A Luta Continua: Post-Colonial Reinterpretations of Early Colonial Contacts and their Contemporary Legacies in Mozambique

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Africa’s Discovery of the World from Archaeological Perspectives: Revisiting Moments of First Contact, Colonialism, and Global Transformation", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Cultural heritage and patrimony face myriad threats across the globe. Around the world, governments and institutions continue to affirm an inherent desire to protect cultural heritage, yet actions speak louder than words. Climate change, unchecked economic development, and ambivalence towards heritage management has left many experts frustrated with neoliberal political policies which prioritize profit over people and heritage. A colonial legacy of dispossession, exploitation, and expropriation remains at the heart of these international and domestic policies. The struggle to rearticulate early colonial narratives while protecting cultural heritage in all its forms continues. This paper will address these significant challenges by highlighting the long pre-colonial and colonial history of Ilha de Mocambique, while also contextualizing the current political economy of research and knowledge production on the Island. This will provide a renewed framework for ethical archaeological research directly addressing neo-colonialism and its social and economic injustices.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Africa’s Discovery of the World from Archaeological Perspectives: Revisiting Moments of First Contact, Colonialism, and Global Transformation

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow