexts. Monetaria annulus were the prevalent cowrie species in southern African archaeological contexts over the last 2000 years, with a notable absence of Monetaria moneta, prevalent at contemporaneous sites in West Africa, as well as a variety of endemic southern African...
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Ancient pottery from the Nyanga agricultural complex (CE 1300–1900) in north-eastern Zimbabwe enjoys more than a century of archaeological research. Though several studies dedicated to the pottery have expanded the frontiers of knowledge... more
Ancient pottery from the Nyanga agricultural complex (CE 1300–1900) in north-eastern Zimbabwe enjoys more than a century of archaeological research. Though several studies dedicated to the pottery have expanded the frontiers of knowledge about the peopling of Bantu-speaking agropastoral societies in this part of southern Africa, we know little about the social context in which the pottery was made, distributed, used, and discarded in everyday life. This mostly comes from the fact that the majority of the ceramic studies undertaken were rooted in Eurocentric typological approaches to material culture hence these processes were elided by most researchers. As part of the decolonial turn in African archaeology geared at rethinking our current understanding of the everyday life of precolonial agropastoral societies, we explored the lifecycle of traditional pottery among the Manyika, one of the local communities historically connected to the Nyanga archaeological landscape. The study proffered new dimensions to the previous typological analyses. It revealed a range of everyday roles and cultural contexts that probably shaped the lifecycle of local pottery in ancient Nyanga.
In southern Africa, as elsewhere, the tendency of Iron Age (AD 200–1900) researchers has been to focus on the more prominent places on the landscape, especially those believed by pioneering archaeologists to have been the centres of big... more
In southern Africa, as elsewhere, the tendency of Iron Age (AD 200–1900) researchers has been to focus on the more prominent places on the landscape, especially those believed by pioneering archaeologists to have been the centres of big states. Consequently, most research has focused on Mapungubwe, Great Zimbabwe, Khami, Danamombe and many other places considered as centres (mizinda) of expansive territorial states. Landscapes away from and in-between these states and their centres are traditionally viewed as ‘peripheries’ where the resources that made them prosperous were extracted. The inhabitants of such ‘peripheries’ are presented as if they possessed little or no agency. One such area isMberengwa, a gold-rich area situated between the edges of Mapela, Mapungubwe, Great Zimbabwe, Danamombe and Khami. This thesis explores the archaeology of Chumnungwa, a drystone-walled muzinda located in Mberengwa. Because of abundant gold, and a landscape optimal for cattle production and crop ...
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The general conviction in the Iron Age archaeology of southern Zambezia is that drylands such as the Shashi region are marginal landscapes that did not host any significant food producing communities in the past. Resultantly, for those... more
The general conviction in the Iron Age archaeology of southern Zambezia is that drylands such as the Shashi region are marginal landscapes that did not host any significant food producing communities in the past. Resultantly, for those communities that occupied these landscapes, their settlement histories have been always portrayed as short-lived, since their existence is mostly understood as by chance and not choice. However, new data recovered from Mananzve and other drylands sites we surveyed and excavated in the Shashi region of south-western Zimbabwe demonstrates that Iron Age communities had a long-term settlement history on the landscape and that, through various strategies, they maintained food security in the face of environmental and climatic adversities. At a broader scale, these findings show that these areas perceived today as drylands are resource rich and that Iron Age communities which occupied these landscapes had the capacity to adapt and utilise these resources to their advantage. This challenges the designation of drylands of southern Zambezia such as the Shashi region as marginal, since that term undermines their resource potential and the adaptive capacity of the communities occupying them consistently through time.
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In southern Africa, there has been a long-standing but unsubstantiated assumption that the site of Khami evolved out of Great Zimbabwe's demise around ad 1450. The study of local ceramics from the two sites indicate that the... more
In southern Africa, there has been a long-standing but unsubstantiated assumption that the site of Khami evolved out of Great Zimbabwe's demise around ad 1450. The study of local ceramics from the two sites indicate that the respective ceramic traditions are clearly different across the entire sequence, pointing towards different cultural affiliations in their origins. Furthermore, there are tangible typological differences between and within their related dry-stone architecture. Finally, absolute and relative chronologies of the two sites suggest that Khami flourished as a major centre from the late fourteenth/early fifteenth century, long before Great Zimbabwe's decline. Great Zimbabwe also continued to be occupied into the late seventeenth and perhaps eighteenth centuries, after the decline of Khami. Consequently, the combined significance of these observations contradicts the parent-offspring relationship implied in traditional frameworks. Instead, as chronologically ove...
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Archaeological indicators of inequality at major historic centres of power have long been poorly understood. This paper is the first to address the archaeology of class and inequality at Great Zimbabwe (AD 1000-1700) from an... more
Archaeological indicators of inequality at major historic centres of power have long been poorly understood. This paper is the first to address the archaeology of class and inequality at Great Zimbabwe (AD 1000-1700) from an African-centred viewpoint. Data from new excavations, combined with insights from Shona philosophy, practice and ethnography, suggest that the categories of 'elite' and 'commoner' were situational and transient, and that they require a more robust theorisation than that currently adopted for the site. The results provide a valuable study for the comparative archaeology of ancient cities, differing in many ways from established interpretive frameworks in global archaeology.