Ancient African History

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HIS 227 Ancient World History – Africa
Patten University Prison University Programme - Associate of Arts Degree
San Quentin, California, USA
Classes: Fridays and Sundays 18:30 - 20:45. 18 January 2005 – 24 April 2005
Instructors: Sven Ouzman, Lee Panich , David Cohen, Anthropology, UC Berkeley.
Course contact: Jody Lewen, Nicole Lindahl, Patten University
Class size: 21 (originally 28) Class units: AA units: 3
The Taung Child Africa The Sphinx, Egypt
Image sources: www.jqjacobs.net/anthro/paleo/images/taung.jpg
http://www.murrayhudson.com/antique_maps/continent_maps/07670m.jpg
http://pythacli.chez.tiscali.fr/images/sphinx.jpg
Course-in-a-nutshell: Situate Africa centrally in the flow of world history and show
how the past shapes the present, and how the present shapes the past.
Objectives
1. Learn about Africa past and present.
2. Learn good critical skills (arguing, presenting, representing, reading, writing).
3. Learn what was happening at other places at the same times.
Grading policy
Original grading policy
1 Map quiz 5% of final grade 5%
5 tests and 5 writing assignments each 5% of final grade 50%
Class participation 20%
Final project & presentation 25% of final grade 25%
100%
90%-100% = A+ 80%-90% = A
75%-80% = B+ 70%-75% = B
65%-70% = C+ 65%-70% = C
55%-60% = D+ 50%-55% = D
Below 50% = Fail

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Patten University’s grading policy (received March 2005)
Letter Grade Numerical Score Grade Points Achievement Level
A
A-
93-100
90-92
4.0
3.7
Superior
B+
B
B-
87-89
83-86
80-82
3.3
3.0
2.7
Above Average
C+
C
C-
77-79
73-76
70-72
2.3
2.0
1.7
Average
D+
D
D-
F
67-69
63-66
60-62
0-59
1.3
1.0
0.7
0.0
Below
Average
CR
NC
70-100
0-70
N/A
N/A
Passing
Not Passing
There will be opportunities to achieve bonus grades.
Primary course text
1. Iliffe, John. 1995. Africans: the history of a continent. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Supplemental course texts (photocopies of readings will be supplied in class):
1. Achebe, Chinua. 1978. An image of Africa. Research in African Literatures
9(1):2-15.
2. Bohannan, Paul and Philip D. Curtin. 1995. Africa and Africans. Fourth Edition.
Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. (pages 17-45; 49-61; 139-149; 152-164;
179-190;217-238).
3. Brent, Michel. 1996. A view inside the illicit trade in African antiquities. In: Peter
R. Schmidt and Roderick J. McIntosh (eds.). Plundering Africa’s past: 63-78.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
4. Connah, Graham. 2004. Forgotten Africa: an introduction to its archaeology.
London: Routledge. (pages 1-19; 27-38; 69-75; 82-117; 125-130; 157-168; 169-
175.).
5. Cook, K.1993. Black bones, white science: The battle over New York's African
Burial Ground. Village Voice May 4, 23–27.
6. Curiel, Jonathan 2004. Muslim roots of the blues: the music of famous American
blues singers reaches back through the South to the culture of West Africa. San
Francisco Chronicle August 15th

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7. Curtin, Philip. 1964. The image of Africa: British ideas and action 1780-1850.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press (pages 3-57).
8. Curtin, Philip, D. 1974 [1964]. Precolonial African history. Washington, D.C.:
American Historical Association Pamphlets 501: 3-66.
9. Franklin, Maria. 2001. The archaeological dimensions of soul food: interpreting
race, culture, and Afro-Virginian identity. In: Orser, Charles E (ed.). Race and the
archaeology of identity: 88-107). Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press.
10. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 1997. Harlem on our minds. Rhapsodies in black: art of
the Harlem renaissance. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
(Introduction)
11. Herskovitz, Melville J. 1958. The myth of the Negro past. Boston, MA: Beacon
Press. (Chapter 1).
12. Kusimba, Chapurukha M. 1996. Archaeology in African museums. African
Archaeological Review 13:165-170.
13. Lowenthal, David. 1985. The past is a foreign country. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. (Introduction).
14. McKee, Larry. 1998. Some thoughts on the past, present, and future of the
Archaeology of the African Diaspora. African-American Archaeology: Newsletter
of the African-American Network 21.
15. Mudimbe, Victor. 1994. The idea of Africa. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press. (Introduction).
16. Ouzman, Sven. 2002. Render unto Africans what is rightly ours. The Sunday
Independent, July 14:9.
17. Phillipson, David, W. 1993. African Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. (pages 1-11; 12-59; 117-157).
18. Shillington, Kevin. 1995. History of Africa. New York: St Martin’s Press. (pages 1-
13; 14-35; 169-175; 170-180; 289-331).
19. Weik, T. 1997. The archaeology of Maroon societies in the Americas: resistance,
cultural continuity, and transformation in the African diaspora. Historical
Archaeology 31(2):81-92.
Video resources
1. Africa. Series by Basil Davidson. 1984. RM Studios, London. Video/C 2490
Filmed on location all over Africa, showing life as it is today, plus archive film and
dramatized reconstructions.
* Different But Equal (Part 1). Describes how some of the greatest civilizations had their
origins in Africa and discusses artistic, technical and scientific achievements.

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* Mastering a Continent (Part 2). Looks at two important developments in early African
society, the growth of cattle keeping and agriculture. Focuses on the activities of three
communities, the Pokot in Northern Kenya, Sukor in Nigeria and the Dogon of Mali.
* Caravans of Gold (Part 3). Traces the trade routes, which stretched from Africa to Asia
and southern Europe long before the arrival of the white man in Africa.
* The Bible and the Gun (Part 5). Looks at the impact on African society of three different
groups; slave traders, missionaries and colonialists.
[Clips from this video series will be used in Lessons 1,6,7,8 & 9 to provide a general
introduction and supply visual material of Africa’s past such as the pyramids, Great
Zimbabwe, environments, people, animals and so forth]
2. Africa Screams Directed by Charles Barton. 1949. Universal Studios.
Cast: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello. Starving cannibals, ferocious lions and awesome apes
terrorize Abbott and Costello in this African adventure. 79 min. DVD 1299
[A short 10 minute clip from this film will be shown in Lesson 10 to see how Africa was
portrayed in the 1920s-1950s; drawing on stereotypes of Africa as a place of `nature’
rather than `culture’]
3. Coincidence in Paradise. Directed by Matthias von Gunten. 1999. First Run/Icarus
Films.
From fossil rich desert gorges to laboratories and primeval rain forests this film presents
in the field some of the most influential scholars working today investigating the million
year mystery of human origins, seeking the latest discoveries. 88 mins. VIDEO/C 6984.
[A series of short 5 minute clips will be used in Lesson 5 to show the class what the
human fossil material looks like and to give them a range of views on human evolution
and creationism through interviews with experts in the field]
4. Congorilla (Mr. and Mrs. Martin Johnson's Congorilla: Adventures Among the Big
apes and Little People of Central Africa). Directed by Martin and Osa Johnson. 1932.
Universal Studios. 67 min. Video/C MM306
The fourth trip of naturalists and explorers Martin and Osa Johnson to Africa as they
encounter inhabitants of the Serengeti Plains, Kenya and the Congo.
[A 5-10 minute clip from this film will be shown in Lesson 10 to provide visual material for
Central Africa, often cast as the `Heart of Darkness’]
5. Fang – an epic journey. Directed by Susan Vogel. 2001. First Run/Icarus Films.
Fang mixes documentary and fiction techniques to recount an African art object's
journey through a century of peril and adventure, and uses the film styles of each
historical period to tell its story - a whole century. 8 mins.
[This 8 minute film by Harvard Professor Susan Vogel shows how the meaning of a
single artifact can change depending on its setting – among the people who made it; in a
museum, in an art gallery and so on. An excellent visual example of how con text
determines meaning]
6. N/um Tchai: The Ceremonial Dance of the !Kung Bushmen Directed by Johan
Marshall. 1966. Harvard Film Project. Video/C 3421
Bushman curing ceremony in the Kalahari Desert area of South West Africa by showing
an all-night n/um tchai (medicine dance). 1966. 20 min.
[Three 5 minute clips from this anthropological classic show the San/Bushman Medicine
Dance –one of the world’s oldest religious ceremonies, with distinctive music]

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7. Ota Benga: A Pygmy in America. Directed by Alfeu França. 2002. Film Arts.
This documentary relates when a pygmy, Ota Benga, was taken from the Congo in 1904
and exhibited at the St. Louis World's Fair and the Bronx Zoo. 17 min. Video/C 9316
[A short film that will be shown in Lesson 10 to show colonial attitudes towards Africa
and how Africans coped with these attitudes]
8. The Life and Times of Sara Baartman: "The Hottentot Venus". Directed by Zola
Maseko. 1998. First Run/Icarus Films.
A documentary film on the life of a Khoi Khoi woman who was taken from South Africa in
1810 and exhibited across Britain and France. I In English and French with English
subtitles. 52 min. Video/C 6374
[15 minute clip will be shown in Lesson 10 to illustrate how African cultural material and
people have traveled beyond Africa, and some of these materials eventually return to
Africa]
9. The Gods Must Be Crazy Directed by Jamie Uys. 1984. Mimosa/Trimark Pictures.
An empty Coke bottle drops from the sky near an African San hunter and causes trouble
so he tries to return the bottle to the gods who must have dropped it. 109 min. 999:3216
[One of the world’s most successful films. Excerpts will be shown in Lesson 10 to see if
the class can distinguish parts where the San/Bushmen are accurately/sensitively
portrayed and sections where they are not]
10. Wonders of the African World. Written and presented by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
1999. BBC/TBS Productions.
* Parts 1 and 2: An epic journey through Egypt and Sudan in search of Nubia, an ancient
African civilization which once rivaled Egypt.
* Parts 3 and 4: Part 3: Gates travels through the old kingdoms of Asante and Dahomey
in modern Ghana and Benin to unravel the real story of the transatlantic slave trade.
* Parts 5 and 6: Pt. 5: Gates sets out on a journey from Mali, following ancient trace
routes to Zimbabwe, a 1000 old African city. 120 min. each installment. Video/C 6657
[Short clips will be shown in Lessons 1,7,10 to demonstrate African cultural
achievements as well as the connections between different parts of Africa in the past]]
Internet resources
University sites
1. John Arthur’s Archaeology of Africa’ course website, University of South Florida,
USA. http://www.stpt.usf.edu/arthurj/archaeology_of_africa.htm
2. Columbia University, USA. African Studies Resources, African Studies, 308
International Affairs, 420 W. 118th Street, NY 10027 Tel: (212) 854-8045 Email:
africa@libraries.cul.columbia.edu Web site:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/africa/cuvl
3. Stanford University, USA Africa south of the Sahara: selected internet resources.
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/guide.html

