Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa

ISSN: 0067-270X (Print) 1945-5534 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/raza20

Mobilizing Heritage in the Maghrib: Rights,

Development, and Transnational Archaeologies

Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels

To cite this article: Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels (2013) Mobilizing Heritage in the Maghrib: Rights,
Development, and Transnational Archaeologies, Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa,
48:1, 150-151, DOI: 10.1080/0067270X.2012.756741

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0067270X.2012.756741

Published online: 08 Mar 2013.

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150 PhD Abstracts

still too patchy for meaningful interpretation but differs from that elsewhere. Overall,
the differing cultural signatures in western South Africa suggest that, although many
questions will likely remain unanswered, a better understanding of southern African
early herding will only be possible with a study addressing all regions simultaneously.

Jayson Orton
ACO Associates, St James, 7945, South Africa
jayson.orton@aco-associates.com
# 2013, Jayson Orton

Mobilizing Heritage in the Maghrib: Rights, Development, and Transnational

Archaeologies. Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, 2010. http://dx.doi.
org/10.1080/0067270X.2012.756741

Archaeology was born in the service of the nation-state, as a technical practice for
engaging with the past, but has since expanded to transnational ambitions. Indeed,
the past is increasingly drawn on for negotiating specific kinds of relationships that
mediate authority and action on the global stage. I examine how the material
remains of the past are dealt with at the global scale: how historic material is
managed under the purview of the international community, and mobilised in social
projects that mediate global relations.
The expansive reach of such a subject is focused on the region of North Africa to
provide rich contextual analysis based on archaeological, ethnographic and archival
evidence. This evidence was collected during 2004
2009 from Tunisia, Morocco and
international organisations headquartered in Paris, Rome and Washington DC
(UNESCO, ICOMOS, ICCROM and the World Bank). North Africa bears a well-
preserved material record representing a long history of ‘global’ connection and a
broad diversity of traditions. Through studying the management practices of
communities, heritage agencies and international organisations, I show how these
strategies intersect over the same material culture to produce, reinforce or interrupt
contemporary globalising relationships. I argue that globalisation is an historical
narrative, creatively constructed while also being subject to long-term historical
trends established in the socio-economic foundations of empire, colonialism and
development.
My approach explodes multi-sited ethnography across time and space. Extending
ethnographic methods to the past, I combine ethnohistory with historical research
tied to issues of scale, balancing large temporal frames with advances in microhistory.
In the first half of this dissertation I set forth an archaeology of rights at the site of
Dougga, Tunisia and its hinterland. A history of rights, as they are attached to
material of historical import, demonstrates how authority depends upon claims to
the past, and how rights draw force from their historical constitution. Further, before
we can ask the question ‘‘Who owns the past?’’ I suggest we first ask ‘‘How exactly is
the past owned?’’ The answer suggests that multiple overlapping regimes of rights
and obligations coexist and contend with one another and that modes of ownership
and possession are inherited along with the material past itself.
Building on this history, the second half of this dissertation explores the
marshalling of material heritage for globalising issues such as human rights, poverty,
 Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 151

development, governance, land tenure, identity, citizenship, Islamism and transna-

tional activism. My multi-sited approach follows how the past circulates as objects,
texts, technologies and expert knowledge, variously coming together in assemblages
that produce the kinds of places and processes described as globalisation. By
presenting globalisation as an historical process, I show how constructing history in
North Africa likewise constructs the spatial and economic relationships of our
contemporary world.

Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels

North Dakota State University
Fargo, United States of America
kathryn.lafrenz.samuels@ndsu.edu
# 2013, Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels

Metalworkers and Smelting Precincts: Technological Reconstructions of Second

Millennium Copper Production Around Phalaborwa, Northern Lowveld of South
Africa. University College, London, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0067270X.2012.
759683

This thesis examines metal production debris with the aim of reconstructing
extractive metal technologies employed around Phalaborwa during the second
millennium AD. Mining and metallurgy were previously identified as exclusive
pulling factors for Iron Age human settlement in this agropastorally marginal area.
Several Iron Age settlements with extensive evidence of metal production were
previously documented. This thesis places emphasis on extractive copper metallurgy
previously neglected for several reasons. The early second millennium AD site of
Shankare is used as the main case study, whilst previously excavated metallurgical
assemblages from late second millennium AD sites are reinvestigated to explore
diachronic changes in smelting technologies. The thesis is inspired by contemporary
theoretical developments in the field of the ‘Anthropology of Technology’.
Standard archaeological fieldwork procedures together with post-fieldwork
laboratory studies were employed. Separation of copper from iron production debris
was impossible visually, but a combination of field observations and archaeometric
approaches offered the answer. Archaeological ores, slags and technical ceramics
were subjected to optical microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (XRF)
and scanning electron microscopy energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDS).
Copper smelting slags differ significantly from iron smelting slags in their
chemistry and microstructure. There are subtle differences in copper slags from
different archaeological sites. Earlier copper slags are heterogeneous with notable
unreacted mineral fragments. Despite these differences, both copper and iron slags
are linked to the same ore deposit in the Palabora Igneous Complex.
The metallurgical chaı̂nes opératoires employed in the research area are
reconstructed. Copper production at Shankare is represented by crushed furnace
slags and secondary refining ceramic crucibles. Iron slags are confined to dedi-
cated metallurgical middens, whereas copper production debris is present as low
density scatters and in domestic middens. This spatial configuration confirms recent
observations by other archaeologists in southern Africa. These results permit