Sources of African History

Sources of African History

• The lecture introduces the concept of 'Sources of African History' and its scope.
• There are three key words: 'Africa', 'History', and 'Sources'.

Defining Africa and Africans

• Africa is understood as the continent of Black peoples, originating from North Africa, initially referring to north-eastern Tunisia
• It then broadened to include Tunisia and Algeria, and eventually the entire continent.
• 'Africa' or 'Africans' also includes African descendants in the diaspora, like in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Australia, who arrived due to adventure, slave trade, exile, and migration
• Not all Africans in the diaspora maintain social, cultural, or historical ties with Africa
• 'Africans' also refers to all residents of the African continent, including whites in Southern Africa, Asians in East Africa, and Lebanese in West Africa
• A person can be black without being African, and vice versa.

Defining History

• History is a story about people and their past activities, including social, political, economic, religious, and technological aspects.
• As an academic discipline, history began in Europe in the 19th century.
• History is unique because of its preoccupation with change over time, noting the development of various fields.
• History demonstrates developmental changes among humans and their environment over time.
• History is as old as mankind, with mankind first living in Africa, particularly in the Great Lakes region.

Early European Views

• Early European scholars denied Africa its rightful contribution to history.
• W.F. Hegel, Hugh Trevor-Roper, and A.P. Newton claimed that there was no history in Africa.
• Hegel divided Africa, excluding the northern part.
• Hegel placed Africa south of the Sahara, equating it with areas with less Arab dominance.
• Before the Sahara's desiccation, Africa was a single entity inhabited mainly by the black community.
• Misconceptions about African history stem from racism.
• Hegel saw only those of Caucasoid stock as capable of making history.
• He believed history began in Asia and culminated in Western Europe.

Other Factors

• Ignorance about the numerous sources used by non-literate societies to transmit their history.
• A large part of Africa was occupied by non-literate societies.
• Hegel, Newton, and Roper wrongly believed that history existed only in written form.

Defining Sources of History

• A 'source' is a work, object, or person that provides information about a fact, event, or community.
• Sources can provide primary data (first-hand information) or secondary data (second-hand information).
• A source of history is any work, object, or person that supplies information or evidence used in historical reconstruction.
• Sources of history encompass all information or evidence left by human beings from their past activities.
• Evidence can be obtained through spoken word, written/printed word, landscape, and material artifacts.
• Spoken word includes taped materials, and printed word includes online material.
• Obtaining historical sources requires consulting various disciplines, including geology, palaeontology, palaeobotany, radio-activity, geography, sociology, oral tradition/history, archeology, economics, population studies and linguistics.

Arther Marwick Quote

• All historical study is based upon the critical evaluation of a wider range of evidence
• History stresses the complexity of evaluating evidence and provides skills in handling source materials.
• It offers a good antidote to misinformation and propaganda from mass media.
• Careful handling of sources allows history practitioners to generate knowledge useful to contemporary society.

Summary Points

• The lesson defines 'sources of African history'.
• History is as old as mankind and Africa is the birthplace of both mankind and history.

Key Word Definitions

• Africa: The continent where Black people predominate, also including other races that have made it their home. 'Africans' can also refer to Black people in the diaspora.
• History: A story about people and their past activities, as old as mankind itself.
• Non-literate: Societies that lived without knowledge of reading and writing.
• Palaeobotany: The scientific study of ancient plant remains.
• Palaeontology: The scientific study of ancient material remains as evidence of past life.
• Sources: Anything that provides information about a fact, event, person, or community.

Archaeology: Definition of Terms

• Archaeology is derived from the Greek words Archios (ancient/old) and Logos (word/study).
• Archaeology can be defined as the study of the past/old/antiquities for reconstructing the past .
• Archaeology is a science systematically studying human cultural and social past through excavation, description, explanation, and analysis of past artifacts in context.
• Artifact: A Latin word derived from arte-skill and facere-to make, meaning items of material culture made with skills.
• Excavation: Originates from the Latin word "excavatus," meaning to dig from the ground. Excavation involves digging up the ground to uncover or expose something.

Archaeology as a Source of African History

• Archaeology corroborates or criticizes evidence like oral tradition and written sources, enriching historical writing
• Archaeology broadens historical studies across human existence.
• Archaeology provides valuable dates in historical writing.

Objectives of Studying Archaeology

• Define archaeology and state reasons for studying it.
• Discuss the steps followed during archaeological investigation.
• Explain relative and chronometric dating methods in archaeology.
• Explain the role of archaeology in historical reconstruction.

