Landscape Transformations and the Archaeology of Impact: Social Disruption and State Formation in Southern Africa (Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology)

An attempt to use archaeological materials to investigate the colonization of southeastern Africa during the period 1500 to 1900. Perry demonstrates the usefulness of archaeology in bypassing the biases of the ethnohistorical and documentary record and generating a more comprehensive understanding of history. Special attention is paid to the period of state formation in Swaziland and a critique of the 'Settler Model', which the author finds to be invalid. Preliminaries......Page 1 Foreword......Page 6 Preface......Page 10 Contents......Page 14 CHAPTER 1. Southern Africa and the Archaeology of Impact......Page 18 CHAPTER 2. The Mfecane/Difaqane Problem from the Documentary Record......Page 26 CHAPTER 3. Archaeological Correlates of the Settler Model......Page 38 CHAPTER 4. Previous Archaeological Research......Page 64 CHAPTER5. Using Archaeology to Study the Processes of the Mfecane/Difaqane......Page 92 CHAPTER 6 . Toward an Archaeology of Impact......Page 156 References......Page 176 Index......Page 190 In 1984, Perry went to Swaziland, in southern Africa, to do archaeological fieldwork on the emergence of the Swazi state. He concentrated on the unsanctioned realms of the recent history, the Mfecane/Difaqane period, and soon discovered that no archaeology had been undertaken and that the official r