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4. Anne Stahl’s Archaeology of Africa, State University of New York, Binghamton,
USA. http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/%7Eastahl/#afarchsyllabus
5. Glenn Stone’s Anthropology 306: Africa: peoples and cultures. Washington
University at St Louis, USA. http://ascc.artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/courses/306/
6. University of Wisconsin, USA Digital Library Africa: sights and sounds of a
continent http://africafocus.library.wisc.edu
7. Michigan State University Centre For African Studies.
http://exploringafrica.matrix.msu.edu/
8. Boston University, African Studies Center http://www.bu.edu/AFR
9. Indiana University, African Studies Program http://indiana.edu~afrist
10. Ohio University, African Studies Program
http://www.ohiou.edu/~african/main.htm
11. University of California-Berkeley, Center for African Studies
http://ias.berkeley.edu/africa
12. University of California-Los Angeles, James Coleman African Studies Center
http://www.isop.ucla.edu/jscasc
13. University of Florida, Center for African Studies
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/aleslie/
14. University of Illinois, Center for African Studies http://www.afrst.uiuc.edu
15. University of Pennsylvania, African Studies Program
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/K-12/AFR_GIDE.html
16. Yale University, Council on African Studies http://yale.edu/ycias/african/Africa
Focus: Sights and Sounds of a Continent. Developed at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison this site provides educators with a wonderful data-base of
digitized photos and music recordings from across Africa
http://africafocus.library.wisc.edu/
Other sites
17. African Voices: Web-based educational resources based on African Voices, a
permanent exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural
History. http://www.mnh.si.edu/africanvoices/
18. African Odyssey Interactive: The African Odyssey Interactive [AOI] website is an
initiative of the Kennedy Center Education Department's ARTSEDGE Program
and contains arts and education information and resources for artists, teachers,
and students of African arts and culture. http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/aoi/
19. Africa South for the Sahara: Selected Internet Resources. The most
comprehensive searchable data-base of Internet resources on Africa currently

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available to educators. This data-base was developed by Karen Fung, Africana
librarian, Stanford University. http://www.stanford.edu/dept/AFR/
20. Art and Life in Africa Online contains information about African Art and Culture.
Some of the material on this site has been adapted from similar material
developed for the Art and Life in Africa CD-ROM being produced at The
University of Iowa. Additionally, some material is specific to this site (and not
found on the CD), as noted below. Links to further resources on the web have
been added where appropriate. http://www.uiowa.edu/~africart/toc/index.html
21. African Action: an important Washington DC based coalition of African advocacy
groups. They produce and post on their web-site excellent analyses of African
issues and U.S. policy towards Africa. http://www.africapolicy.org/index.shtml
22. TransAfrica Forum: a very important Washington DC based advocacy group on
African and African Diaspora issues. http://www.transafricaforum.org/
23. Bureau of African Affairs, United States Department of State Official U.S. policy
statements and documents on African affairs. http://www.state.gov/p/af/
News Services
24. Africa On Line http://www.africaonline.com
25. Africa News Now http://africanewsnow.com
26. All Africa News Service http://allafrica.com
27. IRIN (Integrated Regional Information Network-Africa)
http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN/index.phtml
28. BBC Africa Service http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/default.stm
29. American Journalism Review Links to African Newspapers
http://arj.newslink.org/nonusf.html
30. Ecola Links to African Newspapers http://ecola.com/news/press/af/
31. Christian Science Monitor: http://csmonitor.com/
32. Guardian (London): http://guardian.co.uk/guardian/
33. Le Monde (Paris/English Ed.): http://lwww.lemonde.fr/
34. New York Times: http://nytimes.com/
35. Observer (London): http:///www.observer.co.uk/
36. Washington Post: http://washingtonpost.com/

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HIS 227 Ancient World History - Africa
2005 Policies & Regulations
ATTENDANCE POLICY
ABSENCES
For each unexcused absence, a student's grade will be lowered by one third of a
letter grade (for example, from an B+ to a B). Three unexcused absences will
result in failure of the course.
Students must provide a written explanation for each absence. Without a written
explanation, an absence will be counted as unexcused.
Patten University policy states that any student who misses more than 5 classes
(20% of the course) will not receive any course credit.
TARDINESS/EARLY DEPARTURE
Three unexcused late arrivals or early departures will be counted as one
unexcused absence (except for students whose housing situations require them
to arrive late or leave early).
GRADING
Tests and Assignments:
1 map quiz 5 tests*
5 writing assignments* Final project and presentation
*Tests will occur in class on Fridays and will last 20-30 mins.
*Tests will be handed back the following Friday.
*Writing assignments will be given in class on Friday and will be handed in on the
following Friday. These will be graded on content and argument, not grammar.
*Revision is encouraged and may increase your grade.
*Tests and writing assignments will be worth 20 points each.
Grading Policy
Map quiz, tests, and writing assignments (11 @ 5% each) 55%
Class participation 20%
Final project and presentation 25%
100%
90-100% = A+ 80-90% = A 75-80% = B+
70-75% = B 65-70% = C+ 60-65% = C
55-60% = D+ 50-55% = D Below 50% = Fail
There will be opportunities to achieve bonus points.
Students will have the chance to evaluate the course and the instructors at the end of
the term.

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HIS 227 Ancient World History - Africa 2005 Syllabus Summary
1. Africa fact session (this is rumour control)
21 & 23 January. Africa past, present and syllabus overviews. Assign writing exercise.
2. “The Past is a Foreign Country” How is history made and Africa
represented?
28 & 30 January. How anthropology, archaeology and history work. *Map quiz.
3. “The Past is a Foreign Country” How is history made and Africa
represented?
4 & 6 February. How anthropology, archaeology and history work. *Test 1.
4. Origins – Africa as home of humanity, art, science and music
11 & 13 February. 3 million years of humanity. Feb 11 drop date. *Writing assignment 1.
18 & 20 February. 3 million years of humanity. *Test 2.
6. The rise of farming and cities
25 & 27 February. 7000 years of civilisation. *Writing assignment 2.
4 & 6 March. 7000 years of civilisation. *Test 3. Finalise research topics for 15 & 17
April.
11 & 13 March. Case studies of great African civilizations. *Writing assignment 3.
9. Africa and the rest – slavery, diaspora and colonialism
18 & 20 March. 500 years of European interest in Africa. *Test 4.
10. Africa in the Americas
25 & 27 March. 400 years of Africa in the Americas. April 1 withdrawal date. *Test 5
11. Representations – museums, literature, music, art
1 & 3 April. 500 years of imagining Africa. *Writing assignment 4. (cancelled assignment)
12. Consolidation – questions and preparation for final presentations
8 & 10 April. Q & A on course. Preparation time for presentations. *Writing assignment 5.
13. Presentations and Evaluation – what worked and what didn’t
15 & 17 April. Research topics presented. Evaluation of course, instructors and students.
14. Final grading
Grades to Patten PUP by 24 April. [xx follow-up with students – or do this 17th
]

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HIS 227 Ancient World History - Africa 2005 Detailed Syllabus
1. Africa Fact Session (this is rumour control)
21 & 23 January
Lesson aim
To provide a broad introduction to the diversity of natural and cultural environments in
Africa today, the recent past, the deep past and the pre-human past.
Lesson method
1. Instructors and students introduce themselves and say what their expectations of the
class are; what their interest in Africa is.
2. Instructors introduce course outline, timetable and grading system. Instructors outline
course philosophy on `Ubuntu’ principles.
3. Instructors outline how to present a coherent argument, how to structure a good
written argument, the importance of attributing sources, how to read closely, how to
contextualise information, how to present and balance a variety of perspectives.
4. Through different kinds of maps (climatic, demographic, geological, linguistic, political,
topographic) begin examining the diversity of the world’s 2nd
largest continent (17.5
million km2
- 20% of earth’s land surface) that today has 54 countries, about 900 million
people, approx. 1000 languages etc. Show standard historical method of working back
from known to the lesser known or unknown, move back from shallow time and deep
time.
5. Consider what was happening at similar times in other parts of the world.
Lesson resources
1. Maps: Peters Projection map; Africa map
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/atlas/index.html; climatic, demographic,
geological, linguistic, political and topographic maps from Encarta and Britannica online.
2. OHT visuals of Africa, people, places, animals etc. Video clips from Davidson’s Africa
and Gates’ Wonders of the African world.
For next week
1. Hand out Africa map to study for next week’s map quiz.
2. Pages 1-5 of Iliffe’s Africans – the history of a continent.
3. Pages 1-11 of Phillipson’s African archaeology.
4. Introduction (pp. viii-xxviii) and 39-73 to David Lowenthal’s 1985. The past is a foreign
country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
5. Pages 17-45 of Bohannan and Curtin’s Africa and Africans.
6. Introduction to Victor Mudimbe’s. 1994. The idea of Africa. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press.
Reading load: 70 pages.
Week 1 Writing Assignment:
One hand-written page on the subject:

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What is Africa?
To be handed in next Friday (01/28) in class.
This assignment will be graded but will not count towards the final grade.
Notes
What, Why, How, When to believe?
1. Source
• Spoken, written, seen?
• Who what said/presented it? TV, book, person, internet?
• Old or recent knowledge?
2. More than one source
• Need more than one source.
• Need different types of sources.
• Need to know where to look.
3. Structure
• Logical? Beginning, middle and end?
• Seems strange? Trust instincts.
• Be prepared to be wrong.
4. Context
• Right or wrong?
• Appropriate or inappropriate?
• Agree to disagree?
Tips 1: margin summaries; notes, rough plan, write conclusion first
Tips 2: Have someone read/comment, revise, revise, revise
Visual examples
Compare Mercator and Peters Projection maps.
Writing examples:
Sample 1) Water pollution is starting to become a big problem, even in our local waters,
such as the San Francisco Bay. Many different types of heavy metal pollution that enters
our bay, especially mercury pollution. There are two main ways the pollution gets there.
These two types are point pollution, which includes dumping from sewage plants, and

