Southern African Archaeology in the 1990s

South African Archaeological Society

Southern African Archaeology in the 1990sAuthor(s): J. D. Lewis-WilliamsSource: The South African Archaeological Bulletin, Vol. 48, No. 157 (Jun., 1993), pp. 45-50Published by: South African Archaeological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3888877 .

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South African Archaeological Bulletin 48: 45-50, 1993 45

SOUTHERN AFRICAN ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE 1990s*

J.D. LEWIS-WILLIAMS Rock Art Research Unit Department of Archaeology University of the Witwatersrand, P 0 Wits, 2050

* Received January 1993, revised April 1993

As South Africa changes, its history is being reviewed. Old emphases are giving way to new interests. Old explanations and evaluations of the past are being questioned. Old stereotypes of indigenous people and, indeed, of the whole sweep of African history are being challenged as a new history is constructed. The nature of this new southern African history implicates archaeology; it also poses a fundamental question: What is archaeology?

The question is not as simple as it may at first appear, but it is highly relevant to current changes in people's per- ceptions of southern Africa's past because archaeology is not a 'given', a cut-and-dried, neatly defined package of aims and the methods and techniques for achieving those aims. The discipline has not been defined, once and for all, in some unanimously accepted textbook. On the con- trary, archaeology as a discipline is constantly being re- made as the circumstances of its practice change. Southern African archaeology as it is practised today is not only the study of the subcontinent's past; it is also a product of that past, a specific past with its own self-centred interests.

In commenting briefly on the unmaking and remaking of South African history/archaeology, I take as a starting point a pamphlet entitled 'A career in archaeology'. It was recently issued by the South African Association of Archaeologists, and, as a product of the Association, it has the potential to reproduce and entrench an 'official' view of the discipline. It is designed for school-leavers and first-year students, presumably in the hope that it will encourage some to enter the profession and adopt similar views. Clearly, so short a document cannot be expected to provide full coverage or discussion of what are difficult and controversial issues; I simply use it as a succinct starting point for some comments on southern African archaeology in general. Whatever its target group and notwithstanding its brevity, the version of archaeology it propagates should not be passively accepted simply because it emanates from the subcontinent's professional body; its view of archaeology needs to be vigorously debated.

The South African Archaeological Bulletin is an appro- priate place to air such issues because the membership of the South African Archaeological Society, unlike the Association, comprises professional archaeologists and also non-professionals who, though they come from a range of occupations, are united by an interest (of whatever kind) in southern Africa's past. In other words, the Society usefully brings together producers and consumers of archaeological knowledge. The consumers are people who, through their taxes, contribute to the production of archaeological knowledge. They therefore have a stake in archaeology. Many of the points I make in discussing issues raised by the version of archaeology presented in thle pamphlet are commonplaces in the professional litera- ture (see, amongst many others, Trigger 1984; Shanks & Tilley 1987; Tilley 1985). I simply wish to emphasise their relevance to archaeology as it is practised in South Africa today and, perhaps, to open up wider discussion of

them in, specifically, the southern African context. The pamphlet has six subheadings: What is archaeol-

ogy?; Training; Personal aptitude; Employment; Address- es of universities; Addresses of museums. I give two of these sections in full and then argue that they misrepresent archaeological research, that they will mislead students, that they reproduce power relations within the profession, and that the important concept-forming role of archaeology in southern Africa today is largely ignored.

What is archaeology?

Archaeologists tell the story of past human societies and the natural environments in which they lived from the study of remains ranging from pollen grains to whole buildings. They are not solely interested in the so-called ancient civilizations, such as that of pharaonic Egypt, but in the history of people from the first human societies that developed in Africa some three million years ago to modern industrial societies.

The image of an archaeologist as a glamorous male treasure-hunter doing excavations in exotic places is a Hollywood fairy tale! Archaeologists may sometimes spend a great deal of time looking for sites and exca- vating, but most of their time is spent in the labora- tory doing time-consuming sorting and analysis of the excavated material and interpreting and publishing the results. Archaeologists are not interested in col- lecting objects for their own sake or for their mone- tary value, but rather in the information they can provide about past human societies. Many people think of archaeology as the study of impressive monuments of high status people, but today it is more frequently concerned with all levels of past societies.

