Out of Africa, or How Earlier Forms of African Governance Can Save the World

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Essential Contributions from African to Global Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

One of the consequences of European colonialism is the narrowing of the world’s political imagination. When colonists began to carve up Africa in the late nineteenth century, they were met with a dizzying range of governance systems—systems most famously pondered by academics in Fortes and Evans-Pritchard’s (1940) *African Political Systems.* Ruins like those of Great Zimbabwe and Songo Mnara hinted at even further diversity in the past. This variation was seen as a problem to be solved, however, rather than an opportunity to learn. Only a few forms of government were proper, or even possible, and vast swaths of the continent were transformed to better meet Enlightenment ideals of strong rulers and representative legislatures. Still today, earlier forms of African governance are treated as intellectual curiosities, with little to offer the wider world. This paper challenges this view. In an era of late capitalism and ever-accelerating globalization, the sovereign nation-state model seems ill-equipped for the twenty-first century and beyond. We need to explore other ways of creating enduring collectives at all levels of government. By showing what can be learned from archaeological case studies, I underline the existential importance of understanding Africa’s past.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Essential Contributions from African to Global Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37105.0