Material Culture and Translocality in the Terminal Iron Age in Southern Africa

Abstract

This paper is about making, creativity and memory-work, and the role of crafts in connecting people and places in turbulent times. The last two centuries of the Iron Age in the southern African interior, from the mid-17th to the mid-19th CE, saw an accelerated development of crafts such as metalworking and ceramics. This pace of change happened in tandem with significant changes to material culture more broadly, and to architecture, settlement spaces and the organisation of households. This terminal Iron Age phase was characterised by political turbulence, violence, rapid relocation of people, aggregation into large urban settlements and reconfiguration of social institutions. All the while the metal and ceramic crafts show evidence of synergetic experimentation, creativity and invention. I present a comparative approach that is sensitive to stress indicators and factors that contribute to the vulnerability as well as to the long-term resilience of craft traditions. Based on recent work on material from northern South Africa, southern Botswana and southern Zimbabwe, a core argument is the need to work from a multi- or cross-craft perspective. Focusing on the social dynamics of artisans and the potential for intimacies between crafts, it cannot be overlooked that activities such as metalworking and pottery manufacture were anchored in the household. That is, the crafts shared the most important social and spatial arena for memory-work and transmission of sophisticated knowledge and practical know-how.

The seminar will be followed by a reception. All welcome! Any enquiries about the event may be directed to Pauline Harding.