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nonpoint pollution (when pollutants don’t come from a specific industry or business),
which includes tributary inflow and runoff.
- no clear topic
- general statements without supporting evidence (‘because I said so’)
- listing of facts with no sources cited
- no transitions
Sample 2) Heavy metal pollution is a quickly growing problem for our oceans, lakes, and
rivers. [attention-grabbing statement] Right now it may not be the biggest pollution
problem, but just waiting for it to go away or to solve itself is not going to help. We need
to be aware of the problems heavy metal creates, so we all, in our own little ways, can
contribute to the solutions. [thesis statement/argument to be discussed]
Water pollution is starting to become a big problem, even in our local waters, such as the
San Francisco Bay. There are many different types of heavy metal pollution that enters
our bay, especially mercury pollution. There are two main ways the pollution gets there.
These two types are point pollution, which includes dumping from sewage plants, and
nonpoint pollution (when pollutants don’t come from a specific industry or business),
which includes tributary inflow and runoff.
- states the topic of the paper and draws the reader in
- general statements without supporting evidence (‘because I said so’)
- listing of facts with no sources cited
- no transitions
Sample 3) Heavy metal pollution is a quickly growing problem for our oceans, lakes, and
rivers. [attention-grabbing statement] Right now it may not be the biggest pollution
problem, but just waiting for it to go away or to solve itself is not going to help. We need
to be aware of the problems heavy metal creates, so we all, in our own little ways, can
contribute to the solutions. [thesis statement/argument to be discussed]
[background to argument]
Heavy metal pollution is a threat to human health, animals, plants, and the planet itself,
and is mainly caused by industrialization and its consequences. While some of the metal
pollutants come from fertilizers and sewage, the biggest source of heavy metal pollution
definitely is industrialization (Garbarino 2002).When heavy metal toxins get into the
ocean, no matter how they got there, they will travel up the food chain, getting more
concentrated and lethal with every step. [transition]
Heavy metals pose a large threat to humans. They are most dangerous when taken
orally, although some, like mercury, are known to be harmful just by touch (EPA 2002).
The biggest problem though, is heavy metals reaching our drinking water and
contaminating it, thus endangering humans and animals. [transition]
It begins with a plant or animal, particularly plankton, which absorbs the toxin. Plankton
are the basis of the food chain. Bottom feeders, such as herring, eat the contaminated
plankton. Next step up are then large predatory fish, shark and tuna, who eat the
contaminated bottom feeders. Animals at the top of the ocean food chain, mainly
seabirds, sea mammals and humans, get the highest level of toxicity in their food intake
(Hare 1991). [supporting argument/explanation]
[Conclusion: why is this important/interesting?]

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Water pollution is starting to become a big problem, even in our local waters, such as the
San Francisco Bay. Clean water is our step into a clean future. We need to inform
people about how heavy metal pollution gets into our environment so they can be more
aware of the threats of these pollutants and change their behavior to stop the problem.
References
• EPA. "Mercury." 16 Sep.2002
• Garbarino, John R., et al. "Heavy Metals in the Mississippi River."
(www.water.usgs.gov/pubs/circ/circ1133/heavy-metals.html). 20 Sep. 2002
• Hare, Tony. Toxic Waste. New York, NY: Gloucester Press, 1991
- states the topic of the paper and draws the reader in
- general statements without supporting evidence
- sources cited
- transitions between topics/ideas
- explains the argument without assuming that the reader knows anything
about this (explains the What? When? How? Where? Why?)
- argument does not rely on “trust me, I’m an expert”, but instead convinces the
reader by answering their questions
Readings and Study Tips
Write pencil 1-word summaries next to paragraphs.
Give written work to a friend to comment on.
Set definite times to study and take breaks. 45 mins study 15 mins break works well.
Underline/highlight key words or words/phrases/ideas you are unsure about.
Learn how to skim.
African Plants and Animals
Africa is the second largest continent, comprising one fifth of the earth's landmass, or
about 12 million square miles. The sheer size of the African continent is reflected in its
diverse flora and fauna.
Environmental Zones and Plants.
There are several basic environmental zones in Africa (which are largely dependent on
latitude, altitude, and proximity to large bodies of water, among other factors).
DISCUSSION POINT: How do we conceive of the African landscape/environment?
Rainforests. Africa's tropical rainforests are located primarily in the west and central
parts of the continent. They include hundreds of species of trees, including oil palms,
ebony, mahogany, and okoume.

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Grasslands. Located in the west, east and southern parts of Africa, the savannah is an
important environment in which many different types of drought and fire resistant
grasses grow. Boabab and acacia trees also grew in the savannah.
Steppe/Sahel. These dry grasslands are home to many short, hearty grasses.
Deserts. Africa is home to the world's largest desert, the Sahara. Here, sparse grasses,
shrubs, and trees (such as cypress, olive, acacia, and date palm) live in the highland
areas. Desert plants must adapt to high temperatures and low precipitation. The Sahara
fluctuates in size, and reached its present size by about 2000 years ago. There is
archaeological evidence (e.g. cave paintings) that parts northern Africa used to be much
wetter. In southern Africa, the Kalahari and Namib are two other important deserts.
Coastal Areas. Mangroves grow along much of the African coastline. In the north, along
the Mediterranean, and on the southern tip of the continent, a mild Mediterranean
climate prevails. These regions are home to olive and oak trees.
Introduced Plants. Several food crops have been introduced to Africa, such as
bananas, cassava, corn, tea, and cocoa beans. Eucalyptus was also introduced.
African Animals.
Like the environmental diversity, the sheer number of living things in Africa is
astonishing. There are many thousands of species of mammals, reptiles, fishes, birds
and insects living on the continent today, and in the past.
Many of the most famous herding animals live on the eastern and southern savannah.
There, large groups of antelope, buffalo, zebras, and giraffes roam the grasslands. Of
course, these animals are preyed upon by predators (think Discovery Channel) such as
lions, cheetahs, leopards, and hyenas.
Elephants. Most of the few remaining elephant herds are located in the east and
southeast.
Rhinoceros. There are five kinds of rhinoceros, only two of which live in Africa (the
other three live in Asia). African rhinos are two-horned, where as two of the Asian
species only have one horn. African rhinos are known as the Black Rhino and the White
Rhino, although they are both the same bluish-gray color.
Hippopotamus. Hippos live in central, southern and western Africa, but there range is
limited to places where they can have easy access to water. There are two kinds of
hippos—the River Hippopotamus and the smaller, and less common Pygmy
Hippopotamus. Although hippopotamus is Greek for "river horse," recent research
suggests that the hippo is actually most closely related to the whale (and not the pig, as
was formerly thought).
Bovids. There are roughly 100 species of bovids (hollow-horned ruminants) in Africa, 72
of which are antelopes including the impala and many kinds of gazelles. For comparison,
the prong-horned antelope is the only species of antelope in North America. Giraffes are
also in the bovid family, as are buffalo. It used to be thought that cows, which are

15
important to many African economies, were introduced from Eurasia, but it is now
thought that cows were independently domesticated in Africa.
Apes. The three African apes are the gorilla, chimpanzee, and the bonobo.
There are three kinds of gorillas: the Western Lowland Gorilla which lives in the western
forests, from Nigeria south to the Congo River; the Eastern Lowland Gorilla, which lives
primarily within the modern boundaries of the Democratic Republic of the Congo; and
the Mountain Gorilla, which lives in the upland regions of the DRC and Rwanda. A male
gorilla can be as tall as six feet when fully upright and weigh as much as 450 pounds.
Chimpanzees live in tropical Africa, from Lake Victoria in the east to Gambia in the west.
They range in size from 3 1/4 – 5 1/2 feet and weigh between 90-110 pounds.
Bonobos, also called pygmy chimps, live south of the Congo River in the DRC.
Monkeys. There are all sorts of other monkeys in Africa (which I haven't included in
these notes), and it is a good idea to point out some of the differences between monkeys
and apes. Baboons live in large groups on the savannah, and are similar to dogs.
Lemurs live exclusively in Madagascar.
African peoples and languages
Living Africa
Africa has long represented primitive mystery to the West, an impenetrable `Dark
Continent’ populated by exotic people and gigantic animals. Even today, most people
hear little of life in Africa, beyond occasional horror stories of famine and civil war.
• What, then, are the daily lives of Africans really like, living in the many varied
rural and urban settings across the continent?
• How have historical processes shaped the lives of Africans living today?
• How does reality differ from the common stereotypes held about Africa?
We will seek to understand the African cultures as important and valuable ones in their
own right, while at the same time understanding the role of Africa and its influences in
the broader world.
The peoples of Africa are often described in terms of their ethnic background or their
languages. More than 680,000,000 people live in Africa, and the population of this
continent is rapidly expanding. There are several thousand ethnic groups in Africa,
ranging in physical stature from the short Pygmies to the tall Maasai, each with its own
cultural traditions.
Most of the countries that make up the continent of Africa today were created by seven
European countries—France, Britain, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Belgium—at
the Berlin Conference of 1884-85.
Even though there is such a great amount of ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity on
the continent, Africa and all of the people there are still thought of by many people as
being the same. (R. Kelly’s jungle/perceptions of Africa)

16
It is difficult to believe that 680,000,000 people could all have the same culture or
language. Although the majority of the people in Africa lead a rural life, the continent is
urbanizing at a fast pace. Over a third of the population now lives in cities. Those who
live and work in the major metropolitan areas live in ways similar to most people in the
industrialized world. They drive cars, have televisions in their homes and apartments,
have computers with access to the Internet, are educated in excellent schools and many
go on to study at universities.
Those who live in many of the smaller towns dress in western style and do the kind of
work - in the manufacturing industry or the services - that people in many urbanized
parts of the world do. However, they may not always have all the advantages of those
who live in the larger more modern cities. Their schools may have fewer resources, the
opportunities for earning a living may not be as varied, the services available may not be
as technologically advanced.
In contrast, there are the different ethnic groups living in rural Africa whose lifestyles
have remained virtually unchanged for centuries. They have a rich cultural heritage that
they have passed down from generation to generation with very little influence from the
outside world.
Africa is actually a continent made up of a wide variety of worlds and its people live in
diverse conditions. There is extreme poverty and vast wealth; there are people who
suffer from droughts and famine and people who have plentiful food; there are vast,
magnificent nature reserves with an abundance of wildlife and there are highly urbanized
parts with major cities with high-rise buildings and modern amenities.
Categorization of People (Ethnic groups, etc.)
- ex. of categorization of people (Africans-Batswana-black, white, colored-groups with
totems)
The peoples of Africa belong to several thousand different ethnic groups. Each ethnic
group has its own distinct language, traditions, arts and crafts, history, way of life and
religion. At the same time, in the past the different groups have also influenced one
another and contributed to and enriched one another's culture. There are over 50
countries in Africa, and some of these have 20 or more different ethnic groups living
within their boundaries.
The majority of the countries in Africa are inhabited by peoples of African origin. Some
ethnic groups have been influenced by the migration of Arab peoples into northern
Africa. There are also Europeans whose families moved to Africa during the colonial
period and have stayed on and created new African cultures. In some parts of Africa,
you will also find people of Asian origin, for example from India or China.
Some of the more widely known ethnic groups in Africa are: Arabs, Ashanti, Bantu,
Berbers, Bushmen, Dinka, Fulani, Ganda, Hamites, Hausa, Hottentot, Kikuyu, Luba,
Lunda, Malinke, Moors, Nuer, Pygmies, Semites, Swahili, Tuareg, Xhosa, and Yoruba.
- ex. of the Bantu (archaeology, linguistics, cultural beliefs):

