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The book is the first systematic archaeological monograph devoted
to the Maldives. It features contributions by leading
archaeologists and material culture researchers and offers an
archaeological account of this island-nation from the beginnings of
the Islamic period, it complements and nuances the picture
presented by external historical data, which identify the Maldives
as a key player in global networks. The book is aimed at students
and researchers interested in the archaeology and history of the
Indian Ocean, Islamic studies, island and coastal communities,
maritime networks, and the medieval period, with special relevance
for the ‘Global Middle Ages’. It will appeal to art historians,
archaeologists, museologists, and heritage and material culture
studies researchers with related interests.
The book is the first systematic archaeological monograph devoted
to the Maldives. It features contributions by leading
archaeologists and material culture researchers and offers an
archaeological account of this island-nation from the beginnings of
the Islamic period, it complements and nuances the picture
presented by external historical data, which identify the Maldives
as a key player in global networks. The book is aimed at students
and researchers interested in the archaeology and history of the
Indian Ocean, Islamic studies, island and coastal communities,
maritime networks, and the medieval period, with special relevance
for the 'Global Middle Ages'. It will appeal to art historians,
archaeologists, museologists, and heritage and material culture
studies researchers with related interests.
These seventeen papers were presented at a conference on African
archaeology, held at St Hugh's College, Oxford, in April 2002. The
topics span nineteen countries, from Morocco in the far northwest
of the continent to Lesotho, Madagascar and South Africa in the
south, from Mauritania in the west to Ethiopia and Kenya in the
east. Together they show the strength of research in African
archaeology being undertaken at the present time by British-based
academics, and the relevance of Africa to a whole range of
archaeological debates, including: early hominid evolution and the
recent appearance and expansion of our own species,
palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, the early development of
food-production, the development of metallurgy, the formation of
complex societies, and the sociopolitical impacts of long-distance
trade.
In response to a general lack of research in the Zindar region of
northern Nigeria, Ann Haour collates information and data related
to one important but ill-understood site - Kufan Kanawa. Although
the site comprised a stone enclosure with walls up to 6km long,
enclosing an area of 261 hectares, the site is not well documented.
This volume draws on the results of excavations at the site in 1999
and 2000, as well as anthropological interviews and a critique of
the historiography of the area, to discern the nature of the site,
when it was occupied (a small number of C14 dates suggest a date
c.15th century AD) and its significance in terms of trade, urbanism
and political complexity in this part of Africa.
African Pottery Roulettes Past and Present considers ethnographic,
museological and archaeological approaches to pottery-decorating
tools called roulettes, that is to say, short lengths of fibre or
wood that are rolled over the surface of a vessel for decoration.
This book sets out, for the first time, a solid typology for the
classification of African pottery decorated with such tools, and
forges a consensus on common methodology and standards. It gives an
overview of history of research into roulette decoration in Africa
and elsewhere Jomon Japan, Neolithic Europe, Siberia, and New York
among others; outlines the contemporary distribution of roulette
usage in sub-Saharan African today, a 'success story' from Senegal
to Tanzania; and proposes methodologies for the identification of
selected roulette decoration types in the archaeological record. By
achieving standardisation in pottery analysis, this book will help
researchers make meaningful comparisons between different sites of
West Africa, and thus guide further research on the West African
past. As roulette decoration has been such a global phenomenon in
the past, the book will also be of interest to all researchers with
an interest in ceramics from different parts of the world.
Studies of liminality have a long history in anthropology. In
archaeology, identifying past people - rather than faceless
entities - through material culture is still a work in progress,
but a project that has seen increased attention in recent years.
Focusing on West Africa, this book argues that we should explore
what happens when the primary label assigned to a person's identity
is that of an outsider - when he or she is of, but not in, society.
Such outsiders can be found everywhere in the West African past:
rulers show off their foreign descent, traders migrate to new
areas, potters and blacksmiths claim to be apart from society. Thus
far, however, it is mainly historians and anthropologists who have
tackled the question of outsiders or liminal people. This book asks
what archaeology can bring to the debate, and drawing together for
the first time the extensive literature on the subject of
outsiders, looks in detail at the role they played in the past 1000
years of the West African past, in particular in the construction
of great empires.
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