Visualising Southern African late iron age settlements in the digital age

VISUALISING SOUTHERN AFRICAN LATE IRON AGE SETTLEMENTS IN THE DIGITAL AGE studies the visualisation of Southern African Late Iron Age Settlements (LIAS) (c. 900–1800) across the late nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries (1871–2020), as found in a survey of the cultural production, circulation, reproduction, and theorisation of illustrations accompanying archaeological, anthropological, and historical Southern African LIAS research. A valuable contribution of LIAS research is its continuous demonstration of a pre-colonial hub of cosmopolitanisms on a scale never imagined in colonial histories of 'indigenous' communities – thought of as the ultimate 'other' of global modernity. This study focuses on the visualisation of four settlements, namely: Mapungubwe, Khami, Great Zimbabwe, and Bokoni. It is proposed that as with the authority of Eurocentric 'formative interpretations' of LIAS research currently under review, visualisations accompanying LIAS also need to be critically relooked at within appropriate visual cultural methodologies informed by postcolonial, decolonial and critical race theory. The study follows a two-fold methodological framework involving a textual analysis and an image-making process. On both accounts, the study focuses on the cultural politics of representation, asking: who and what is being made visible in the visualisation of settlements accompanying LIAS research; what forms of materiality and spatiality are pictured and performed; what is the affect such visualisations have on the people that experience them; and finally, what do they mean in the context in which they are made

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Pretoria

Year dc:date.issued

2022

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Kriel, Lize
• Schwarz, Anja

• UCTD
• Visual Culture Studies
• Iron age settlement
• Digital age
• Southern Africa archaeology
• Digital archaeology
• Archaeological visualization
• Heritage visualization
• Spatial analysis
• GIS (Geographic Information Systems)

Statement dc:rights

• © 2022 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria.

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

A2023

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/89485