Thinking Across the African Past: Interdisciplinarity and Early History

Taking "Pandemic" Seriously: Making the Black Death Global

“…Reconstructing the history of the Black Death can proceed from many motives, and methodologies will be chosen according to the objectives that various researchers wish to achieve as well as their training and resources. Some possible methods for exploring plague's histories have not even been discussed here, such as the use of historical linguistics, which has already proven a powerful ally to both archaeological and genetics work (e.g., de Luna, Fleisher, and McIntosh 2012). Plague is an "elephant" that demands the efforts of many blind men and women to assess its full, huge, and awful expanse.…”

Painting in Turbulent Times: House Wall Art, Culture, and Commentary in Colonial East Africa

“…deep symbolisms, social and political commentaries or a combination of all these and more reasons. To interpret any art or symbolic communication across time and cultures is not without its challenges (de Luna, Fleisher, and McIntosh 2012;Schoenbrun 2012;Fleish and Stephens 2016). Yet engaging in such analysis offers key insights for historians interested in histories of both African popular culture and African art (Alpers 1988: 75).…”

Boots on the ground in Africa's ancient DNA ‘revolution’: archaeological perspectives on ethics and best practices

“…While aDNA is frequently hailed as revolutionary, many of the questions that genetics can address have been explored for decades using archaeological, bioarchaeological and linguistic data—albeit at varying spatial and temporal scales of analysis (De Luna et al 2012; Robertshaw 2012; MacEachern 2013). The true revolution is in our practice: archaeogenetics thrusts together specialists who not only have different training, but also distinct work cultures (Pluciennik 2006).…”