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Report on the 10th Congress of the
Pan-African Association for Prehistory
and Related Studies
Harare, Zimbabwe, June 19-23, 1995
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This was the first meeting of the Association in twelve years, the
last having been held in Jos, Nigeria in 1983. The Congress took
place at the University of Zimbabwe and was organized largely by
members of the History Department, ably headed by Prof. Gilbert Pwiti
as Organizing Secretary. Almost 300 scholars attended, most
presenting papers. All were impressed by the smoothness of the
operation and how well virtually all the details were
planned--especially since the organizers had to contend with a
competing gathering of local officials that preempted some of the
meeting spaces and vied for resources.
After opening ceremonies, attended among others by the Foreign
Minister-cum-historian Stan Mudenge, there was a plenary session
devoted to Great Zimbabwe. For the rest of the four and a half days,
four sessions ran concurrently except for a mid-week break in order
to visit the Domboshawa cave paintings. Sessions were divided among
eighteen different themes:
Hominid Evolution
Palaeoenvironmental Studies
Rock Art
Early Food Production
Information Technology
Ethnoarchaeology
Cultural Resource Management
Early Iron Working Communities
Late Iron Working Communities
Development of Complexity
Historical Archaeology
Interpretation of Culture Change
Early Hominid Land Use
Terminology in African Prehistory
Spatial Analyis
Zimbabwean Archaeology
Zimbabwe Publishing House in concert with the British Museum Press
was able to time the publication of Pet er Garlake's *The Hunter's
Vision: The Prehistoric Art of Zimbabwe* to coincide with the
Congress.
Obviously the distinctions implied by the themes of the sessions
were tenuous and arbitrary, but they may have been intended to
highlight methodological debates, especially those within
archaeology, as well as to impose some order on the proceedings.
(I should note at the outset that I confined myself to sessions
dealing with post-Stone Age Africa.)
Aside from the interesting range of the research itself, some of the
most stimulating issues raised concerned the meaning of sites to
indigenous peoples themselves and the use of later ethnographic
evidence to interpret archaeological sites. For example, the
earthworks at Bigo in Uganda had no significance for the local people
when they were first studied by European archaeologists but have now
come to be imp ortant ritual centers. Similarly, cave painting sites
such as Domboshava are currently embroiled in a tug of war between
Historical Monuments officials and tourist s on the one hand and
local populations that see them as centers for rain making ceremonie s
on the other.
Tom Huffman's argument that contemporary or at least reacent Venda
culture may be used to explicate the spatial arrangements, political
relationships, and other aspects of Great Zimbabwe continue to spark
a great deal of controversy. Some archaeologists deny that GZ and its
neighbors exhibited as much unformity as Huffman's model claims,
while others are suspicious of the degree of continuity Huffman
finds in Venda. His book should be out at the end of 1995, detailing
his arguments and supporting evid ence more than has been possible in
articles and in the brief presentation to the Congress.
At the same time Merrick Posnansky's presentation of 25 years of
archaeological work at Hani in northern Ghana brilliantly
demonstrated the value of such long-term research. Here, long
acquaintance with the village and its people not only permitted
judicious use of oral tradition in reconstructing the past but also
made the researchers aware of how much their own presence has
affected ways of organizing space over time, not least in the
widespread adoption of hedges by individual compounds!
There were a number of presentations about metalworking, some
unfortunately scheduled at the same time. Nic David's work on Sukur
now allows him and his colleagues to propose unusually precise
estimates for iron production and charcoal consumption over the past
century and a half, and to detail the symbiosis of montagnard
metallurgists, farmers of the plain, and traders. David has,
incidentally, just completed a film on African iron working entitled
"Black Hephaistos." It was made in collaboration with David Killick
and shows what can be determined by laboratory analysis--a valuable
adjunct to archaeology and the history of African technology. The
film is available from the University of Calgary.
This was a superb opportunity for scholars to engage each other, and
especially enjoyable to continue the discussions after the Congress
proper during the excursions. Only Francophones might complain about
the overwhelmingly Anglophone character of the meetings--it must have
been hard going to deal not simply with the fact that the
overwhelming majority of communications were in English but that the
English came in so many accents! And, as a speaker at one reception
remarked, one can hope that future congresses will see a more even
match of African and Euro-American participants.