Crafting Archaeological Practice in Africa and Beyond: Celebrating the Contributions of Ann B. Stahl to Global Archaeology

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Crafting Archaeological Practice in Africa and Beyond: Celebrating the Contributions of Ann B. Stahl to Global Archaeology" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Over the last four decades, Ann B. Stahl has been at the leading edge of Africanist and Americanist archaeology. Through a series of multiple, overlapping engagements across theoretical and methodological registers, Stahl has crafted a new kind of archaeological practice that is simultaneously community-engaged, theoretically innovative, and future-oriented. In this session, we reflect on her intellectual improvisations and how they emerged out of a commitment to community-based, long-term fieldwork in Banda, Ghana. We consider the “communities of archaeological practice” inspired and built through Ann’s work and mentorship, as well as their implications for the direction of archaeology as a whole. Key themes include (1) how pasts, presents, and futures mingle in archaeological and digital worlds; (2) interdisciplinary engagements with materiality; (3) global entanglements and taste; (4) relationality and communities of practice; and (5) archaeology and education.

Other Keywords
Theory • Historic • Historical Archaeology • Ceramic Analysis • Ethnohistory/History • Architecture • History Of Archaeology • Cultural Resource Management • West Africa • Ethnoarchaeology

Geographic Keywords
Africa (Continent) • Republic of Guinea (Country) • Republic of Guinea-Bissau (Country) • Republic of Liberia (Country) • Republic of Senegal (Country) • Republic of Sierra Leone (Country) • Republic of The Gambia (Country) • Republic of Botswana (Country) • Republic of Namibia (Country) • Republic of South Africa (Country)

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  • Documents (11)
Documents
  • Ann Stahl’s Archival Imagination (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Francois Richard.

    This is an abstract from the "Crafting Archaeological Practice in Africa and Beyond: Celebrating the Contributions of Ann B. Stahl to Global Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In *Making History in Banda*, Ann Stahl stages an encounter with Rolph Trouillot’s *Silencing the Past* to develop an inspiring discussion of sources, interdisciplinary thinking, the supplemental use of archives, and the fraught dynamics of historical production in...

  • Archaeology, Indigenous Archiving Practices, and the African Past: Researching the History of Atlantic Slavery in Peki, Ghana (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kofi Nutor.

    This is an abstract from the "Crafting Archaeological Practice in Africa and Beyond: Celebrating the Contributions of Ann B. Stahl to Global Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses the creative use of indigenous and conventional archives and archaeological data in unearthing the history of Atlantic slavery in Peki. This frontier Ewe community in present-day Ghana led the pan-Ewe Krepi state out of Akwamu and Asante...

  • Engaging Materiality: Archaeology of Craft Production in Igbo Ukwu (Ninth–Twelfth Century CE) (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Adeyemo.

    This is an abstract from the "Crafting Archaeological Practice in Africa and Beyond: Celebrating the Contributions of Ann B. Stahl to Global Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the study of craft production in antiquity. It combines theoretical and methodological toolkits from archaeology, material science, studies of craft production, and ancient economies to investigate the organization...

  • From Making to Mobilizing History in Banda: Learning from Ann Stahl’s Place-Based Approach to Archaeology (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Logan.

    This is an abstract from the "Crafting Archaeological Practice in Africa and Beyond: Celebrating the Contributions of Ann B. Stahl to Global Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ann Stahl’s career spans over 40 years, and for most of that time, she has focused on working in one small place in central Ghana known as Banda. Banda is different than most regions where archaeologists usually conduct sustained, long-term fieldwork: it was not a...

  • Improvisation and Creativity at an Emergent Andean Center (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Roddick.

    This is an abstract from the "Crafting Archaeological Practice in Africa and Beyond: Celebrating the Contributions of Ann B. Stahl to Global Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ann Stahl continues to produce a rich, and provocative scholarship, one that has inspired scholars across regions and generations. She has long positioned herself within "intellectual crosscurrents," drawing on literature from a wide range of disciplines. Most...

  • Interdisciplinary Collaboration between Educators and Archaeologists (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison Balabuch.

    This is an abstract from the "Crafting Archaeological Practice in Africa and Beyond: Celebrating the Contributions of Ann B. Stahl to Global Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology contains fascinating subject matter that can provide the themes and content for many school subjects in K-12 education. Although there are many resources available for teachers, they are often difficult to find and/or only focus on the basic skills or...

  • Keep Your Eyes on the Practices and Process: Ann Stahl’s Impact on the Archaeology of the Bight of Benin and Beyond (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Neil Norman.

    This is an abstract from the "Crafting Archaeological Practice in Africa and Beyond: Celebrating the Contributions of Ann B. Stahl to Global Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Through a series of publications, boots on the ground fieldwork, and dynamic community collaboration, Ann Stahl set the pace for an engaged archaeology that centered historical processes, daily practices, scale, and dimensions of time. Although these theoretical...

  • Negotiating Local Tastes in Trade Networks: Reflections on Ann Stahl’s Contributions to West African Archaeology (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Dela Kuma.

    This is an abstract from the "Crafting Archaeological Practice in Africa and Beyond: Celebrating the Contributions of Ann B. Stahl to Global Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. My research on local tastes and embodied practices during the Afro-European trade in Ghana is greatly influenced by Ann Stahl’s extensive theoretical work in West Africa. The 19th and early 20th centuries in West Africa witnessed a surge in the demand and export of...

  • Pursuing Park Museums and Archaeology in Ghana: A New Frontier in Heritage Education and Development (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only William Gblerkpor.

    This is an abstract from the "Crafting Archaeological Practice in Africa and Beyond: Celebrating the Contributions of Ann B. Stahl to Global Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. How significant are newly established museums and archaeological projects in national parks to the future of Ghana's heritage education and community development? The inauguration of the Museum of Natural and Cultural Heritage at Shai Hills has revealed a promising...

  • A Supplemental Approach: The Influence of Ann Stahl’s Interdisciplinarity to African Archaeology (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Fleisher.

    This is an abstract from the "Crafting Archaeological Practice in Africa and Beyond: Celebrating the Contributions of Ann B. Stahl to Global Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is a long history of interdisciplinary research on the precolonial African past, with historians, archaeologists, and historical linguists seeking out and drawing on insights from their allied disciplines. These scholars often seek to integrate different types...

  • The Three Phases of Sans-Souci: An Architecture of Remembering and Forgetting in the Kingdom of Hayti (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only J. Cameron Monroe.

    This is an abstract from the "Crafting Archaeological Practice in Africa and Beyond: Celebrating the Contributions of Ann B. Stahl to Global Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Following three centuries of colonial rule, the Haitian Revolution ushered a period of political change, one in which ex-slaves, maroons, and free hommes de couleur united to forge new political institutions on the island of Saint Domingue. Henry Christophe was...