17
• There are more than 60 million people who speak Bantu as their native language
and live primarily in the regions around the equator and continue southward into
southern Africa where they migrated to
• It is believed that the Bantu origins lie in Cameroon. About 1000 BC a massive
migration began (considered one of the largest in human history). This migration
continued until around the 3rd or 4th century AD.
• Anthropologists have studied this phenomenon and believe there are several
possibilities for its occurrence. It may have been due to a growing population in
ancient times, which increased the need for more food. It was around this time
that the banana, which is native to Asia, was introduced in southern Africa
• Another important occurrence in the history of the Bantu is a split that created
two major language families. They are known as the Eastern Bantu and the
Western Bantu. The Eastern Bantu migrated to Zimbabwe, Mozambique and
down into South Africa. The Western Bantu migrated into Angola, Namibia, and
parts of Botswana
• Currently the Bantu are known more as a language group than as a distinct
ethnic group. Swahili is the most widely spoken Bantu language (around 50
million people living in the countries along the east coast of Africa)
• The ethnic groups that make up the Eastern Bantu include the Xhosa, Zulu,
Kikuyu, and Shona peoples. The Western Bantu include the Herero and Tonga
peoples.
Clothing
- most Africans, particularly men, wear Western-style clothing on a daily basis; traditional
clothing is worn on special occasions
- not to “be like Americans/whites”
• early missionaries in the 19th century established schools and introduced
Western clothing to Afican people, which eventually began to replace the trade in
African cloth
• why? African cloth was made primarily for the weaver’s personal and family use,
and occasionally for trading with other groups. This handmade production was
much slower and could not keep up with the growing demand for quickly
produced clothing. Western clothing is also more durable and holds up better to
wear.
- in the recent past, millions of people have left their small villages and families to work in
large towns and cities (shops, homes, factories, mines) where Western-style clothing is
the ‘norm’
- Many aid organizations, thrift stores and church groups sell clothes very inexpensively
(a few cents)
- some special events where special/traditional clothing is worn
• Engagement rituals: Kuanyama women participate in an engagement/coming to
womanhood ritual for which they wear showy clothes
• After Masai women are married, they wear more beaded collars and are then
allowed to wear brass earring (similar to a wedding ring?)
• When West African women get married, they wear large, elaborate head ties
• A Zulu boy courting a girl will wear Western clothing bought in the city, and a
goatskin front apron that is tied with a beaded belt.

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Languages
-Just like there are many languages spoken in the United States, many languages and
dialects are spoken in Africa. There are over 1,000 languages spoken in Africa! Some
are linked to the earliest communications between humans, while others remain as
evidence of colonists: English French, Portugese, and Arabic are official languages of
many of the countries in Africa.
- The linguistic diversity of Africa is considered by some to be a problem for its people.
For example, estimates range from as low as 800 to just over 2,000 languages spoken
within the continent. In fact, there still exist some languages with no writing systems.
- what need is served by the study of languages? Language can reveal much about
historical and sociological factors related to the extension and diffusion of cultures.
- linguistic similarities (ex. ‘water’)
• Metsi in Setswana
• Maji in Swahili
- Africanisms in the English language
• Voodoo (“witchcraft”)
• something smells ‘funky’ (Ki-Kongo word for a bad odor ‘lu-fuki’)
• boogie (-woogie) “fast blues music’: (Mandingo bugB “to beat drums”)
• hip, hep “well informed, alert, aware of what’s going on” (Wolof hipi “to open
one’s eyes, be aware of what’s going on)
• cat “man, fellow” from Wolof Kat “denoting person as final element in compound”
(e.g. hipi-kat, hep cat)
• zombie “ghost, raised corpse” from Kindundu nzumbi “ghost”
• okay, O.K. (Mande oke “all right” and Wolof waw kay “all correct’)
• banana (Wolof word for “fruit”)
- Texas longhorn cattle breed brought with slaves (many Fulani) to herd cattle
• many cowboys in the west were black
• term “boy” given to slaves was eventually combined with “cow” since this was the
main duty of the slaves
African languages (4 phyla)
a. Afro-Asiatic: Egyptian, Cushitic, Semitic, Omotic, Chad, Berber. Agriculture,
pastoralism and state societies. Read Sea hills originary area.
b. KhoiSan: `Click’ languages with approx. 250 000 speakers. East African origins.
Gatherer-hunters and pastoralists.
c. Niger-Congo: 1436 languages – largest family in world. Bantu, Mande, Dogon, Krue,
Benue, Congo. Glotto-chronology back to 17 000 years ago.
d. Nilo-Saharan: Songhay, Sahara, Maba, Fur, East Sudanic (Waasai, Dinka, Nuer),
Central Sudanic, Berta Kunama, Koman, Gumuz, Kuliak. Eastern southern Sahara
originary area. At least 12 000 glotto-chronology. Hunter-gatherers; pastoralist and
agriculturist. .Various originary areas – Sudan – Mali with southwards Bantu extension.
Hunter-gatherers, agriculturalist and state societies.
History has given a false impression that Africa was isolated from the rest of the world.
In fact Africa borrowed from other continents for innovations in agriculture and material

19
technology. As early as the first millennium, long before Europeans began establishing
colonies, Africans were trading over the Indian Ocean with Arabia, India, Persia, and
China. They exported gold and other commodities across the Sahara Desert to Europe.
Europe and the Middle East were in contact with Africa, exchanging scholars and ideas.
And the rest of the world?
Pyramids 4500 years ago Maya pyramids 1500 years ago
Europe has no metal
Corn domesticated in Mexico
Great Zimbabwe 900-1450 AD/CE Dark ages in Europe
Zen Buddhism (c.1200)
Gunpowder in China (c.1150)
Slave trade 15th
– 19th
centuries Industrial Revolution 1760-1830
(1400s – 1800s) US Dec Independence 1776
Shaka Zulu rules 1816-1828
General
Use 6th
-grade black/white T-shirt, race example.
Alert class of need for final group project and to identify partners.
Punchy intro, summary conclusion.
Structure and methodical.
Superimpose USA onto Africa (page 19 of Bohannan and Curtin).
Use OHT of Africa on whiteboard and write onto it ecological zones etc.
R Kelley jungle-studio example.
`Hippopotamus’ = `river horse’ but more closely related to whale.
HIS 227 Ancient World History – Africa – Course Administration
Week 1
Before class
Locker 1: Office supplies and extra Admin forms and office supplies..
Locker 2: Our course; Instructions folder; Pre-release Academic Programme; and
Admin/paperwork.

20
In class
1. Trust account withdrawal forms : Students fill in name, CDC#, housing, signature,
number written on item, title and value of item.
2. Distribute notebooks, folders, pencils from Class Box. Chalk, dry erase markers
3. Attendance roster: Roll. Newbies - Add Form. Opt-outs - Drop Form. Feb 11 Deadline.
4. Pre-Release Academic Advising: On Thursday eves for all inmates. For studies after
parole – distribute Sign up sheet.
5. Friday tutorial 10:30-14:30 and 18:20-20:45 sign-up.
6. Introduce selves, outline course, give rules. Assignments – in writing - given by 18:45.
7. 18:45 Close B students leave.
After class
1.Attendance roster, Add/Drop form, Pre-Release Programme sign-up & Tutorial sign-up
to Jody/NicoleSign in sheets to Jody/Nicole Box.

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2. “The Past is a Foreign Country …” How is history made and
Africa represented?
28 & 30 January
Lesson aim
1. To introduce the histories, basic techniques, methods, assumptions and theoretical
orientations of anthropology, archaeology and history.
2. Discuss principles of stratigraphy, excavation, dating techniques, how to make a multi-
stranded argument.
Lesson method
1. 30 mins for map quiz on 28th
and 15 mins handback and review on 30th.
2. Examine the histories of anthropology, archaeology and history.
3. Consider the benefits and drawbacks of different evidence (artefactual, oral, written).
4. Take key sites like the Egyptian pyramids, Great Zimbabwe, a San rock painting
shelter, a European colonial settlement and examine how anthropology, archaeology
and history would investigate each site.
5. Author 411 – who is doing this writing?
Lesson resources
1. Pages 1-5 of Iliffe’s Africans: the history of a continent; Pages 1-11 of Phillipson’s
African archaeology; Introduction to David Lowenthal’s 1985. The past is a foreign
country; pages 17-45 of Bohannan and Curtin’s Africa and Africans Introduction to David
Lowenthal’s 1985. The past is a foreign country. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press; and introduction to Victor Mudimbe’s. 1994. The idea of Africa. Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press.
2. OHT visuals of sites, artefacts, archaeologists.
3. Glossary of commonly-used terms.
For next week
1. Assign pages 6-17 of Iliffe’s Africans – the history of a continent for next week.
2. Assign Curtin, Philip, D. 1974 [1964]. Precolonial African history. Washington, D.C.:
American Historical Association Pamphlets 501: 3-66 for next week.
3. Hand out questions for next week’s test (Test 1).
Notes
History
• `Started’ by Herodotus of Halicarnassas (then Greek, town ruled by Persians
now Bodrum, Turkey). Born approx 484 BC died 425 BC (explain BC and time).
• Prominent family and travelled widely in Mediterranean. Well-educated.
• Revolutionary and then moved Athens, where literary talents feted. But not a
citizen so moved to southern Italy in hope of attaining citizen’s rights.
• Works on his 9-volume `histories’ (inquiry’ in the Greek). Mostly about Persian-
Greek conflict. (links to Lowenthal’s uses/abuses of history).
• Cicero called him the `Father of History’; others called him the `Father of Lies’.