Reasons to Study Archaeology

• To understand archaeological entities, processes, artefacts, attributes and assemblages, providing material information on people's technology, economy, social units, burial practices, and artistic achievements.
• Archaeology offers everyone the chance to see reconstructed sites, widening the perspectives of history and helping understand human behavior.
• It is key to understanding African and other civilizations, especially where written records are absent, dating back at least 4 million years to humanity's origins.
• Archaeology can honor a nation's achievements.
• Southern Rhodesia changed to Zimbabwe after its monument and the Gold Coast became Ghana after ancient kingdoms
• Egyptians named their team "the Pharaohs" after ancient science/math rulers
• Kenya is considered to have a long history due to archeological finds.
• Israel sends soldiers to Masada for graduation, vowing to defend as zealots did

Other Reasons to Study Archaeology

• Archaeology helps emerging nations establish a cultural heritage.
• It assists historians by establishing architectural history; settlement size, trade, industry, and everyday life
• It is vital in confirming/criticizing other evidence for historical reconstructions
• Archaeology offers insights into the origins and spread of human populations and domesticates
• It helps archeologists cooperate with palaeobotanists, use pollen to study crop origins & ancient environments, suggest human & societal migrations and influences to detail human ecology
• Individuals can pursue careers as research scientists, teachers, company leaders, journalists, resource officers, and cultural advisors

Career Opportunities in Archaeology

• Museums in Kenya and the Kenya National Archives employ archaeology graduates as curators, site interpreters, and conservationists.
• They are valuable in the tourist industry by interpreting sites and promoting cultural tourism.
• Kenya Wildlife Service needs archeologists as educators to guide studies on human & nature evolution

Archaeology in Academia and Public Life

• Company executives benefit from these graduates for the analytical skills necessary to make decisions; the knowledge helps cut consultancy costs
• Archaeology helps journalists react to western propaganda due to an understanding of societal evolution: Archaeology helps romanticize TV like Conan

Archaeology, Business and Cultural Preservation

• Archaeologists can work with publishers on evolution and encourage the public to read
• Legal advisors and business can look to archaeologists
• Presidents can be archaeologists, setting up legislature preserving curios like Mali in 2002
• Archaeology is also studied for its inherent value, enriching human experiences and quality of life as Grahame Clarke said

Educational Integration and Significance

• Archaeology offers solutions to humanity, and development cannot occur without it: South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, and Mali adopted it so the interpretation of social and physical aspects get enhanced

Key Issues

• There are six of concern in archeological investigation: Site, site discovery, site survey, excavation, evidence interpretation, and preservation of recovered objects
• Archaeological sites are areas showing material evidence of past human activities, determined by the archaeologist based on cultural remains per square meter and the extent/density of visible surface remains
• Indicators include areas that are elevated above the ground, stone ruins, pyramids, and burial mounds.

Site Indicators and Discovery Methods

• Vegetation cover can indicate archaeological sites, with healthy vegetation due to high nitrogen/phosphorus or stunted vegetation.
• Soil color indicates human activity.
• Surface finds of artifacts like potsherds, bones, and stone tools.
• Accidental discoveries occur, such as during the construction of Masinga dam where artifacts were found showing an Iron Age Site
• It can be discovered by aerial photography if the sites are recorded from the plane.
• A remote Sensing process uses satellites to take pictures of the earth's surface and reveal configurations
• Restivity Surveys are done with a magnetometer to measure electrical resistance of the soil in undisturbed areas, as water and roads get measured by current
• Seek local information and visit the terrain.

Site Surveying and Fossil Collection

• Site surveying is the simplest way of getting ideas about the site's extent.
• Site surveys are done by studying the distribution of surviving features and recording
• Survey's 1st form is mapping for accurate record of data on surface features
• There are two ways to find fossils or artifacts: Collect everything or collect artifacts if an area known

Excavation and Stratigraphy

• Excavation is a major, destructive undertaking.
• Digs from the ground provide information on the guidance of prehistoric times, chosen only to when threatened with destruction
• Considerations include reasoning for evolution
• Excavation yields two forms of activity: Human or Period
• Archaeologists get contemporaneity to prove artifacts happen with disturbed context
• Dimensions are analyzed with stratigraphy. It shows a sequence with an excavated vertical profile

Pre-Excavation Considerations

• Permission to excavate is mandatory for the owner. It comes from the National Museums of Kenya and the President is mandated by Cap 218 to provide a custodian
• Accessibility will determine the vehicle on weather to use
• Finance depends on excavation

Excavation and Knowledge Acquisition

• Flexible strategy helps find culture with knowledge of excavated site
• Two forms are remote sensoring or surface collection. Both get such knowledge
• A testing strategy involves small squares to collect variations
• Two excavation methods include Area or Horizontal, or Vertical

