Retelling the past

There is a growing tendency to discount knowledge about the past, with archaeology and historicized ways of thinking seen as an unaffordable luxury irrelevant to an African future. At the same time, historical narratives and knowledge play an ever more potent role in discussions about national cohesion, and in debates and litigation over land rights, citizenship and the politics of culture and heritage. Opportunity also comes from wider debates over the nature of scholarship and decolonisation of knowledge. Challenge and opportunity are linked, and the past – whether deep, or recent – must be revisited and retold from new perspectives. Archaeology, ethnography, anthropology, history and a host of complementary disciplines can be used to retell the past.

Changing environments

Climate change, bio-diversity loss, urbanisation, large infrastructure projects and technological innovations all impact the environments in which people live in ways that are having, and have long had, profound demographic, socioeconomic, cultural and political effects. It is critical that these changes – including their histories, their varied and complex impacts, the challenges and opportunities that they throw up, how these changes are conceptualised, negotiated, understood and represented, and the varied responses of governments, ordinary citizens and other stakeholders (including cultural actors) – are studied so as to better understand the past, present and possible futures.

Urban lives

Often seen simply as problematic, urbanisation is also a driver of creativity and innovation – from music-making and art to political mobilisation and mobile banking. This theme encourages research that explores and questions peoples’ imaginations, negotiations and everyday realities of urban life today and/or in the past.

Technologies of politics

Africa’s ‘digital revolution’ creates new realities, and provokes fresh thinking, on how power is mobilised, organised and exercised. Social movements, street protests, democratic elections, state authority and economic innovation are enabled and constrained in different ways as communication technologies, new and old, are innovated, imported, adapted and controlled. The BIEA brings its commitment to empirically grounded and multi-disciplinary local scholarship to promote research that builds worldclass knowledge on the digital age in and from the region.

Next generations

Across the region the idea of who constitutes the youth commonly extends to people in their 30s. This theme looks at the lived experiences, concerns, identities and strategies of the current youth, as well as at the changing and possible educational, socio-economic, employment, cultural, political, and environmental contexts which will help to shape the lives of future generations.

Epidemics, pandemics and epizootics

COVID-19 and varied government responses, popular responses and narratives, and cultural, socio-economic, and political impacts, have provided a stark reminder of how diseases help to make history, but also how they help to bring various social relations and realities into the spotlight. This theme encourages research that looks at both of these aspects – namely, on the impacts of, and insights provided by, disease – in the context of COVID-19 or earlier epidemics, pandemics and epizootics in the region.

Kushite iron production, Sudan
This large research project focuses on the ancient iron production technologies of the Kingdom of Kush. Since 2012 Jane has led a team excavating at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Royal City of Meroe in Sudan, and collaborated with teams working at other Kushite iron production locations. To investigate the large-scale remains of ancient technological practice she employs a combination of archaeological and archaeometallurgical methods, including experimental archaeology, to understand the technological nature, socio-cultural role and politico-economic impact of ancient technologies and technologists during this key period of Sudan’s history. Having revealed particularly early dates for iron production at Meroe, the research also considers the origins of ferrous technology in Africa.
Jane and her team have developed a comprehensive and diverse programme of community engagement and capacity building activities in Sudan, as well as site management strategies and an open air, bi- lingual information point.

 

Recent publications:

2021 Humphris, J. Iron production at Meroe. In G. Emberling, & B. B. Williams (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, DOI:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190496272.013.47

2021 Humphris, J., Emberling, G. & and Bradshaw, R. Archaeological Practice in the 21st Century.
Reflecting on Archaeologist-Community Relationships in Sudan’s Nile Valley. In G. Emberling, & B. B. Williams (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190496272.013.57

2020 Humphris, J. Is the archaeometallurgical record a valuable tool when considering Meroe within a Trans-Saharan landscape? In C. Duckworth, A. Cuénod, & D. Mattingly (Eds.), Mobile Technologies in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond (Trans-Saharan Archaeology, 259-289). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, DOI:10.1017/9781108908047.009

2020 Ting, C. & Humphris, J. Pottery Production in Ancient Sudan: A Case Study of the Pottery from the Slag Heaps of Meroe and Hamadab. In A. K. Hodgkinson & C. L. Tvetmarken (Eds.), Approaches to the Analysis of Production Activity at Archaeological Sites. Archaeopress Archaeology, 141 – 160.

2020 Humphris, J. Sudan Today. Exploring the Cultural Heritage of Meroe’s communities (Bi-lingual book), Akkadia Press.

Freda has been conducting research within the Mt. Kenya region, Northern Kenya, Kenyan Coast and Western Kenya. Her research ranges from Iron Age period in Kenya, Historical period, to Present day. She looks at environments, populations, heritage and livelihoods.

 

• Mt. Kenya Iron Age research (PI)

This research is about Iron working in Mt. Kenya region, its objective is to give a higher resolution to the question of Bantu Migration. She has been carrying out surveys and excavations in order to collect comparative data around the region which will help in giving a more nuanced information about the Bantu migration narratives. This research is funded mostly by the British Institute in Eastern Africa, but has also received funding from Wenner Gren foundation.   It is done in collaboration with the National Museums of Kenya and University College London.

