This volume provides new insights into the distinctive contributions that community archaeology and heritage make to the decolonization of archaeological practice. Using innovative approaches, the contributors explore important initiatives which have protected and revitalized local heritage, initiatives that involved archaeologists as co-producers rather than leaders. These case studies underline the need completely reshape archaeological practice, engaging local and indigenous communities in regular dialogue and recognizing their distinctive needs, in order to break away from the top-down power relationships that have previously characterized archaeology in Africa. Community Archaeology and Heritage in Africa reflects a determined effort to change how archaeology is taught to future generations. Through community-based participatory approaches, archaeologists and heritage professionals can benefit from shared resources and local knowledge; and by sharing decision-making with members of local communities, archaeological inquiry can enhance their way of life, ameliorate their human rights concerns, and meet their daily needs to build better futures. Exchanging traditional power structures for research design and implementation, the examples outlined in this volume demonstrate the discipline’s exciting capacity to move forward to achieve its potential as a broader, more accessible, and more inclusive field.

This volume provides a powerful alternative to the Western paradigms that have governed archaeological inquiry and heritage studies in Africa. Community-based Heritage Research in Africa boldly shifts focus away from top-down community engagements, usually instigated by elite academic and heritage institutions, to examine locally initiated projects. Schmidt explores how and why local research initiatives, which are often motivated by rapid culture change caused by globalization, arose among the Haya people of western Tanzania. In particular, the trauma of HIV/AIDS resulted in the loss of elders who had performed oral traditions and rituals at sacred places, the two most recognized forms of heritage among the Haya as well as distinct alternatives to the authorized heritage discourse favored around the globe. Examining three local initiatives, Schmidt draws on his experience as an anthropologist invited to collaborate and co-produce with the Haya to provide a poignant rendering of the successes, conflicts, and failures that punctuated their participatory community research efforts. This frank appraisal privileges local voices and focuses attention on the unique and important contributions that such projects can make to the preservation of regional history. Through this blend of personalized narrative and analytical examination, the book provides fresh insights into African archaeology and heritage studies.

This volume provides new insights into the distinctive contributions that community archaeology and heritage make to the decolonization of archaeological practice. Using innovative approaches, the contributors explore important initiatives which have protected and revitalized local heritage, initiatives that involved archaeologists as co-producers rather than leaders. These case studies underline the need completely reshape archaeological practice, engaging local and indigenous communities in regular dialogue and recognizing their distinctive needs, in order to break away from the top-down power relationships that have previously characterized archaeology in Africa. Community Archaeology and Heritage in Africa reflects a determined effort to change how archaeology is taught to future generations. Through community-based participatory approaches, archaeologists and heritage professionals can benefit from shared resources and local knowledge; and by sharing decision-making with members of local communities, archaeological inquiry can enhance their way of life, ameliorate their human rights concerns, and meet their daily needs to build better futures. Exchanging traditional power structures for research design and implementation, the examples outlined in this volume demonstrate the discipline’s exciting capacity to move forward to achieve its potential as a broader, more accessible, and more inclusive field.

Community Archaeology and Heritage in Africa provides new insights into the distinctive contributions that community archaeology makes to the decolonization of archaeological practice. Using innovative approaches, contributors share important initiatives taken by communities to protect and revitalize their heritage, initiatives that involve archaeologists as co-producers and not as leaders. Giving up traditional power over research design and implementation, these African examples demonstrate an exciting capacity to move the discipline forward to achieve its potential as a broader, more accessible, and more inclusive discipline.

This book traces the development of 'community archaeology', identifying both its advantages and disadvantages by describing how and why tensions have arisen between archaeological and community understandings of the past. The focus of this book is the conceptual disjunction between heritage and data and the problems this poses for both archaeologists and communities in communicating and engaging with each other. In order to explain the extent of the miscommunication that can occur, the authors examine the ways in which a range of community groups, including communities of expertise, define and negotiate memory and identity. Importantly, they explore the ways in which these expressions are used, or are taken up, in struggles over cultural recognition - and ultimately, the practical, ethical, political and theoretical implications this has for archaeologists engaging in community work. Finally, they argue that there are very real advantages for archaeological research, theory and practice to be gained from engaging with communities.

For a long time, resource conservationists have viewed environmental conservation as synonymous with wilderness and wildlife resources only, oblivious to the contributions made by cultural and heritage resources. However, cultural heritage resources in many parts of the developing world are gradually becoming key in social (e.g. communities’ identities and museums), economic (heritage tourism and eco-tourism), educational (curriculum development), civic (intergenerational awareness), and international resources management (e.g. UNESCO). In universities, African cultural heritage resources are facing a challenge of being brought into various academic discourses and syllabi in a rather reactive and/or haphazard approach, resulting in failure to fully address and research these resources’ conservation needs to ensure that their use in multiple platforms and by various stakeholders is sustainable. This book seeks to place African cultural heritage studies and conservation practices within an international and modern world discourse of conservation by presenting its varied themes and topics that are important for the development of the wider field of cultural heritage studies and management.

Africa has the longest and arguably the most diverse archaeological record of any of the continents. It is where the human lineage first evolved and from where Homo sapiens spread across the rest of the world. Later, it witnessed novel experiments in food-production and unique trajectories to urbanism and the organisation of large communities that were not always structured along strictly hierarchical lines. Millennia of engagement with societies in other parts of the world confirm Africa's active participation in the construction of the modern world, while the richness of its history, ethnography, and linguistics provide unusually powerful opportunities for constructing interdisciplinary narratives of Africa's past. This Handbook provides a comprehensive and up-to-date synthesis of African archaeology, covering the entirety of the continent's past from the beginnings of human evolution to the archaeological legacy of European colonialism. As well as covering almost all periods and regions of the continent, it includes a mixture of key methodological and theoretical issues and debates, and situates the subject's contemporary practice within the discipline's history and the infrastructural challenges now facing its practitioners. Bringing together essays on all these themes from over seventy contributors, many of them living and working in Africa, it offers a highly accessible, contemporary account of the subject for use by scholars and students of not only archaeology, but also history, anthropology, and other disciplines.