South Africa has a long and rich human history beginning more than two million years ago. Much of this story has to be told by archaeologists because there are no written records until the late fifteenth century. However, the contribution of archaeology to the story of South Africa does not end with the arrival of Euro- peans and appearance of written documents. Archaeological evidence is more and more frequently being used in conjunction with written records from the colonial period to gain insights into aspects of colonial society which are omitted or obscured in the documentary evidence. Such historical or colonial archaeology is currently producing information on topics ranging from architecture to diet in projects like the Cape Town Castle restoration, and is provid- ing a clearer picture of segments of colonial society which are not adequately documented in the written records, such as that of the slaves. Also, the archaeology of historical sites such as mission stations, forts and shipwrecks provides an added dimension to history unavailable from written records.

Personal aptitude

Potential archaeologists should do well academically and be able to think analyticzally, observe, interpret observations and write reports. While there are



46 South African Archaeological Bulletin

moments of great excitement, most of the work tends to be time-consuming so that patience, concentration and mental endurance are useful personal attributes.

Archaeological Method The pamphlet rightly begins by rejecting romantic

notions of archaeological discovery by flamboyant, gung- ho male adventurers - although some practitioners still seem to find this image attractive. Also rejected is the popularly held belief that archaeologists study only monuments erected by powerful leaders; archaeologists are, today at any rate, also interested in the lives of common people and slaves.

Problems begin to arise when the pamphlet explains how archaeologists work - important knowledge for those contemplating entering the profession. The root of the problem lies in the characterization of archaeology as essentially empiricist: a researcher's work starts, the pamphlet implies, by looking for sites, proceeds through excavation to "time-consuming sorting and analysis of the excavated material" to interpretation and, finally, publication. This characterization of archaeology is not an accident of the conciseness demanded by a short pamphlet. Part of the empiricist methodological chain is repeated in the section entitled "Personal aptitude", where readers are told that archaeologists "observe, interpret observations and write reports".

Enough has been written to demonstrate beyond rea- sonable doubt that this methodological chain does not represent what in fact happens. Archaeological research does not lead, by way of a series of steps, from 'objective', 'scientific' data to interpretations or understandings of those data.

At the very outset, the topics that archaeologists choose to study are not 'given'; they do not study aspects of the past simply because they are intriguing puzzles that are there - like mountain peaks waiting to be climbed. The consciousness and interests of each archaeologist are formed, to a large extent but by no means ineluctably, by his or her social, political, intellectual and academic milieu. At certain times in history certain issues seem important to certain archaeologists and historians. 'Importance' is ascribed; it is not inherent in events or data. The importance of events and issues, or lack of it, is governed more often than not by the political interests of the class from which archaeologists and historians come (or which they join). Neither archaeologists nor historians can, therefore, be expected to give 'unbiased', 'scientific' or 'professional' judgements about the past. In southern Africa, for instance, some archaeologists have devoted themselves to presenting each 'tribe' or 'self-governing state' with its own, sectional history, in the hope that these histories will legitimize the creations of segregationist policies. By contrast, other archaeologists have success- fully refuted the segregationist claim that a number of already defined 'tribes' (themselves to varying degrees artefacts of colonialism) entered southern Africa at about the same time that white settlers began to invade the inte- rior from the Cape of Good Hope. Neither of these issues had to be addressed; it was the researchers' political interests that selected them, consciously or not. We can go further: by concentrating on the issue of 'first arrvals', archaeological research has inadvertently reproduced a divisive criterion. Now that the error has been exposed and we know that farming people have been living in parts of southern Africa for close on two millennia, we need an archaeology/history that is based on different, less sectional values and interests and a less divisive criterion than

'arrivals'. We need to develop approaches to the past that will contribute to the formation of concepts that will pro- mote unity.

Having selected their research topics (in accordance with principles of which there is no mention), readers of the pamphlet are given to understand that archaeology students are taught a series of research steps that will lead to understanding of their chosen topics. Each of the steps given is, however, flawed. In view of the attention that this issue has already received in the philosophical litera- ture (for overviews see, for example, Chalmers 1978; Copi 1982) and in southern African archaeology (e.g. Lewis-Williams 1983, 1984; Lewis-Williams & Loubser 1986), a few very brief remarks on each step will suffice to show that the steps are not 'neutral' stages leading from ignorance to explanation.

According to the pamphlet, the first step is looking for sites. The impression given is that almost any site will do, provided it is rich enough, interesting, accessible and so forth. This is not the case. Archaeologists are sometimes approached by people who wish to draw their attention to sites on their property. Often, these people are disap- pointed because the archaeologists do not immediately start excavations. The reason for the archaeologists' apparent lack of interest is that their research is guided by strategies and by hypotheses that they wish to test, in short, by quite specific things they wish to know. Most introductory texts make this point.

What we need in South Africa today is re-evaluation of the interests that inform those strategies and hypotheses. Why, for instance, do some archaeologists choose sites that will, they hope, help to 'explain' the past in terms of interactions between people and the environment? What is the effect of these 'explanations'? 'Explanations' of the past in terms of adaptation to changing environments shift attention away from the social conflicts and struggles that are the real driving forces within a society. I return to this point below. Another question is: why are some kinds of sites considered commonplace and therefore not worthy of excavation or preservation, while others are deemed valuable and interesting? Almost every Cape Dutch building, for example, is considered worthy of preservation. On the other hand, many stone-walled settlements dating from the so-called Iron Age are seen as repetitive and therefore less valuable. The factors that make a site valuable are clearly established by the sort of past that archaeologists wish to construct. Moreover, the sort of past that archaeologists wish to construct is determined by what they wish to 'explain' not only in the past but also in the present and by the principles that they believe guide the course of human history (e.g. adaptation or social dynamics). That some of those explanations and principles favour and serve the interests of certain groups in modern society and marginalize other groups is a point that needs to be repeat- edly emphasized.

Archaeologists, therefore, do not start their work by 'looking for sites'. They start with frequently unques- tioned assumptions about what is important in the past and what is important in the present, not in any neutral, general or 'scientific' sense, but in the sense that that 'importance' is gauged by the degree to which it serves present sectional interests. 'Looking for sites' is thus a highly structured and ideologically loaded activity.

The second step, according to the pamphlet, is excavation. For all its centrality in archaeology, excavation is not a 'scientific', objective technique like reading a ther- mometer (if, indeed, even that can be said to be objective). It is a social activity conducted by a number of people of varying degrees of competence. The key to the whole



South African Archaeological Bulletin 47

exercise is the neatly drawn section showing each or the strata. This section is not 'given' or 'discovered': its final, published form conceals the doubts of the researchers and the ambiguities of the sides of the trench. In short, the section is an interpretation of phenomena uncovered by digging, not an objective, error-free replication of some- thing real 'out there' (cf. Hodder 1989; Tilley 1989).

The next step, "time-consuming sorting and analysis of the excavated material" is equally problematic. The "excavated material" in fact comprises only certain items selected from what came out of the hole in the ground. The selection is made according to preconceived notions of which items are 'relevant' and which are not. Much "excavated material" is discarded. The "material" eventu- ally studied is therefore not given; it is, at least in large measure, constructed by the hypotheses, concepts, interests and ideological biases of the excavator. Similarly, "sorting" of this material is done according to categories devised by researchers, not according to 'givens'. Cate- gories (e.g. 'scrapers', 'crescents', 'adzes') are imposed on the "excavated material", not derived from it. In some instances, these categories, inherited from earlier workers, may mask the very things that a researcher wants to find out. Different systems of classification point to different kinds of explanation. There can therefore be no single, all- purpose system of classification.

Perhaps the whole research procedure presented by the pamphlet is best summed up by its word "analysis" and, subsequently, by the phrase "to think analytically". "Analysis", I venture to suggest, is a highly problematic concept and "analytical thinking" even more so. Both the word and the phrase mystify the real, much more messy, thought processes of archaeologists and clothe the production of value-laden constructions of the past in the guise of 'scientific procedure'. 'Analysis' is a kind of black box, the inner workings of which are known only to the researchers themselves, and, more often than not, they are not telling - if, in fact, they know. According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary 'analysis' means "Examine minutely the constituent elements of;...ascertain the elements of". Unfortunately, in archaeology those "elements" (i.e. categories of objects) are not, as I have shown, pre- determined as if by some periodic chart; they are created by researchers. In short, 'analysis' is little more than a slogan that, through its connotations, implies 'objective science' and the special neutral, unbiased aura that scien- tists try to create for themselves and that is the basis of their influence and power in contemporary society.