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• Query: Is history specific to Greek/Persians from 5th
century?
Methodology
Direct Historical Method – work from known – unknown; present to past. `Logos’. Source
materials – written sources prime (papyrus, stone, clay tablets – pre-cuneiform @ 5500
years ago; Heiroglyphs 3300 BC; Shang dynasty China @ 1700 BC – and maybe 8600
year-old bone symbols). What about maker’s marks? Andean string `documents’.
History, pre and proto-history. Need to cross-reference within and between texts and
with other data sources. Both direct and indirect source. Can use structures
(architecture) and some oral interviewing. Linking objects and documents (i.e. to
establish provenance). Importance of `close’ reading.
Strengths: Detailed. Emic. Authored. Familiar. Durable (?). Influential. Tells a good
story. Don’t have to go `there’ – can study from a distance.
Weaknesses: Bias. Pencil and pen of the conqueror and the vanquished. Words written
down from an oral tradition or long after an event. Big man and singular event history.
Partial recording. Different priorities. Different understanding of reality, myth, reliability.
Used as a marker for `civilisation’. Cultural ontogeny.
Anthropology
- four field tradition: archaeology (study of human cultures and societies of the past
through recovery and interpretation of the remains of material culture and their contexts),
linguistics (focus on language), biological (grounded in natural sciences and medicine;
human evolution, primatology, human genetics, human physical growth, human
ecology), cultural (contemporary human society, make sense of behaviors seen as
bizarre by outsiders, comparative method to avoid ethnocentrism; participant
observation; informants)
- Emic (insiders view; how people think, perceive their world and interpret their culture)
versus Etic (outsiders view; the ethnographer tries to objectively interpret cultural traits
with cross-cultural comparisons)
- Developed by university-trained anthropologists to succeed amateur interests
represented by the Bureau of American Ethnology, local ethnological and folklore
societies and museums
- began as historical inquiry
- Rousseau’s ‘Noble savage’ (1762): view of the savage as innocent and free
- Darwin’s Origin of the Species (1859)
- Savagery, barbarism, civilization
-BAE: gov’t. dept established in 1879 after it was argued that studying Native Americans
would make it easier to deal with them
- debate over whether the goal of American anthropology was explanation or
interpretation
- trends/phases
• 1) (1851-1889) ethnology practiced mainly by the Bureau of American
Ethnology: long periods of fieldwork among Native Americans, artifacts and texts

23
collected; believed that deteriorating demographic and material conditions on the
reservations necessitated a form of ‘salvage anthropology’ since the Indian way
of life was quickly disappearing
• 2) (1890-1940) academic anthropology established; concept of ‘culture’
articulated by Boas and developed by his students (Mead, Lowie, Kroeber,
Sapir), replacing the earlier emphasis on ‘society’; four-field approach developed
to reconstruct the disappearing Native American cultures (influenced by German
ethnology; Boasian period); influence of British social anthropology added
attention to kinship and social organization
• Boas attempted to distance themselves from evolutionary ideas;
ethnocentrism; detailed research into culture and variation between cultures;
realization that cultures are being studies in a historical context
• Lowie (Boas’s first PhD student) & Kroeber helped establish the Berkeley
anthro dept.; fieldwork among native California and Plains groups
• 3) (1940-1964) movement beyond science to a domination by ideas of
economics, sociology and political science; change in methodology: began to
study contemporary conditions on reservations, questioned generalizations by
sociologists and political scientists about United States society; expansion of
overseas fieldwork leading to questioning of tradition, modernization, continuity
and change; 50s and 60s influence of Francophone scholars; culture history,
cultural ecology
• 4) (1965) increased specialization and contestation of the interrelationship
among the four fields; development of new groups (ex. medical, urban, visual)
- post 1960: emergence of humankind (biological anthropology, archaeology, linguistics):
connections to tool-making and tool use, forms of social organization and language;
cultural transformation (archaeology, ethnohistory, ethnography): shifts in food
production, trade and growth of cities
-Wilmsen’s Land Filled with Flies (1989): key text in the four-field approach; used
archaeological, archival, linguistic, biological and ethnographic evidence to refute
analytically closed-system approaches of structuralists and cultural ecologists (view of
!Kung as a contemporary instance of remote way of life of hunter-gatherers); Wilmsen
found them to have had a long history of regional and transcontinental trade; entrenched
ideology in modern society perpetuated their dispossession and rural underclass status
- Africa
• early ethnography: classical Greek and Arab sources, European
navigators
• second half of 19th c: daily records of explorers, colonial administrators,
missionaries (uncritical, distorted by stereotyped prejudices)
• ex. Great Lakes kingdoms of Buganda, Rwanda and Burundi: efficient
bureaucracy impressed Europeans so much that they became seen as heirs of a
mythical empire founded by the Bacwezi, a superior race of ‘whitish’ immigrants
• “Curse of Central Africa” (1903, Captain Guy Burrows, district
commissioner in the Congo Free State) (p 212) “That the native thinks there is no
harm in cannibalism there can be no doubt. It comes as natural to him to eat the
flesh of a human being as it does to Europeans to eat beef or mutton; and he
certainly emphasizes the point that the flesh of man is superior to that of other

24
animals. He prefers that of the white man to the black, because Europeans are
accustomed to the habitual use of salt, which of course the native does not use.”
• Romantic fictions of Laurens van der Post in “The Lost World of the
Kalahari” (1958)
• intense study of Kalahari groups: thought that insights from contemporary
hunter-gatherer groups could help to develop models for the evolution of human
behavior, egalitarianism
• religion conceived as magic and condemned by missionaries as pagan
superstition; later approached in terms of cosmological ideas and philosophy
(est. in 1969 of a chair of African Religions and Philosophy at a university in
Uganda, John Mditi)
• recent focus on rituals leading to reinforced traditions, traditional medicine
(WHO)
• development of African Independent Churches: initially studied as a
reaction to racial discrimination, recent studies emphasize their ability to help
with African struggles to cope with a demanding urban environment
- sketchy roots (race, savagery/civilization) to study of the creation of these systems and
interest in the history of anthropology (American interest)
-Ethics in anthropology
• Do no harm
• An anthropologist has an ethical obligation to the people, animals and materials
he or she studies
• Must respect their safety, privacy and dignity
• Anthropologists are responsible for the integrity and reputation of their discipline
• They should do all they can to preserve opportunities for future field work
• They should share their findings with the scientific community
- Responsibility to the public
• Anthropologists should make their results available to sponsors, students and
other non-anthropologists
• They need to consider the social and political implications of their work
Archaeology
Archaeology is the study of the past.
Archaeo means old, and ology is loosely translated as "the study of".
Literally, archaeology is the study of old things.
And things are a major part of it. We, as archaeologists study, the things people made,
used, modified, and ultimately left behind. Most of what we find is the residue of daily
life. This is what we call material culture. These are usually mundane things like
pottery, not treasure. Indian Jones example.
Archaeology and its ties to Anthropology and History

25
Anthropology:
In North America, archaeology is usually taught in anthropology departments, and most
archaeologists would consider themselves anthropological archaeologists. Archaeology
after all, is the study of mankind, from its earliest manifestations onward.
As we talked about in the lecture on anthropology, archaeology is one of the four main
subdivisions of anthropology: Archaeology, socio-cultural, linguistic, and physical.
In this class, we will be looking closely at archaeology as well as physical anthropology
(which can be defined as the study of the human body, how it works and how it evolved).
Much of the physical anthropological evidence we will be looking at are those of those
pertaining to human evolution thousands, even millions of years ago. This part of
physical anthropology, often called paleo-anthropology, overlaps greatly with
archaeology, especially in terms of methods used by researchers. More on that later,
History: Both archaeology and history are interested in the past, but as we talked about,
history is its own discipline separate from archaeology.
Historians rely primarily on texts (remember Herodotus?), whereas archaeologists rely
primarily on material remains, such as stone tools, pottery, animal bones, and even
human skeletons.
Archaeologists also use texts and oral traditions where available (examples: colonial
stuff). In terms of Africa, we look at texts, oral traditions, linguistics, and ethnography, to
better understand ancient history. but in many cases, especially for ancient history,
physical evidence is all we have to go on.
Historical bias: focus on elites through most documents (colonial examples).
Archaeology has its own methodological problems, We'll get to that later…
Recently, many archaeologists looking at historical periods=> Historical Archaeology.
Problem with Prehistory/history divide. Africa example.
Archaeology also has close ties to classical studies (ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt),
geography, and many natural sciences. For this class, mostly looking at History,
Anthropology, and Archaeology, but some of the other things may come up as well.
First, a little history of archaeology:
Archaeology basically started from antiquarianism.
In Europe, this was fostered by a longstanding interest in the classical world.
For example, one of the earliest, and most famous archaeological digs was Heinrich
Schliemann's excavations in the 1870s of what he thought was Troy.
People initially excavated sites for objects to sell or to display in museums, though they
didn't always use controlled excavation techniques.
In the US, archaeology had its roots in a similar fascination with the remains of Native
American cultures. Parallel between the mound-builder myth and the great Zimbabwe.
Thomas Jefferson excavated an "Indian mound" in 1784.

26
As archaeology became more professional, around in the early part of the twentieth
century, people became interested in what is called "culture history". This was a project
intended to track the different cultures of the world through time and space.
After WWII, archaeology sought to understand the past scientifically. This meant not the
reconstruction or interpretation of the history of a specific people, but rather the use of
the archaeological record as laboratory in which we could test generalizing hypotheses
about all of humanity.
Underlying this was an evolutionary framework, in which cultures over time became
more complex. Such evolutionary thinking was implicit in a lot of earlier archaeology and
anthropology, but during the 1960s and 70s, it became mutated into different forms.
Tribes, bands, chiefdoms, states. Systems theory, etc (probably don't need to spend
much time on this).
Today, people are taking a more contextual approach. Less concerned with the ability to
generalize, and more engaged with descendant communities and the public at large.
The point is not for you to know the precise history of archaeology, but to see that the
field has changed dramatically over the last 100 years and that it is subject to more
change in the future. The schools we attend, the people we work with, and the theories
we hold about the way the world works, all play a role in how we interpret the past.
Archaeologists don't have a monopoly on the truth, we just act like we do.
The take home message is basically that the way we view the world today shapes the
way we view past worlds.
METHODOLOGY:
Archaeology isn't just digging, and even in cases when excavation does take place, it is
a pretty small component of the overall research project.
Research design.
The first thing that an archaeologist needs to do before starting a project is to come up
with a research design. Most archaeology is by nature destructive, and once you dig a
site, you can't undo it. So you need to think about what you're doing and why you are
doing it before you begin.
Survey.
This is the finding of sites. Sure, the pyramids, and the Great Zimbabwe are pretty easy
to find, but what about a temporary hunting camps that was used 10,000 years ago?
There are number of ways to find sites, and most people use a combination of the
following:
Interviews (avocational archs, property owners, residents, oral histories, etc).
Remote sensing (aerial photos, GPR, metal detector, etc).
Pedestrian survey, subsurface testing
Excavation:
Once you decide where to excavate, you need to decide what to excavate.

