Studying Meaning in African Worlds Without Literacy Working Group

Cosponsored by the departs of Anthropology and History

Making History in Banda Redux: Three Decades of Puzzling over Global Entanglements and their Effects

Ann Stahl, Chair and Professor, Anthropology, University of Victoria

Ann B. Stahl (PhD, Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley 1985) is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada. She is an anthropological archaeologist whose long-term research project in the Banda area of west central Ghana focuses on how daily life was reshaped through involvement in global trade (via trans-Saharan and later Atlantic networks) and colonial entanglements. Her research draws on broader theoretical and methodological interests in materiality, political economy, analogy, and the production of history in the present. Her earlier work on dietary reconstruction and the transition to food production in Africa shapes her ongoing interest in the dietary changes associated with global exchange, while her more recent work has explored transformations in production, consumption and ritual practice, among other topics.