Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

A Reconsideration of Rwandan Archaeological Ceramics and their Political Significance in a Post-Genocide Era

A Reconsideration of Rwandan Archaeological Ceramics and their Political Significance in a... This paper reviews Rwandan ceramic typologies and integrates these with recent regional ones through the consideration of four new ceramic assemblages dating to three distinct phases across the past 2,000 years. In addition to providing a synthesis of ceramic approaches as a research resource, it also suggests that ceramics previously termed type C might now better be understood as a transitional form of Urewe. In so doing, it both describes how previous accounts of Rwanda's archaeological ceramics reproduced a contested ethno-racial colonial construction of Rwandan society and suggests the replacement of these with non-ethno-racial explanations of material culture change proposed elsewhere for comparable circumstances in Great Lakes Africa. Finally, as the government seeks to reintroduce secondary school history teaching using archaeological narratives, it discusses the contemporary political significance of this and other research in post-genocide Rwanda, arguing that archaeology, whether framed in technical language or not, has contemporary political reference. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png African Archaeological Review Springer Journals

A Reconsideration of Rwandan Archaeological Ceramics and their Political Significance in a Post-Genocide Era

African Archaeological Review , Volume 30 (4) – Nov 21, 2013

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/a-reconsideration-of-rwandan-archaeological-ceramics-and-their-1aAxFSgxS0

References (78)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by Springer Science+Business Media New York
Subject
Social Sciences, general; Archaeology; Anthropology; Regional and Cultural Studies
ISSN
0263-0338
eISSN
1572-9842
DOI
10.1007/s10437-013-9144-1
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This paper reviews Rwandan ceramic typologies and integrates these with recent regional ones through the consideration of four new ceramic assemblages dating to three distinct phases across the past 2,000 years. In addition to providing a synthesis of ceramic approaches as a research resource, it also suggests that ceramics previously termed type C might now better be understood as a transitional form of Urewe. In so doing, it both describes how previous accounts of Rwanda's archaeological ceramics reproduced a contested ethno-racial colonial construction of Rwandan society and suggests the replacement of these with non-ethno-racial explanations of material culture change proposed elsewhere for comparable circumstances in Great Lakes Africa. Finally, as the government seeks to reintroduce secondary school history teaching using archaeological narratives, it discusses the contemporary political significance of this and other research in post-genocide Rwanda, arguing that archaeology, whether framed in technical language or not, has contemporary political reference.

Journal

African Archaeological ReviewSpringer Journals

Published: Nov 21, 2013

There are no references for this article.