Entangled materialities and new global histories from southern Africa

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• Abigail J. Moffett (McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge)
• Tuesday 19 November 2024, 13:00-14:00
• Garrod Seminar Room, MacDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Kiah Johnson.

New research combined with innovative methodological and theoretical approaches provides critical opportunities to challenge and enrich perspectives on global connections in past societies. Despite early evidence of contact between communities on the southern African coastline and the wider Indian Ocean maritime network from 600 CE, the relationship between coastal communities and the networks that linked them to the gold producing regions of the interior and the maritime routes of the Indian Ocean region remain poorly understood. Our current project, ENTANGLED , brings together distinct lines of enquiry to study the nature and impact of global connections in the southern African region during the Global Middle Ages (AD 500-1500).

Entangled is a five-year Starting Grant awarded by the ERC and funded by the UKRI . In this presentation we provide an overview of the aims of the project, addressing the development of maritime economies in southern Mozambique, the nature and directionality of trade routes that linked interior and coastal communities, and the value of traded items across diverse paths of exchange and consumption. We present the results of our recent fieldwork on Bazaruto Archipelago, the adjacent mainland areas, and test excavations at the newly identified Zimbabwe type site of Ngomene. Drawing on these findings, we discuss evidence for overlapping networks of interaction linking coastal and inland communities in southern Africa, bringing to the fore the entangled nature of ‘global’ maritime economies.

This talk is part of the African Archaeology Group Seminar Series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• African Archaeology Group Seminar Series
• Garrod Seminar Room, MacDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

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