Archaeology

Abstract

Western approaches to knowledge production in archaeology have primarily been framed on the ‘artefact’ and how the information around it aggregates to the ‘feature’, ‘structure’, ‘site’, and the spatial spread of such evidence in the landscape and its transformation over time. The deep history of Africa shows how this framing of knowledge in non-Western societies has been framed and internalized into ‘prehistory’, seriously impacting the methodology and theory necessary to understand contexts beyond the Global North. I argue here that if approaches to rewriting the African pasts are to effectively challenge this disaggregation and fragmentation of knowledge in archaeology, new knowledge must provide meanings to material culture and contexts that align with the worldviews of Indigenous peoples. Archaeology then becomes a discipline not only focused on the study of the past but also on how the past connects with the present and helps address the contemporary human condition.

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