27
Most archaeologists usually excavate a sample of the site, rather than the whole thing.
Many times people do a random sample in the hopes that it will be representative of the
whole (maybe do an illustration).
But other times you may know that you want to excavate a particular part of a site. This
is called a non-random or judgmental sample.
Preservation:
Different types of materials last longer in the ground than others. Stone tools will last a
lot longer that plant remains. Especially true for wet climates or soils with high acidity.
Talk about what might preserve best in different African settings.
Also, terms like "stone age" leave out all sorts of other items people would've been using
that simply didn't last archaeologically…
Context
It is incredibly important that artifacts discovered in excavation can be interpreted
through their depositional context. So a lot of the information that we can get from an
artifact depends on where it was found. We use the word provenience to refer to the
location where an artifact was found. Here, recording is key. Lots of paperwork.
Stratigraphy (layers)
One of the most important things that archaeologists record about an artifact's context is
its stratigraphic provenience, ie where it was found underground. This is important for
interpretation and also for dating. Usually artifacts found nearer to the surface were
deposited more recently than those further underground. Illustration. Exceptions: pits,
disturbance, etc. Law of superposition.
DATING:
Archaeologists refer to relative and absolute dating.
The law of superposition is an example of relative dating. Illustration: artifact A is older
than artifact B.
Another example of relative dating is cross dating. Common in paleontological studies
(reference fossils). Site A is older than site B. But we don't know by how much.
Absolute dating: This means getting the precise date of the artifact or site, in terms of
calendrical dates. Also called chronometric dating.
14
C / Carbon-14 Method of dating organic remains through a radioactive carbon
isotope. Effective until about 40 000 years back. Carbon-14 has a half life of 5730 years.
Potassium Argon: used mostly for dating volcanic materials that go back between 1
and 5 million years. Used frequently in East Africa in paleoanthropological research.
Obsidian Hydration: This technique measures a thin layer of water that begins to
adhere to the surface of obsidian after it is first exposed to air (after it is flaked).
Dendrochronology: Based on tree rings, measurement and patterns of growth. Can go
back hundreds of years in arid regions, where old wood is well preserved (not used
much in Africa).

28
Glottochronology Determining the age of languages by comparing similarities and
differences between languages.
Other dating miscellaneous (from the Glossary):
BC AD Before Christ. Anno Domini - ìn the year of our Lord’. Makes the
year 0 the hypothetical birth of Christ. Christian-centric.
BCE CE Before the Common Era. Common Era. More neutral than BC and
AD.
BP `Before present’. `Present’ = 1950, after which atomic radiation
has major affect of 14
C readings.
c. / circa `c.’ is abbreviation for Latin àbout’. Christ was born c. 0
BOTTOM LINE:
Archaeology is the only way to know about the majority of world history, but it only offers
us a limited view into this history (preservation issues, primarily an etic view, etc.).
Miscellania
Iliffe’s harsh environment vs Philipson’s stable environment vs Bohannan & Curtin’s
`poor soils’.
Arc as a `direct’ source rather than ìndirect’ lingustics, oral histories, living societies.
First article on African archaeology Langham Dale’s 1869. On a collection of stone
implements from the Cape of Good Hope. xx
First African’s article – Ekpo Eyo’s 1974. xx. West African Journal of Archaeology.
First female African article – Alinah Segobye’s 1998 xx.
Origin of word Àfrica’
1. Our president once said, “ I am an Africa” which became the famous phrase used to
denote that someone is not ashamed of belonging to the continent “Africa”. I wonder, did
people ever ask themselves about the meaning and the origin of the word Africa?
Recent findings reveal that although the origin is uncertain but according to The
Crawfurd homepage there is credible connection of the word as originated from Latin
“Africa” which means sunny and even Greek word “Aphrike” which means not cold. The
two meanings are true of our continent and therefore may be true that the word is not
African. If this is true, then it becomes meaning less to cal, our continent Africa or even
our country South Africa. What then could we call South Africa, Azania? I suppose not
considering that even the origin of the word “Azania” maybe Greek or Arabic but not
“African”. Not to mention but a few other “African” countries whose names are of foreign
origin namely; Mozambique is Portuguese, Eritrea is Italian, Cameroon is Portuguese,
Ethiopia is Greek and the list is endless. http://blogspot.mg.co.za/?q=node/245

29
2. "Africa" is not an African word. The origin of the word is still a little uncertain, but it is
credible to see a connection from Latin (Africa = sunny) and Greek (Aphrike = not cold).
The Romans were the first to use the name. For them it covered Tunisia and the most
northern parts of Algeria and Libya. Egypt was already known territory, but further South
was unknown land. Around 2,000 years ago "Aethiopia" seems to have been used to
describe the land found south of Sahara, but Europeans later used "Africa" to describe
the entire continent. This is why we began to see Africa one land with only one kind of
people. Strangely enough it changed from the land of sunshine and warmth to "the dark
continent". The story is much more complex than that: a more fulfilling explanation can
be found in the excellent book "Wonders of the African World" by Dr. Henry Louis Gates,
Jr, which is also my source (see "shop now" box elsewhere on this page).
http://crawfurd.dk/africa/word.htm
3. Posted by muhammad abdullah <dawah_ma_90221@yahoo.com> on Wed, 25
Jun 2003, in response to Is there somebody who knows the origin of Alkebulan, posted
by kader on Wed, 18 Jun 2003 as-salamu-alaikum" " where does the word africa come
from?"-the origin of the word" africa"has been difficult to elucidatre.it became the
acepted term from roman times onwards in the form,' africa' re[lacing the originally greek
or egyptian word'libya',the land of the lebu or the lubins in genesis.from designating the
north african coast,the word ' africa' came to be applied to the whole continent from the
end of the first century before our era. but what was the original meaning of the
name?*the word ' africa' is thought to come from the name of a berber people who lived
to the south of carthage,the afarik or aourigha,whence afriga or africa to denote the land
of the afarik.*another derivation of the word africa is that it comes from two phoenician
terms,one of which means an ear of corn,a fertility symbol in that region,and the
other,pharika,means the land of fruit.*it is further suggested that the word comes from
the latin adjective aprica[sunny]or the greek aprike[free from cold].*another origin might
be the phoenician root faraq,which suggests the idea of separation or in other words
diaspora.it may be pointed out that the same root is to be found in some african
languages,for instance bambara.*in sanskrit and hindi the root apara or africa denotes
that which,in geographical terms,comes ' after,' in other words the west.africa is the
western continent.*an historical tradition subscribed to be leo africanus has it that a
yemenite chief named africus invaded north africa in the second millenium before our
era and founded a town called afrikyah.but it is more likely that the arabic term ifriqiya is
the arabic transliteration of the word' africa.'*one version even suggests that afer was a
grandson of abraham[ibrahim]pbuh and a companion of hercules.[from:general history of
africa[unesco]vol.1,general introduction by joseph ki zerbo,director of the vol.,p.21]insha-
Allah email my son to get sheikh muhammad sharef's email to add more insight to your
question.' askiya@hotmail.com-muhammad abdullah-p.o.box 338-compton,ca.90223
http://www.genealogyforum.rootsweb.com/messages/genbbs.cgi/AARA/1565
4a)The Afarak were a Berber people who lived south of Carthage.
b) The Latin word aprica means sunny, while the Greek aprike means “free from cold”.
c) In Sanskrit and Hindu, Apara or Africa means “in the West” (of India).
d) The Phoenician word Pharikia means “land of the fruit”.

30
e) In the second millennium BC, a chief named Africus invaded North Africa — and
founded a town called Afrikya.
http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=3057
Glossary
(add words that are new to you and look up their meanings)
14
C / Carbon-14 Method of dating organic remains through a radioactive carbon
isotope. Effective until about 40 000 years back.
Absolute dating Calendric dates – getting the precise age of an artifact or site.
Relative dating Dating artifacts/sites relative to other artifacts/sites. Older than or
younger than.
Africa Uncertain origin. Possibilities include:
a) The Latin word aprica meaning `sunny’
b) The Greek aprike meaning `free from cold’.
c) Sanskrit and Hindu, Apara/Africa means ìn the West’ (of India).
d) The Phoenician word Pharikia meaning `land of the fruit’.
e) In the second millennium BC, a chief named Africus invaded
North Africa — and founded a town called Afrikya.
Analogy Similarity between two things. A heart is like a mechanical pump.
Anthropology Study of the origins of and relationships between human beings.
Derived from Latin Ànthropos’ for `human/people’ and Greek
`logos’ - `study’ of’.
Archaeology The study of material culture, especially of prehistoric people and
places.
Artifact A human-made object, usually old. Similar to `material culture’.
BC AD Before Christ. Anno Domini - ìn the year of our Lord’. Makes the
year 0 the hypothetical birth of Christ. Christian-centric.
BCE CE Before the Common Era. Common Era. More neutral than BC and
AD.
BP `Before present’. `Present’ = 1950, after which atomic radiation
has major affect of 14
C readings.
c. / circa `c.’ is abbreviation for Latin àbout’. Christ was born c. 0
Demography The distribution of people and resources across a landscape.
Ethnography In-depth, qualitative social research.
Geology The history of the earth as recorded in rocks.
Glottochronology Determining the age of languages by comparing similarities and
differences between languages.
History All events from the past, leading to the present.
Holocene The last 10 000 years.
Iron Age Period when people made tools and artifacts from iron. Usually
the last few thousand years.
Lithic Stone, anything made of stone, like stone tools.
Material culture Objects that people make. Can be ancient or modern.
Prehistory Period before written history.
Palaeontology The study of non-human fossils.
Radiocarbon Same as 14
C and carbon-14.
Site A place where human activity has occurred. Usually marked by
artifacts.
Stone Age Period when people used stone for tools. Did not work iron.