As part of the pottery studies, Freda has also conducted research on pottery making chaine opératoire among the potters of Ishiara in order to offer comparative data for archaeological pottery. She has also engaged in promotion of the craft through funding from UNESCO. This has been of great benefit to several women and women groups in Ishiara, Tharaka and Tigania regions.

• Wells Project (PI)

This is a collaborative research project between archaeologists and pastoralist community organisations on the long-term history of indigenous water management and well digging in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia. Community archaeology on the bio-cultural heritage of extant and abandoned wells will bring together stakeholders with diverse knowledge, skills, and experience to exchange understandings of pastoralist self-organisation and sustainable development in these arid but resilient landscapes. Overcoming inter-community violence through dialogue about the shared past and promoting cultural heritage as pathways to security, identity, and dignity are key goals. Demand for water drives government and investor development in these arid regions and is focused on building infrastructure to extract new energy sources (oil, wind, hydroelectric) to the exclusion of pastoralist rangelands and water points.

Objectives:

• To show how community archaeology research on wells as bio-cultural heritage can empower communities to engage constructively with external actors such as governments, companies, academics, and NGOs
• To encourage and foster archaeological research skills among local communities, democratizing and decolonizing research-based knowledge
• To ensure that development policy decisions respect the cultural and livelihood rights of local communities

This Project is funded by GCRF through the British Academy, and it is in partnership with the University of Cambridge, Gabra and Borana communities of Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia. More information can be found on https://www.biea.ac.uk/wellsproject/

• Traditional Technologies of the Daughters of the Azanian Coast (PI)

This project is working with women groups along the Kenyan Coast with an aim of coming up with value addition for their tradition products. The products that we are interested in, are those that derive from the Marine Cultural Heritage (MCH). Our project which is done in partnership with National Museums of Kenya, the County government of Kilifi and University college London is mostly interested in pottery making, basketry and thatching materials (makuti). It is funded by Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) through Rising from the Depth, RFTDs project 

• Biocultural Protocols for the Kenyan Coast Traditional Technologies (CoI)

This is a collaborative research project between the BIEA, National Museums of Kenya, and the County Government of Kilifi, with an aim of supporting the community in developing biocultural protocols so as to protect their Marine Cultural Heritage. Most Marine Cultural Heritage is threatened by population growth, rising sea levels due to climate change, and development projects. This project is funded by RFTDs. The project is closely related to the Azanian daughters project which has been researching, documenting and finding ways of adding value to the MCH products.

• Thimlich Ohinga Project (PI)

Thimilich Ohinga archaeological site, is one of the world’s cultural heritage sites that are protected by UNESCO in Kenya. It is an Iron Age site with stone wall enclosures and is found in Western Kenya. The early users of this site and the dates of its construction are not well known although a lot of archaeological work has been done there to understand the sources of the construction materials, the architecture, site use and economy. The current project is directed towards excavations of a probable burial with the hopes of retrieving datable and DNA material. These will help to answer the questions on population dynamics and the dates of its construction more accurately. The project is funded by the BIEA, and is a collaborative venture between the BIEA, National Museums of Kenya, and Jaramogi Oginga University of Science and Technology.

Recent Publications:

• M’Mbogori, F.N. (2020) Human and Environmental Interactions in Late Iron Age Kenya. Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Anthropology https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190854584.013.264
• M’Mbogori, F.N., Gakii, K., Ochieng, P.N. (2020) Pottery Chaîne Opératoire among the Mbeere People of Mt. Kenya Region: Continuity and Change. Archaeological Review from Cambridge Volume 35 (1) 160-171
• Madingou, B.T., Herve, G., Perrin, M. M’Mbogori, F.N., Guemona, D., Mathe P.E , Williamson, D., Brunner, C.R. (2020) First archeomagnetic data from Kenya and Chad: Analysis of iron furnaces from Mt. Kenya and Guera Massif. Physics of the earth and planetary interiors Vol. 309, December 2020

Tackling Infrastructure: Lessons from Creative Solutions of the Urban Poor in Fragile and Marginal Contexts

This project takes the case of Hoima, a fragile and marginal city located in western Uganda, to unearth ways through which the urban poor navigate and negotiate the absence and inadequacy of formal technical infrastructure; and how they put together a semblance of viable life through modest, low-cost, small-scale and sometimes improvised interventions in their everyday lives for survival. Interest in this project stems, in part, from urban studies in the Global South that have studied large/central cities to reveal how diverse populations manage to operate successfully (albeit with constraints and limitations), despite limits on formal institutions of governance and service delivery. This project will draw from a smaller/marginal city in a low-income country in sub-Saharan Africa where violent conflict, extreme poverty, infrastructure devastation and endemic disease might constitute ‘the norm’, thus providing lessons for ‘tackling infrastructure’ and realising ‘sustainable economies and societies’.