Speaking with Substance: Methods of Language and Materials in African History(Contributions from Africa)

This volume proposes a supplemental approach to interdisciplinary historical reconstructions that draw on archaeological and linguistic data. The introduction lays out the supplemental approach, situating it in the broader context of similar interdisciplinary research methods in other world regions. Reflecting the arguments of the volume and its goal to document the process rather than the outcome of interdisciplinary collaboration, the volume is organized into two two-chapter case studies. Within each case study, the non-specialist develops an historical interpretation using their own research findings and published data from the other discipline.This chapter is followed by critical commentary from the specialist, a dialogue clarifying the commentary and specialists’ methods, and a second short historical interpretation that deploys insights from the supplemental approach. The conclusion reflects on the challenges of disciplinary conventions to interdisciplinary research and the contribution of the supplemental approach to efforts to know the history of oral societies in Africa and beyond

Table of Contents:
1. Interdisciplinary Reconstructions of Prehistory in Africa and Beyond.- 2. The Politics of Food Collection in South Central Africa.- 3. Commentary, Dialogue, & Supplemental Reading: South Central Africa.- 4. When did Feasting Emerge on the Eastern African Coast? New Perspectives from Historical Linguistics and Archaeology.- 5. Commentary, Dialogue, & Supplemental Reading: Eastern Africa Coast.- 6. Conclusion. 

About the Author :
Kathryn M. de Luna is an historian of early central Africa and Associate Professor of African History at Georgetown University. She is the author of Collecting Food, Cultivating People: Subsistence and Society in Central Africa (Yale, 2016) and co-editor with Ericka Albaugh of Tracing Language Movement in Africa (Oxford, 2018). Her current research focuses on the history of pyrotechnologies and the senses in early central Africa.  Jeffrey Fleisher is an archaeologist of complex societies specializing on the Swahili coast of eastern Africa. His current research at the medieval site of Songo Mnara in Tanzania focuses on the use of open space with Swahili towns; he has worked to integrate historical linguistic data with archaeological materials from this site in order to interpret spatial activities. His previous research on Pemba Island, Tanzania focused on the ritual politics of consumption, addressing feasting practices and emergence of social power.

Review :
“This book is thus an essential contribution as it launches a vigorous argument for the validity of the supplemental approach to the interdisciplinary work between archaeology and historical linguistics in the field of early African history.” (Marcos Leitão de Almeida, Azania, Archaeological Research in Africa, Vol. 56 (2), 2021)