31
Superpositioning Principle that states that lower layers are older than layers on top
of them.
Stratigraphy Layers of material on top of or underneath each other.
Africa Map Quiz (25 minutes)
Name:……………………………………………………………………………….
On the blank Africa outline map in front of you, please correctly fill in the following:
Countries (fill in 10 of the 15 listed options – 1 point for each correct answer)
Botswana Egypt Ethiopia
Democratic Republic of Congo Ghana Kenya
Liberia Libya Madagascar
Morocco Senegal South Africa
Sudan Tanzania Zimbabwe
Capital cities (fill in 5 of the 10 listed options – 1 point for each correct answer)
Addis Ababa Antananarivo Cairo
Dakar Gaborone Khartoum
Kinshasa Luanda Lusaka
Tunis
Physical features (fill in 5 of the 10 listed options – 1 point for each correct answer)
Atlantic Ocean Drakensberg Equator
Great Rift Valley Indian Ocean Kilimanjaro
North Tropic of Cancer Tropic of Capricorn
Red Sea
Bonus section (1 point for each correct answer)

32
Atlas mountains Chad Lake Victoria
Sahara Windhoek Yamoussoukro
Week 2a
Before class
Admin/paperwork.
In class
1. Take roll and pass sign-in sheet around. Add/drop/registration. Collect and mark off
writing assignments. Week 1 feedback (Baobabs and Tarzan Lord of the `Apes’).
2. Hand out map quiz and blank map. 25 mins quiz. Collect maps (not question sheets).
Show OHT of next week’s test. Stress NB of good notes. Introduce glossary.
3. 15-25 mins on `History’ – history and methodology. Intro via last few lines of Iliffe and
title of talk. Link to Lowenthal and Mudimbe readings. `Africa’ `history’, `material culture’,
and `demography’ Copy names to make mark sheet.
4. 18:45 Close B students leave & break.
5. Questions and video – Gates.
6. Pack up and go.
After class
1.Attendance roster, Add/Drop form, Pre-Release Programme sign-up & Tutorial sign-up
to Jody/Nicole Sign in sheets to Jody/Nicole Box.
2. Mark quizzes and photocopy maps.
3. Make master class marking sheet.
Week 2b
Before class
Admin/paperwork.
In class
1. Take roll, hand back map quizzes. Explain marking, common mistakes, strengths etc.
Feedback from Friday class (Gilgamesh – perhaps world’s oldest recorded story - 12
clay tablets in cunieform about King of Uruk’s (Iraq) adventures circa 2750 and 2500
BCE)., Ptolemy I one of Alexander’s [56 to 323 B.C.] generals Macedonian family that
ruled Egypt during the Hellenistic period, from the death of Alexander the Great in 323
bc until Egypt became a Roman province in 30 BC. Alexandria capital and last Queen
Cleopatra. 1st
African PhD, Edward A. Bouchet first African-American PhD in Physics at
Yale in 1876. In Africa – `Kaptein’ from xx? Who studied at Leiden in ?1600s and wrote

33
how Christianity and slavery were compatible for his dissertation. `Pygmy’ singer: – Zap
Mama formed in the early ’90s as an all-female, a cappella group fronted by African
native Marie Daulne – Belgian father and Zaireois mother. Father killed in independence
c. 1960 riots and Pygmies sheltered mother, who bore child in forest. Herodotus as
`father of history’ perhaps appropriate in European context but not Africa – text vs
orality). Leave OHT of next week’s test up.
2. 20-25 mins on Ànthropology’ and Àrchaeology’ – history and methodology. Cover
origins of words Ànthropology’ and àrchaeology’ and èthnography’ and `bp’. Strengths
and failings.
4. Questions and video – Gates.
5. Pack up and go.
After class
1. Attendance roster, Add/Drop form, Pre-Release Programme sign-up & Tutorial sign-
up to Jody/Nicole Sign in sheets to Jody/Nicole Box.

34
3. “The Past is a Foreign Country …” How is history made and
Africa represented?
4 & 6 February
Lesson aim
1. To introduce the histories, basic techniques, methods, assumptions and theoretical
orientations of anthropological, archaeological and historical enquiry.
2. To suggest the relative merits of different ways of representing Africa and its 3 million
year human history.
Lesson method
1. 30 mins to write Test 1 on 4th
and 30 mins handback and review on 11thth
.
3. Examine common assumptions of Africa and its history and examine their factual
basis and believability. Examples like `The Lost Tribe of Israel’; the position of Egypt in
Africa, the notion of Africa as a `natural’ rather than `cultural’ place. .
4. Allow 20-30 mins for group work.
Lesson resources
1. Pages 6-17 of Iliffe’s Africans – the history of a continent and Curtin, Philip, D. 1974
[1964]. Precolonial African history. Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association
Pamphlets 501: 3-66.
2. OHT visuals of sites, artefacts, archaeologists.
For next week
1. Assign pages 12-59 of Phillipson’s African archaeology
2. Assign pages 1-19 of Connah’s Forgotten Africa.
3. Hand out writing assignment for next week (Writing Assignment 1).
Notes
Grading comments
Good
1. Writing, spelling and grammar are good. Notion of `adult student’ – we all are so
forget the inferiority complex.
2. Almost everyone followed the 1-page instruction
Bad
1. Question is framed in present tense –p most essays dealt with past. OK to set up
argument of present but must be less than 50%.
2. Limited sources used. Have course materials and a library. Minimum of two sources.
3. Lack of attribution to sources. Where did you get the info exactly.

35
4. Lot of rhetoric, but what do you mean? `Colonialism’? “This encouraged the theory
that Africa’s first anatomically modern men were the ancestors of all human beings,
expanding from their country to colonise the rest of the world and supplant other strains
such as the Neanderthals” Source: page 17 of Iliffe, John. 1995. Africans the history of a
continent. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (emphasis added). What is meant is
European colonialism c. 1880-1960.
5. Absolutism – context is key. Seldom is anything `right’ or `wrong’ – “… older history
showed only part of the truth” (Curtin 1974:3). Implies even the `old’ had some `truth’
and was partly `right’. Similarly, is there one, knowable truth? Also page 8 on importance
of old sources. 1/8 vs 6% Curtin 1974:4. Curtin page 51 – moralistics aside – how did it
all work and why? Page 52 and 5% of African slaves to US. Page 65 – constant
vigilance
Tips
1. Use the `Eskimo Principle’ – assume you are writing for an audience that has NO idea
of you subject. Explain basics, link concepts, use specific, illustrative examples.
Time
The earth’s history in 1 year
January 1st
- end February: Earth forms (4.5 billion years ago).
March 25th
(before sunrise): Simple life begins.
November: Multicellular animals appear. Land plants 5 pm Nov. 26th
December 13th
: Dinosaurs appear (120-65 million years). Die after 13 days.
97% of earth’s history already past. Gondwana and
Laurasia start separating from Pangaea.
December 20th
: Earth looks as it does today.
December 31st
, 7 pm: Human ancestors appear (2.5 million years)
December 31st
11:49 pm Homo sapiens appear (100 000 years)
December 31st
11:59 pm: Agriculture, cities and writing develop.
December 31st
11:59, 58 Industrial revolution (c. 1860 AD/CE)
Your lifetime? About 0.5 seconds

36
If 4.5 billion years is represented as 4.5 miles:
Last 0.57 miles: Life appears
0.25 miles – 77.5 feet: Dinosaurs appear
5.25 feet: Human ancestors appear
1.5 inches: Homo sapiens.
3/10,000 of an inch: Your life
John Mc Phee's time exercise: "With your arms spread to represent all time on earth,
look at one hand. The Cambrian begins in the wrist. The Permian is the outer palm. The
Cenozoic is a fingerprint. A single stroke with a nail file would eradicate human history.."
Week 3 Test 1 (25 minutes – 20 points)
Longer answers (3 points each)
1. Are old historic documents reliable? Why? Why not? Are modern historic documents
reliable? Why? Why not? 3 points
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
2. Imagine you are a Social Anthropologist from Stanford going to study the Masaai in
Kenya. What techniques would you use to get information? Which of these techniques
would be `etic’ and which would be `emic’? 3 points
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
3. Why might "ancient history" be a better term than "prehistory" for the study of past
African societies? 3 points

37
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Short answers (1 point each)
4. List one possible origin of the word `Africa’ and what it means 1 point
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
5. Who was Herodotus? (say more than he was `the father of history’) 1 point
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
6. According to Iliffe (Chap 2), how many African language families are there? (Not how
many individual languages, but how many broader language families) 1 point
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
7. What is `demography’ 1 point
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
8. According to Philip Curtin, what percentage of African slaves were brought to the
USA? (Hint: it is less than you think) 1 point
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
9. What does `Anthropology’ mean? 1 point
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
10. Name three sources of bias that can influence an ethnography? 1 point
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
11. Which of the following types of evidence are used by archaeologists to understand
the past? Circle one correct answer.
a) written texts b) oral traditions c) linguistics d) all of the above 1 point

38
12. True or False – Normally, archaeological materials nearest to the surface are
younger) than materials found further underground. 1 point
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
13. Many objects used in the past are not found in archaeological sites because they
deteriorate over time. Which archaeological materials do you think are best preserved in
African sites? Circle one correct answer.
a) wood implements b) skeletons c) stone tools d) food remains 1 point
14. What is the difference between an `emic’ and an `etic’ perspective? 1 point
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Bonus section (each 1 point)
15. Name the principle that states layers underneath are older than layers on top.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
16. Name three archaeological dating techniques.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
17. What are the approximate date ranges for a) the slave trade and b) colonialism?
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Week 3a
Before class
Locker 2: Our course; Instructions folder; Pre-release Academic Programme and Admin.
In class
1. Check out Library. Get Lee copy of Iliffe. Ask about Superbowl TV coverage.
2. Take roll, mention 11th
drop/add date. Sign in sheet.
3. Give instructions for test (no talking, no books, budget time etc). 25 mins test. At end
take papers from each individual list and mark off on roll sheet.
4. Hand back essays and discuss the good, bad and room for improvement.
5. Discuss test briefly – page 17 Iliffe on preservation and Curtin page 14.
6. Feedback – First African PhD pending – refer to pages 9-13 of Curtin. Oral histories –
David to address on Sunday.
7. Talk about time, concepts of past-present-future and the relativeness and
absoluteness of dating. Page 8 on multiple sources and page 15 on methods quote.