Excavation Methods and Recording

• Area or Horizontal seeks for settlement, households that could potentially become large, in dig areas of the earth; Vertical excavation covers information that includes layer for artifact samples
• A day-to-day notebook catalogs all excavations
• Recording leads to classification of material which requires lab followed by final report

Interpreting Evidence

• Interpretation of evidence is based on sources available and is conditioned by nature
• Artifacts has drawbacks (wooden houses, potsherds, burials)
• Studies of remains attempt to reconstruct inhabitant history
• This needs to care about metals that damage pottery
• Heat should get avoided to avoid disintegration artifacts

Handling and Analyzing Bones

• Bones preserved for anthropologist's to determine gender and ethnicity (skull, lower jaw, limps, ect) which are applied to acetone to prevent disintegration
• Attempts will show disease, wounds or death, and skeletons
• Acetone applies

Dating Methods: Relative vs. Chronometrical

• Relative is ''as old as'' (a) which determines chronology to scientist
• Chronometrical is ''absolute'' (b) which helps trace story if world past
• Archaeological materials are interpreted with morphological aspects to help theory
• Rigorous dating can help detect falsehoods in case finds. (Lucy or Piltdown) which have both been redated

Archaeological Dating and Historical Authenticity

• Dating is used with historians with Herodotus' pyramid construction that was authenticated.
• It is used to understand Egypt in Asia, with dating telling man first evolved in Kenya before Egypt.
• Artifacts can reconstruct history dating by delineating, as done by Christian Thornsen in the 19th century
• Periods can be relative too

Relative Dating Types

• R1 primary sequences (Africanus)
• R2 denotes a local sequence that gets stone bowl culture
• R3 denotes dating that compared morphologies
• R4 denotes dating of size of brain and jaw

Relative Dating Examples

• Stratigraphy which can analyze a younger one or another
• Fluorine which analyzes

Stratigraphy and Superimposition

• Skulls are defined at depth of meters which may give evolution ideas (10 m compared to at 20cm).
• Its focus is on superimposition to determine how far lower the stratum or layer is by age
• Earth laid down by rock

Event Sequencing and Disadvantages

• Event can place itself after or before like at BC and AD but cannot get known
• Activity of volcano not accounted

Fluorine Analysis Method

• A fluorine works only for bones assumption as groundwater has a fluorine presence
• This results by demonstrating the human is much older then jaw

Fluorine Analysis Disadvantages

• Can vary, thus making comparing bones impossible
• Stratigraphy cannot define strata ages
• Absolute dating will define the number of phenomenon
• Uranium helps to know if radioactive isotopes of element variations

Dating Methods Overview

• Radioactive is the theory that isotopes are unstable
• Patterns show the geological time clock
• Chronometric tech has to be used with artifacts

Uranium dating

• The uranium decays to get a life (4.5) with uranium (238U) lost per year
• The age of rocks is 4.5 years with 238U dating with isotope

Potassium Dating

• Potassium makes a half life for 1.3 million years
• Heat increases activity
• Date of rocks is measured in heated tests. (Potassium/Argon)
• Dating extensively has to be done per (1 to 5 million years)

Material Weaknesses

• Organic components don't measure bones and require rock matrices
• C14 half life is 5730 that dates materials with probability errors
• Rationale comes with radiation in earth

Radioactive Isotopes

• Neutrons are produced with carbon. Carbon has ration and mixes with process
• They are transferred to all for at fixed ration
• Organism no absorb with rate by nitrogen 14 for 5730 y

Dating Procedures

• It comes down to percentage with 14 atoms per year that charcoal takes
• If not, then about 11,460 years left.
• All processes have little

Advantage and Weakness: Carbon Dating

• Dates are typically accurate (Organic origin)
• This means (up to 7000) are smaller and only reliable organic material

Additional Factors & Dating

• Contamination helps error
• Methods are all precise
• Dating takes place with accurate date (+) (-) factor
• Archaeomagnetism/Palaeomagnetism depends on dating the clay
• If no approximate, it will never match. This shows shifted magnetic pole

Dating Drawbacks and Additional Methods

• It help to get confirmation from derivation
• Dendrochronology has to apply as well as to climate and process
• This all goes with chronology that check radio dating and trees to show beyond
• Varve chronology only works with the deposit
• During a season, these sites only work in cold latitudes

Conclusion

• Meaning of archaeology is listed. As well, its methods, and dating
• Not just construction but the individual
• One of cardinal methods is archaeological findings and transcendence