Abstract
From its inception in 2014, the interdisciplinary Bantu Mobility Project has sought to refocus research on the Bantu Expansions away from the macroscale towards a “writ small” approach within a well-defined region with well-understood episodes of language expansion, namely, the middle Kafue and middle Zambezi catchments of southern Zambia. This tighter focus enables the project to capture the human agency shaping movements of people, animals, material goods, and languages, and to consider the productive tension between mobility and rootedness as Bantu-speaking populations became settled in particular regions between the sixth and sixteenth centuries AD. From an archaeological standpoint, careful study of the spatial contexts of recovered artifacts—and of the various human activities that left them behind—captures different forms and scales of mobility that existed alongside the rootedness of mounded settlements occupied over generations. This paper shows how a better understanding of those spatial contexts, and the settlement patterns and land use they encode, is being achieved around Basanga, Zambia, by combining systematic archaeological survey with data derived from satellite imagery using analytical techniques available through GIS, such as spatial interpolation and linear regression modeling. Ultimately, the project will aim to integrate the insights of that geospatial analysis with other archaeological, linguistic, historical, and environmental datasets to capture the stories of the people whose ideas, practices, and forms of mobility and rootedness constituted the local experience of the Bantu Expansions.
Résumé
Depuis sa création en 2014, le Bantu Mobility Project, un projet interdisciplinaire sur l’histoire de la mobilité des bantous, a proposé de remplacer une approche à grande échelle vers une approche à petite échelle dans une région bien définie avec des épisodes d’expansion linguistique bien compris, les bassins versants du Kafue moyen et du Zambezi moyen dans le sud de la Zambie. Cette focalisation permet au projet de capturer l’agence humaine influençant les mouvements des personnes, des animaux, des matériaux et des langues, et de prendre en compte la tension productive entre mobilité et enracinement au fur lorsque les populations de langue bantou se sont installées dans ces régions entre les 6e et 16e siècles. D’un point de vue archéologique, une étude du contexte spatial des artefacts récupérés (et des diverses activités humaines qui les ont laissés) capture différentes formes et échelles des mobilité qui existaient parallèlement à l’enracinement des établissements en ruines occupés au fil des générations. Une meilleure compréhension de ces contextes spatiaux, ainsi que des modèles de peuplement et de l’utilisation des terres qu’ils codent, est réalisé autour de Basanga (en Zambie), en combinant une prospection archéologique systématique avec des données dérivées de l’imagerie satellitaire à l’aide de techniques analytiques disponibles via SIG, telles que l’interpolation spatiale et modélisation par régression linéaire. Le projet intégrera les connaissances de l’analyse géospatiale avec d’autres données archéologiques, linguistiques, historiques et environnementales pour capturer les histoires des personnes dont les idées, les pratiques et les formes de mobilité et d’enracinement ont constitué l’expérience locale des extensions bantoues.
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Funding
The work described here was conducted under the oversight of the Zambian National Heritage Conservation Commission (permit #SWR-2014-20-06-1), where we have benefitted from the assistance of Richard Mbewe. Our project has also been affiliated in Zambia with the Livingstone Museum, where we greatly appreciated the collaborative spirit of the director, George Mudenda, as well as the assistance of the entire staff, particularly Maggie Katongo and Happy Chilufya. We thank Chief Musongwa for facilitating fieldwork in the area around Basanga and providing valuable historical information. We are grateful to Duncan Shing’andu and his family and neighbors for their help and hospitality across multiple field seasons. The headman of New Ngoma, Mr. Shandahu, assisted in locating several mounds. We also appreciate the cooperation of Chief Shezongo and the warden of Kafue National Park, Elliot Kasempa, for facilitating the survey in their respective areas. Students from the Rice and Georgetown University field schools contributed tremendously to the work in 2018. Finally, we would be remiss if we did not also acknowledge our extraordinary research assistant, Brave Mushabati. The work here was funded by pilot grants through Rice University’s Social Science Research Institute, Rice University Archaeological Field School, and Georgetown University’s Office of the Provost. We declare that we have no conflicts of interest.
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Pawlowicz, M., Fleisher, J. & de Luna, K. Capturing People on the Move: Spatial Analysis and Remote Sensing in the Bantu Mobility Project, Basanga, Zambia. Afr Archaeol Rev 37, 69–93 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-020-09363-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-020-09363-0