'Analysis', the pamphlet says, is followed, at last, by 'interpretation', but, as I have shown, interpretation has been going on right from the beginning: everything has been 'interpretation'. To speak of interpretation at this late stage is therefore meaningless and a misrepresentation of what has actually been happening. The essential nature of the final 'interpretation' (the only declared one) has, in large measure, already been set up by all the (concealed) interpretations that have gone before.

Publication of these interpretations and the data from which they are supposed to be logically, step-by-step derived is presented as the final stage of the archaeological enterprise (as we know all too well, this last stage is often not attained, and important research is not made available to other workers). Often, these publications follow a widely approved structure: Introduction; Data; D:iscus- sion; Conclusion (or some variant of this). This structure clearly comes out of the empiricist research programme, the steps of which I have outlined and briefly criticised. Notwithstanding their panoply of 'science', publications structured in this way are ideological documents that mys-

tify the processes of research and establish power by the creation of supposedly value-free, 'neutral' knowledge. The writers give the impression that their 'Data' section, however named, presents 'scientific facts' and that they are standing back from these data until the 'Discussion' section. Not so. As I have argued, the 'facts' have been selected and, at any rate in part, created by a specific hypothesis. Yet, as I have pointed out, it is the production of these supposedly 'scientific facts' that constitutes archaeological writers' power bases; knowledge, it is widely accepted, is power, and sure 'scientific' knowledge is sure power.

The problems of publication do not end with what the pamphlet calls 'writing reports'. Where to publish? Some journals further careers in mainstream academia, others - the more 'popular' and the more radical ones - do not. What to publish? No one publishes everything, only those things that seem 'relevant' - but to what and to whom? Another question is: To whom should archaeologists 'report'? Is an archaeologist's responsibility to the public or to the profession and, if to both, in what proportions?

These questions about the writing of reports remind me of post-graduate students who say of their theses, "The work is finished. All I have to do now is write it up." They do not realise, first, that 'writing it up' is another creative, not objective, process - perhaps the most important one of all. Moreover, having, as undergraduates, been through the numbing empiricist mill, they do not realise that 'writing up' is the production of a text that will, far from being an objective report, be a socio-political inter- vention. Indeed, archaeologists' concern over where to publish and to whom to address their work is evidence for the political nature of archaeological publications, both within and without academia.

What, according to the pamphlet, is the content of archaeological publications? We are told that it is "the story of past human societies and the natural environments in which they lived". Two important points emerge from this statement.

First, the singularity of "the story" is one of the most significant features of the version of archaeology that the pamphlet propagates. The phrase disguises disagreement within the profession and again emphasises the supposed objectivity of archaeological narratives. In reality, there are many possible 'stories' about the past; indeed, there are as many different views of the past as there are of the present.

Secondly, the supposed essence of "the story" is implied by the phrase "the natural environments in which they lived". This phrase tacitly invokes 'adaptation' and the notion that "past human societies" are in some way 'explained' by accounts of how they adapted to their environments. Today, however, many archaeologists rightly reject the explanatory value of 'adaptation'. Briefly, most 'adaptation' explanations are merely descriptive. For instance, a particular component of a past society's subsistence strategy (e.g. irrigation) may be said to be an adaptive response to a perceived feature of the environment (e.g. increasing aridity). In other words, the component does what it does. Almost any practice that is not clearly maladaptive can be said to be adaptive, without any explanation being achieved. If, on the other hand, we accept that a number of viable responses to a given set of environmental conditions are possible (as the diversity of human communities in a single environment surely shows), we shall have to ask, 'Why did people adopt this particular response and not another?' Then, most impor- tantly, we shall have to ask, 'Whose interests did this particular response serve?' It is the answer to this question,




rather than vaguely conceived 'adaptation', that will explain why a community developed in one way and not in another. A human community is not an unthinking organ- ism that works on the basis of a stimulus-response rela- tionship with its environment. Rather, the history of a community is constructed by the working out of conflict- ing interests within it. Interest groups influence the selection and exploitation of certain components of the environment as they forge their own trajectories, usualjy at the expense of other interest groups.

Archaeology students in the 1990s

Clearly, the pamphlet's unproblematic presentation of the empiricist chain (looking for sites, excavation, sorting, analysis, interpretation and publication) as an account of how archaeologists work must be rejected on logical and conceptual grounds. Its rehearsal in the section headed "Personal aptitude" has unfortunate spin-offs. Here prospective students are told that "patience, concentration and mental endurance" are "useful personal attributes". These attributes are, of course, not to be totally decried; archaeological work does indeed demand great patience and dedication. Yet, unalloyed, these are the attributes that lead to the stagnation of the discipline. They are the attributes that please many archaeology teachers but achieve little else.

The 'attributes' that southern African archaeology students should, I argue, have today include the following: revolutionary thinking, sensitivity to contemporary social concerns, an ability to challenge accepted views (rather than 'endure' them), a fearless confrontation with authority (including lecturers and professors), and an enthusi- asm, even passion, for exposing everything that is presented as unproblematic and 'given'. Students who pass through plodding, empiricist 'training' will find that these attributes are not encouraged and developed. Indeed, students who do take a radical position ('radical' in the full sense of the word: going to the social and conceptual roots of facilely accepted concepts) often feel ignored or, at best, briefly patronised and then reduced to impotence by authoritarian structures within the discipline. Sometimes they hear the issues about which they rightly feel so passionately parodied and dismissed by people at the top of the profession; archaeology is not a mere game, an amusing pastime. The extolling of dullness of thought rather than innovation and social sensitivity will estrange the innovative students that southern African archaeology desperately needs.

This is not to say that sloppy work and faulty logic should be condoned. Good empirical work is not the same thing as empiricism. Good empirical work, coupled with adventurous, challenging thinking is needed to rescue southern African archaeology from what some see as the doldrums. Becalmed by empiricism, "patience, concentration and mental endurance", many students (and archaeologists) are not in a position to read and think adven- turously enough to break out of and overturn the 'givens' of the profession. Less endurance and more overt impa- tience is required. Indeed, one can go further and say that it is revolutionary, challenging thinking that leads to good empirical work. Working outside of the accepted parame- ters of archaeological discourse can sharpen the wits and tighten up an honest researcher's techniques.

The pamphlet is, of course, designed for school-leavers and first-year students, and it may be argued that such matters are too complex, too deep or, heaven forbid, too disturbing for those of tender years. This position is inde- fensible. We must not attract people to the profession with

a fiction. Certainly, instead of being fed facts and techniques, undergraduates, especially first-year students, should be exposed to the challenges of critical thinking; nothing should be presented as unproblematic - not even critical thinking. The dark truths of uncertainty and doubt should not be withheld from students until their final undergraduate year or, worse, their Honours year. Nor should these 'truths' be seen as an obligatory genuflection to post-modernism before getting down to the 'real busi- ness' of (empiricist) archaeology; their radicalising influence must be felt in all teaching situations. If revelations about the essentially political and ideological nature of archaeology estrange students, so be it. On the other hand, it seems to me that critical, radical thought is far more likely to galvanise students into intellectual, questioning activity. It is critique, not technique, that ignites students' minds. If the uncertainty that attends critical thought turns them into radicals who challenge archaeological (and other) authority, we should be pleased. Successful teachers are the first targets of the critical minds they nurture. The degree of their success may be gauged by their reaction to criticism.

The deep doubts, uncertainties and questioning of post- modernism seem to erode the foundations of any confident meaning, yet at the same time there is - or should be - a desire for a politically committed archaeology. If doubt is everywhere, what is the basis for commitment? This is a dilemma, one that demands to be addressed openly and not concealed from first-year students. They need to be told that archaeological narratives are socio-political interventions that have practical consequences. Archaeo- logical narratives can, by their concept-forming role, actually affect people's lives by reproducing or by transform- ing ideologies and power structures. Put bluntly, archaeologists in southern Africa write narratives that either help to reproduce racial stereotypes that emphasize 'primitiveness' and technological inferiority or, by contrast, that challenge and transform these stereotypes by emphasising other equally (or more) admirable qualities. As I have argued, these emphases are controlled by the political sympathies of the archaeologists. The narratives that our students will, as practising archaeologists, even- tually produce will inevitably be interventions in a discourse of power and resistance, and they had better know that right from the beginning. Southern Africa's past will have to be - will inevitably be - reconceptualised. As the present changes, so will the past; past and present are two sides of the same coin. Because of the very nature of southern Africa's distant past, archaeologists are in an especially well-placed position to play a formative role.

Archaeology and professional power To realise their concept-forming role archaeologists

will have to abandon the 'scientific' uniqueness now claimed for the discipline and take their chance along with other 'social sciences': archaeology, history, sociology and anthropology are all contributors to the discourse, and little will be achieved by the maintenance of disciplinary boundaries that are posited on career options and professional power structures. As future practitioners, students should be encouraged to question the reproduction of professional bailiwicks. Archaeology as an independent discipline was demarcated long ago. What, we should be constantly asking, are its present grounds for independence?

In contrast to this questioning, self-critical position, the version of archaeology that the pamphlet projects is essentially conservative and exclusive; it creates a restricted view of the discipline's subject matter. Most



South African Archaeological Bulletin 49

significantly, by its insistence on excavation and empiricist procedures, its version of archaeology excludes rock art research. Various kinds of archaeology are mentioned, yet there is no word about rock art research. The nearest we come to a mention is in the front-page illustration (Fig. 1),

Fig. 1. Cover illustration from a pamphlet produced by the Southern African Association of Archaeologists (1992).

itself material for deconstruction by first-year students. Here six people are engaged in excavation and only one in the (background) activity of tracing rock art. Yet southern African rock art research has, arguably, produced more understanding of terminal Later Stone Age life than lithic sequences and environmentalist explanations; its theory and methodology have influenced other branches of the discipline; and it has done much to challenge racist stereotypes of indigenous people. Why, then, is it not mentioned? One possible answer is that it is marginalised because it is not based on the sanctioned techniques of excavation and 'analysis'. That a discipline should be defined by one privileged technique of data retrieval (excavation) is, of course, absurd. But the discipline's obsession with excavation is surely not the only reason.

Often, puzzled excavators ask how rock art research can be integrated into 'mainstream' archaeology, or, as some laughingly put it, 'dirt' archaeology. Urgent though it is, the issue is too large to address here, but two pre- liminary points can be made. First, it is necessary to rid the discipline of the notion of an established 'mainstream' component. Centrality is accorded to bodies of data or techniques of data retrieval by the aims and the values of researchers; no corpus of data or technique is intrinsically more central than any other. Once the notion of a 'mainstream' archaeology has been eradicated, the question of integration will lose much of its force. Secondly, and since some of the puzzlement derives from an inability to date all individual paintings, there is a need to review the chronocentrismi of present-day southern African archaeology. The accurate chronological linearity implied by excavation sections and also enshrined in Western con1- cepts of time has varied and profound implications for archaeological narratives. The linear, pinpointing concept of chronology privileges colonial history at the expense of pre-colonial history. Moreover, as this privileging implies, chronocentrism is a divisive, value-laden factor that cripples any alternative way of seeing southern

Africa's past. Chronocentrism, moreover, marginalises the most prolific and easily accessible (only in the sense that excavation is not required) body of data on the Later Stone Age - rock art. In any event, much. of the art can be suffi- ciently dated to allay the misgivings of all but the most incorrigible chronophiles.

Indeed, it is arguable that what we now know about southern African rock art is so detailed that the privileged positions of excavation, adaptation, lithic sequences and so forth in, at any rate terminal, Later Stone Age research has already been eroded; these components are less central than they were, say, fifteen years ago. The task is not so much to fit rock art research into the mould of received lithocentric, adaptationist archaeology; rather, 'mainstream' archaeology will have to adjust to the results of rock art research. Much, of course, depends on what we want to know, as I suggested at the outset. It is Western technologically centred values that place lithic sequences, exploitation strategies, adaptation to environments and so forth above complex symbolism, religious beliefs and social dynamics. It is technologically centred values that are (with the noteworthy exception of some researchers) presently moulding the discipline; in doing so, these values are reproducing political power structures as well as academic power structures.

The virtual exclusion of rock art from the pamphlet and the concomitant emphases on excavation and the empiricist methodological chain are examples of the ways in which a document can be an instrument of power structures within a profession. As I said at the beginning, there is no golden, perfect definition of 'archaeology' lodged somewhere in the sky. Archaeology is what the most powerful practitioners, usually professors, say it is; there is no court of appeal. And the practitioners define archaeology to suit their own careers and political positions. Understandably enough, they foreground those areas of research (e.g. the study of ancient technologies) in which they themselves are most proficient and which priv- ilege the interests of the social class from which they come. As they create their own power bases, they marginalise others' proficiencies and the interests of other classes (e.g. some social groups are more concerned with social change than with technology).

