Essential Contributions from African to Global Archaeology

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Essential Contributions from African to Global Archaeology" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeology throughout the African continent in the last few decades has provided important insights into questions that are relevant to archaeology worldwide. Yet, these new theoretical perspectives and datasets have not been widely incorporated into scholarship elsewhere in the world, perhaps a latent effect of lingering colonialist perspectives, and consequently have not played prominently in global archaeological debates. This session aims to correct this situation by highlighting the ways that Africanist scholarship pushes forward debates on a variety of important topics, including but not limited to Indigenous archaeologies, domestication of plants and animals, egalitarianism and inequality, the practice of archaeology, complexity and urbanism, site formation processes, histories of technology, religion, and political process. It will bring together scholars working in Africa with those working elsewhere to explore thematic and theoretical connections and identify new directions that emerge from these dialogues.