When:
Monday, October 13, 2014
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM CT
Where: 620 Library Place, Conference Room, 620 Library Place , Evanston, IL 60208 map it
Audience: Faculty/Staff - Student - Public - Post Docs/Docs - Graduate Students
Contact:
Program of African Studies
(847) 491-7323
Group: Program of African Studies
Category: Lectures & Meetings
October 13th, 4pm
An Historical Approach to the Archaeology of Tanzania's Ancient Hinterland
Jonathan Walz, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Rollins College
Abstract: Dr. Walz reports on an historical approach to deep-time African pasts in northeastern Tanzania, 500–1900 CE. Systematic, problem-oriented research and its findings along a nineteenth-century caravan route transform understandings of ancient communities and a space in Africa's continental hinterland. Project findings, for instance about settlement and interactions, suggest that if archaeologists engage contemporary Africans, employ diverse sources, and operate at multiple scales (including a regional scale), they can fundamentally remake pasts.
Bio: Jonathan Walz is an anthropologist who practices archaeology. His scholarship emphasizes deep time historical archaeology in East Africa and human and object itineraries in the ancient Indian Ocean. Dr. Walz earned a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Florida, where he also taught for three years in the Interdisciplinary Honors Program and for the Center for African Studies. With support from FLAS and Fulbright-Hays, he studied African history and Swahili at the University of Dar es Salaam. For his doctoral research, Dr. Walz completed a regional scale archaeology project in NE Tanzania that also integrated unique findings from ethnography and oral traditions. Currently, Dr. Walz is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Coordinator of the Archaeology Program at Rollins College in Florida. His research continues at multiple localities in coastwise East Africa and in Uganda and India.