It seems indisputable that the pamphlet gives the impression that certain areas of interest are not very important, and that they are not fields worth pursuing by those who wish to be leaders in archaeology.

Towards a 1990s Southern African Archaeology What, then, is archaeology? More to the point, what

should archaeology be in the South Africa of today and tomorrow? The following points may be made:

First, archaeology is a social practice conducted in specific historical circumstances.

Secondly, southern African archaeology is, like all archaeology, a social practice that is conducted in the present but that uses the past as one of its resources.

Thirdly, archaeology is a political and concept-forming practice; it is not a value-free 'science' that has no impact on the ways in which people perceive their own and others' social positions and worth.

Fourthly, the narratives that southern African archaeology produces should not be tailored to naturalise, justify or explain (away) the present; rather, they need to tell us that the present could have been different. The past is a challenge to the present.

Fifthly, the very possibility of archaeological research is itself an exciting challenge to innovative, socially con-




cerned South African students to question the past in the present, and the present in the past.

Finally, archaeology is history. There is no valid distinction between, on the one hand, history and, on the other archaeology or prehistory. In southern Africa that distinction reproduces the colonial hegemony over the past.

An archaeology conceived along these lines will encounter opposition from different constituencies, both within and without the profession. I mention two interre- lated issues that will have to be addressed.

First, archaeologists seeking to reconceptualise the past will have to accept that the decades of colonial and Chris- tian National education have been largely successful in achieving what the architects of these educational policies wanted. Most of the country's population was educated in these systems and has absorbed their unquestioning ethic and their foci of significance. As a result, many people do not consider the pre-1652 past to be of much interest. Many of the teachers in South African schools today know nothing about the subcontinent's pre-1652 history. Even more problematically, they have absorbed judgements, evaluations and attitudes, those intangibles that are far less easily corrected than grosser issues such as incorrect 'facts' or the celebrated inappropriate emphasis on the so- called 'Great Trek'. Then, beyond the schools, liberal and even radical historians have focussed on the more recent past, the centuries of conquest and increasingly formalised oppression, without recognizing the importance of the subcontinent's extended history. To be sure, southern Africa's 'prehistory', as historians incorrectly see it and some archaeologists incorrectly designate it, lies beyond their grasp by virtue of the training that its construction demands. Nevertheless, the production of a coherent, long-term view of southern Africa's past should not be inhibited by the foci and training of historians who are themselves products of the sectional views against which many of whom, in all sincerity and not without a measure of success, fight. Concentration on the nearly four centuries of colonial oppression and the invisibility of enormous national suffering during this period is clearly a priority, but that concentration must not be allowed to become an obsession that blinds historians to the subcontinent's extremely long and dynamic history and that, by its engaging of colonial oppression, robs the nation of an authentic African history. The emphases of Christian National Education must not be simply turned on their heads in such a way that the overall structure of the past as presently conceived (a comparatively uneventful, 'primitive' pre-colonial period followed by an important colonial period) remains intact.

Secondly, archaeologists will have to reconceptualize their own work. If history is to break through the 1652 barrier and extend into the indigenous past, the writers of the new, long-term histories - essentially archaeologists - will have to produce a past that can be understood by all people. Lithic and ceramic sequences, for example, may (or may not) be the 'nuts and bolts' of long-term

(archaeological) history, but they are not suitable for class- room teaching. Constructing an accessible past will entail populating it with real women and men and thereby bring- ing out issues that are intelligible as human concerns. It will not be good enough to tell the writers of school text- books and histories of southern Africa to consult the archaeological journals. Rather, archaeologists themselves will have to examine their emphases, reconceptualise their research and themselves do more to make southern Africa's long-term history accessible to the whole nation.

Note 1. I am grateful to Professor Meg Conkey for this word.

Acknowledgements The Rock Art Research Unit is funded by the Centre

for Science Development and the University of the Wit- watersrand. Opinions expressed and conclusions reached are the author's and are not necessarily to be attributed to either institution. The manuscript was kindly typed by Anne Holliday.

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Lewis-Williams, J.D. & Loubser, J.H.N. 1986. Deceptive appearances: a critique of southern African rock art studies. In: Wendorf, F. & Close, A.E. (eds) Advances in World Archaeology 5:253-289. New York: Academic Press.

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Southern African Archaeology in the 1990s