Materializing Colonial Encounters

This volume investigates the material production and expression of colonial experiences in Africa. It combines archaeological, historical, and ethnographic sources to explore the diverse pathways, practices, and projects constructed by Africans in their engagement with the forces of colonial modernity and capitalism. The volume is situated in ongoing debates on materiality, targeting archaeologists interested in conceptualizing colonial encounters and heightening the visibility of African historical archaeology to scholars of colonialism and imperialism working in other disciplines. It brings together an array of junior and senior scholars, whose contributions constitute a rich sample of the vibrant archaeological research conducted in Africa today, blending conceptual sophistication with inspired fieldwork. They target a variety of cultural, historical and colonial contexts and are driven by a plurality of perspectives, but they are bound by a shared commitment to postcolonial, critical, and material culture theories. While the book focuses on western and southern Africa - the sub-regions that boast the deepest traditions of historical archaeological research in the continent, attention was also placed on including case-studies from traditionally less well-represented areas (East African and Swahili coasts, Madagascar), whose material pasts are nevertheless essential to a wider comprehension of variability and comparability of modern colonial conditions. Consequently, the volume lends a unique latitudinal look at African experiences across the tangle of imperial geographies on the continent, with case-studies focusing on Anglophone, Francophone and Dutch-speaking contexts. The volume is an exciting opportunity to present this work to wider audiences and foster conversations with a broader community of scholars about the material fashioning of colonial life, relations and configurations of power.