39
Page 20 on history/prehistory. Page 24 colonial period and p 44 slave trade. Page 38 on
history and elite. Page 43 on tribe. Page 50 on microcosm/macrocosm.
9. Questions and video – Gates’ Wonders of the African World.
7. Pack up and go.
After class
1. Mark and photocopy test.
2. Feedback to Jody/Nicole on writing skills.
Week 3b
No Class because of Superbowl (decided class vote 24 for Superbowl and 4 for
Class)

40
11 & 13 February
Lesson aim
1. Investigate the basic human question – where do we come from?
2. Do we have to choose between Creationism and Evolution?
Lesson method
1. Hand out Writing Assignment 2 on 11th
and review on 18th
.
2. Outline evidence for Creationism and Evolution; their assumptions and contexts.
3. Provide an evolutionary overview of the basic human ancestors and humans.
4. Introduce the `Out of Africa’ vs `Multi-regionalism’ debate of human origins and lay out
the evidence for each. Do the same for `African Eve’. The Piltdown forgery is a good
example of Europe mis-representing Africa’s place in human evolution.
Lesson resources
1. Pages 12-59 of Phillipson’s African archaeology & pages 1-19 of Connah’s Forgotten
Africa.
2. OHT visuals of sites and artifacts.
3. Video clips from Coincidence in Paradise and Num Tchai videos.
For next week
1. Assign pages 1-13 of Shillington’s History of Africa.
2. Assign pages 49-61 of Bohannan and Curtin’s Africa and Africans.
3. Assign pages 27-38 of Connah’s Forgotten Africa.
4. Assign Ouzman, Sven. 2002. Render unto Africans what is rightly ours. The Sunday
Independent, July 14:9.
5. Hand out questions for next week’s test (Test 2).
Notes
Cheat sheet of human ancestors.
Geological and ecological examples will work well.
Lovejoy’s Great Chain of Being.
Di Leonardo’s `circle of we’.
AK47 and Botlano Fela (Thamaga Hill, Botswana)
- Bantu-speaking agropastoralist migration ~1500-1000 years ago, material culture
in advance of contact, ethnohistories discussion of relationships, missionaries
- survey to locate hunter-gatherer sites, evidence of contact, everyone says that
they never lived here or left long ago for Moshaweng
- sites on Thamaga hill

41
- test excavation at Botlano Fela: stone walls, burial (chief Thamaga), midden,
strata, superposition and features
- cow verts (use of comparative collections, age, sex, species), ceremonial
slaughtering?, culinary processing (not mokoto)
- AK47 occupation: proximity to Botlano Fela, c-14 date 600 BP +/- 100 (1250-
1450 CE), ceramics ~850 BP (~1100 CE) from Moritshane
- Agropastoralist ceramics, OES beads (manufacture, ethnography), glass/metal
beads, trade networks
- Petrography, ceramic styles/uses, lipid analyses, seeds, metal composition
- collecting oral traditions (explain difference from oral histories), understanding of
contemporary racism
- who lived in Thamaga? (hard to nail down) hiding during WWII, BaPene,
Bathlaope, Bakgalagadi (‘they came from far away’; non-Swana-speaking Bantu
language), Radiepelwang (‘what are they digging for’; “the greatest healer”
stayed to continue healing when his family moved away)
- Bakgatla ba mananna (vervet and thamaga cow; connection to other grops of
Bakgatla), settled Thamaga in 1924 for the second time; previous movement
near Kanye, then Moshupa; dominated by Bakwena
* no one line of evidence is enough
The Great Zimbabwe as a case study for the importance of scientific
methodology
Background
In southeastern Africa, there are several hundred stone-walled sites that are generally
referred to as zimbabwes, which means "stone building" in the Shona language. (There
are 250 in Zimbabwe alone—others in Botswana, Mozambique, and the Northern
Province of South Africa). The Great Zimbabwe is the largest of these sites, and is the
largest pre-colonial monument south of the Pyramids. We will get to the details of the
Great Zimbabwe and its role in the ancient history of the region in a few weeks, but for
now, it is enough to know that it was built by the ancestors of the Shona, a Bantu-
speaking people, and that the site was at its peak between 1200 and 1500 A.D. There
are 100 acres enclosed by the stone walls of the Great Zimbabwe. These walls reach as
high as 32 feet, and were all built without the use of mortar. As you may already know,
colonial settlers appropriated the Great Zimbabwe and created long-standing myths
about the site's origins in order to justify their plundering of the site and the colonial
occupation in general. In keeping with the theme of methodology, we're going to talk
about how history, anthropology, archaeology each helped to counter these colonial
myths about the Great Zimbabwe and illuminate its actual role in African ancient history.
The creation of the colonial myths (Following Hall [1995])
There is a common thread to many early European myths about ancient monuments in
Africa and the New World (ie, the Americas). Generally, there is a basic three-part
structure that revolves around an early civilization, its destruction by savage (preferably
dark skinned) hordes, and its rediscovery by noble Europeans. Often such myths are

42
used to justify the destruction of native inhabitants and the colonization of their land. In
the US, this type of myth is best exemplified by the myth of the mound builders. When
American settlers moved into the Southeast and Midwest, they found huge earthen
mounds. Rather than see these structures as monuments constructed by Native
Americans, Anglo-Americans concocted stories that such mounds were evidence that
the lost tribes of Israel had wandered to the Americas only to be wiped out by the
uncivilized and savage American Indians. Thomas Jefferson even excavated a so-called
Indian Mound to learn more about this apparently mysterious phenomenon, and the
mounds were not properly attributed to Native Americans until the late 19th century with
the advent of modern archaeological techniques. In Africa, like the Americas, Europeans
sought out the treasures of "lost civilizations," and the Great Zimbabwe assumed an
important role in the myths created by European colonists. In the 16th century,
Portuguese merchants became the first Europeans to hear of the Great Zimbabwe.
Although never laid eyes upon the ruins, the rumors that they heard impressed them.
One chronicler, João de Barros, thought the Great Zimbabwe must have been Axuma,
one of the cities of the Queen of Sheba. Other Portuguese associated the Great
Zimbabwe with the gold trade of southern Africa and proposed that the ruins represented
Ophir, a biblical region that produced gold for King Solomon and was ruled by the queen
of Sheba. The bible isn't clear on the location of Ophir (it says only that it took three
years to sail there from Jerusalem). So in 1871 a German explorer named Carl Mauch
came to southern Africa, in full Indiana Jones style, to find the ruins of Ophir. There he
stumbled upon the ruins of the Great Zimbabwe. Wood that he found in the ruins
apparently looked and smelled like the wood of his pencil, which was cedar from
Lebanon. Mauch thus concluded the wood must have been brought to the site by the
Phoenicians and that the great ruins must have been built by the Queen of Sheba. Just
two years later, in 1873, a map was made that placed the Great Zimbabwe in the "Realm
of Queen of Sheba," The myth was further perpetuated in the novel King Solomon's
Mines by Henry Rider Haggard. Through these works, the myth of the Great Zimbabwe
as the ruins of a lost civilization took hold, and the image of Africa as a dark and savage
place became entrenched in the minds of Europeans, underscoring the moral virtue of
colonialism. These ideas fit perfectly with Cecil Rhodes, who led the British colonial
enterprise in the region. In 1890 his company was in control of the region, and he was
eager to legitimate his rule. Accordingly, he sponsored the first archaeological dig of the
Great Zimbabwe, which was conducted by the Royal Geographic Society and the British
Association for the Advancement of Science, under the leadership of Theodore Bent,
who was an expert on the Phoenicians (Rhodes was trying to build up the Phoenician
connection). While Bent dismissed the connection between the Great Zimbabwe and
Sheba/Solomon, he nonetheless supported the idea that the site had been built by Arab
gold miners. This version differed only in the details from the standard European myth.
By the early 1900s, it was apparent that the so-called archaeologists that had
investigated the site were simply plundering the Great Zimbabwe. Most of the
archaeological deposits had been destroyed in an unsuccessful attempt to prove the
"white" origins of the site. Eventually the colonial authorities recognized the damage that
was being done, and eventually the archaeological work did improve (David Randall-
MacIver in 1900s and Gurtrude Caton-Thompson in 1920s). As early as 1906 reports
were published that attributed the Great Zimbabwe to local (ie African) origins, but these
findings were intolerable for the white settlers of the region, many of whom continued to
question the origin of the Great Zimbabwe. In the 1960s, the Great Zimbabwe became
the symbol of the African nationalist movement, and the white government of Rhodesia
tried to re-popularize the myth about the Great Zimbabwe's foreign origin. One
archaeologist, Peter Garlake, was even forced to leave the country. Today, however,

43
Rhodesia no longer exists, and the nation of Zimbabwe has majority rule and is free to
write the history of the Great Zimbabwe without the burden of colonial ideology.
So how are we to unravel the real story of the Great Zimbabwe?
Archaeology:
Some of the most important evidence that scholars have used to refute the colonial
myths about the Great Zimbabwe has come from archaeology. Although the early
explorers destroyed a large portion of the archaeological deposits associated with the
ruins, their finds as well as later work can be used to show the African origins of the site.
First and foremost is the overwhelming number of artifacts recovered from the site that
are made from local resources in distinctly African ways. Indeed, the types of houses,
iron implements, pottery, and weaving tools are all similar to those found at other
Zimbabwe sites in the region, and additionally bear resemblance to the types of artifacts
used by the Shona when the Portuguese arrived in the 16th Century. These artifacts
were also similar to the material culture of the local Karanga, a Shona group who was
living near the site during the first excavations.Yet some of the items found at the site
were of foreign origin. Although colonists argued that such finds proved that the site was
not constructed by Africans, the evidence indicates that most of the foreign items came
to the coast of eastern Africa by way of Arab and Asian traders during the height of the
Great Zimbabwe. These items include 13th century Chinese ceramics, a 14th century
Persian bowl, and thousands of tiny glass beads manufactured in India. A good example
of relative dating. Radiocarbon dates also helped to show that the Great Zimbabwe was
constructed much more recently than the time of the Queen of Sheba and King
Solomon. In 1952, Libby, the originator of radiocarbon dating, conducted some of the
first ever radiocarbon dates on wood used in the construction of the Great Zimbabwe.
These dates, however, were wrong. They were apparently taken from Tambooti wood,
which can survive up to 500 years, and gave a date of about 600 AD. Later attempts to
date the Great Zimbabwe have shown that it was constructed somewhat later around
1200AD, and that the site was probably occupied for about 300 years or until around
1500 AD.
Anthropology
Although archaeology can counter some of the myths surrounding the Great Zimbabwe,
particularly those regarding when it was built and by whom, scholars have also looked to
anthropology to add more details. Archaeological evidence clearly shows that the Great
Zimbabwe was built by Africans, but by which group? The oral traditions collected from
the Shona have helped to convince scholars that it was the ancestors of this group, the
Shona, who built the Great Zimbabwe. Recently, scholars studying the Great Zimbabwe,
have also used ethnographic analogy to understand the function and meaning of various
portions of the site. Here, they have looked at practices that were recorded among local
people by anthropologists and then looked for similarities in the architecture and
archaeological record of the Great Zimbabwe. For example, Thomas Huffman uses
modern Venda initiation schools for girls to interpret certain buildings which he suggests
were used to instruct the daughters of the ruling families at the Great Zimbabwe.
Huffman also uses Shona ethnography to understand the different roles of men and
women, as well as to demonstrate the relationship between heaven and earth (but see
Beach 1998 for a criticism of Huffman's work at the site). Peter Garlake, the definitive
authority on the Great Zimbabwe, uses ethnographic observations on the connection
between rulers and spirit mediums to understand various aspects of the spatial layout at
the site (the ruler lived in the Great Enclosure, which signified status, while the spirit

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