Contextualizing Ritual and Collapse in Eastern and Southern African Chiefdoms and States

Summary

The role of ritual in the rise of complex societies is well understood in many regions of the world. In contrast, the roles ritual may have played in state collapse, regeneration, and resilience remains inadequately theorized in archaeological studies of the political dynamics of complex societies. This paper will evaluate the role of ritual in the emergence, resilience, and collapse of chiefly and state societies in Eastern and Southeastern Africa. Social and symbolic factors especially the role of ritual and ritual experts, who included master smiths, rain makers, healers, soothsayers, and shamans has remained sorely understudied in the archaeology of state formation in Africa. This paper will examine evidence of the role of ritual in the context of an emerging theoretical perspective in archaeology of the collapse of the state in Africa. I argue that understanding how ritual knowledge and expertise was nurtured, used, abused, and discarded in the service of the state is critical to unveiling how power was negotiated between communities, amongst various disparate stakeholders, both during the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial Africa to address overlapping forms of social, political, economic, and technological interactions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Ritual during Periods of Decline, Collapse, and Regeneration in Archaic States

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16344