Southern Africa’s Later Stone Age and Hunter-Gatherer Ethnography

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Forssman
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Mobility Patterns ◽  
Later Stone Age ◽  
Research Topics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Kalahari Desert

Reviews of southern Africa’s Later Stone Age (LSA) have seen many different iterations. Generally, however, they summarize the technocomplex from its earliest industry until it ceases to be recognizable in the archaeological record, summarizing the variety of research topics, questions, and approaches. Binding much of this together, despite the diaspora of studies, is the use of ethnography to understand past hunter-gatherer lifeways. This resource has guided interpretations of the past and helped design research approaches since the 1970s. And yet, from as early as the 1980s, archaeologists as well as anthropologists have debated the influence ethnography plays in understanding the past. Nonetheless, without it, significantly less would be written of hunter-gatherer prehistory in southern Africa, which includes belief systems, settlement structures, mobility patterns, subsistence habits, and social relations. Using ethnography as a vehicle, it is possible to navigate the LSA pathways created by scholars and examine the aforementioned contributions this knowledge system has made to interpretations of the past. From this vantage, envisioning a future for ethnography within the field is possible. This should involve expanding the ethnographies archaeologists use, moving beyond the Kalahari Desert, creating a diverse group of LSA researchers, and decolonizing the discipline.

Ostrich Eggshell Beads in Later Stone Age Contexts

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Collins
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Site Formation ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Later Stone Age ◽  
The Past ◽  
Eastern And Southern Africa ◽  
Analytical Approaches ◽  
Ostrich Eggshell

Ostrich eggshell (OES) beads are a common feature of Later Stone Age (LSA) archaeology throughout eastern and southern Africa and have the potential to inform on site use, cultural diversity, social networks, and site formation. However, too often OES bead assemblages have not been recorded or studied in the necessary detail to make meaningful contributions to these important questions. In this respect, and to aid future research focusing on the African LSA, OES and OES beads must be discussed in detail, beginning with a background to ostriches and their eggs and commenting on why OES is an important raw material. Then, one should consider OES beads in detail, specifically, the manufacturing process, the social context in which they were made, and how they may have been used in the past. Subsequently, the focus should be on how OES bead assemblages are analyzed, as well as archaeometric approaches to studying OES bead residues and OES bead provenance. The potential insights gained from these diverse and multidisciplinary analytical approaches, especially when combined, are then highlighted through discussing trends in OES bead research from African LSA contexts. These trends include the contribution of OES beads to understanding the complex transition from hunter-gatherers to herders, the identification of different cultural groups in the past, and identifying the presence and extent of past social networks. The final focus should be on future research directions that will benefit OES bead research, specifically more detailed approaches to understanding OES bead diversity and the expansion of experimentally derived taphonomic frameworks for identifying past human and nonhuman behaviors in OES bead assemblages. Future research should build on the growing body of detailed OES bead analyses, as they provide unique insight and a strong complement to traditional archaeological approaches to understanding past peoples, groups, and cultures during the African LSA.

Track 2.b Introduction: Design & Democracy

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 213
Author(s):  
Virginia TASSINARI ◽  
Ezio MANZINI ◽  
Maurizio TELI ◽  
Liesbeth HUYBRECHTS
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Core Theme ◽  
The Past ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Democratic Discourse ◽  
Different Parts

The issue of design and democracy is an urgent and rather controversial one. Democracy has always been a core theme in design research, but in the past years it has shifted in meaning. The current discourse in design research that has been working in a participatory way on common issues in given local contexts, has developed an enhanced focus on rethinking democracy. This is the topic of some recent design conferences, such PDC2018, Nordes2017 and DRS2018, and of the DESIS Philosophy Talk #6 “Regenerating Democracy?” (www.desis-philosophytalks.org), from which this track originates. To reflect on the role and responsibility of designers in a time where democracy in its various forms is often put at risk seems an urgent matter to us. The concern for the ways in which the democratic discourse is put at risk in many different parts of the word is registered outside the design community (for instance by philosophers such as Noam Chomsky), as well as within (see for instance Manzini’s and Margolin’s call Design Stand Up (http://www.democracy-design.org). Therefore, the need to articulate a discussion on this difficult matter, and to find a common vocabulary we can share to talk about it. One of the difficulties encountered for instance when discussing this issue, is that the word “democracy” is understood in different ways, in relation to the traditions and contexts in which it is framed. Philosophically speaking, there are diverse discourses on democracy that currently inspire design researchers and theorists, such as Arendt, Dewey, Negri and Hardt, Schmitt, Mouffe, Rancière, Agamben, Rawls, Habermas, Latour, Gramsci, whose positions on this topic are very diverse. How can these authors guide us to further articulate this discussion? In which ways can these philosophers support and enrich design’s innovation discourses on design and democracy, and guide our thinking in addressing sensitive and yet timely questions, such as what design can do in what seems to be dark times for democracy, and whether design can possibly contribute to enrich the current democratic ecosystems, making them more strong and resilient?

Receptions of the Past: Commemoration, Racism, Desire

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-303
Author(s):  
Michael Connors Jackman
Keyword(s):  
Critical Point ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
White Privilege ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Lesbian And Gay ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

This article investigates the ways in which the work of The Body Politic (TBP), the first major lesbian and gay newspaper in Canada, comes to be commemorated in queer publics and how it figures in the memories of those who were involved in producing the paper. In revisiting a critical point in the history of TBP from 1985 when controversy erupted over race and racism within the editorial collective, this discussion considers the role of memory in the reproduction of whiteness and in the rupture of standard narratives about the past. As the controversy continues to haunt contemporary queer activism in Canada, the productive work of memory must be considered an essential aspect of how, when and for what reasons the work of TBP comes to be commemorated. By revisiting the events of 1985 and by sifting through interviews with individuals who contributed to the work of TBP, this article complicates the narrative of TBP as a bluntly racist endeavour whilst questioning the white privilege and racially-charged demands that undergird its commemoration. The work of producing and preserving queer history is a vital means of challenging the intentional and strategic erasure of queer existence, but those who engage in such efforts must remain attentive to the unequal terrain of social relations within which remembering forms its objects.

The Middle to Later Stone Age transition at Panga ya Saidi, in the tropical coastal forest of eastern Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 153 ◽  
pp. 102954
Author(s):  
Ceri Shipton ◽  
James Blinkhorn ◽  
Will Archer ◽  
Nikolaos Kourampas ◽  
Patrick Roberts ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Coastal Forest ◽  
Later Stone Age

Differences in temporal reasoning

Focaal ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 (66) ◽  
pp. 25-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Ringel
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Temporal Reasoning ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Temporal Complexity ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Temporal Flexibility ◽  
Shrinking City

Hoyerswerda, Germany's fastest-shrinking city, faces problems with the future that seem initially unrelated to the past and yet excite manifold conflicting accounts of it. The multiple and conflicting temporal references employed by Hoyerswerdians indicate that the temporal regime of postsocialism is accompanied, if not overcome, by the temporal framework of shrinkage. By reintroducing the analytical domain of the future, I show that local temporal knowledge practices are not historically predetermined by a homogenous postsocialist culture or by particular generational experiences. Rather, they exhibit what I call temporal complexity and temporal flexibility-creative uses of a variety of coexisting temporal references. My ethnographic material illustrates how such expressions of different forms of temporal reasoning structure social relations within and between different generations. Corresponding social groups are not simply divided by age, but are united through shared and heavily disputed negotiations of the post-Cold War era's contemporary crisis.

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