Foreman Bandama
Biographic Data
| ID | 336568 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Foreman Bandama |
| GIVEN NAMES | Foreman |
| FAMILY NAME | Bandama |
| SIGNATURE | BANDAMA F |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cape Town |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4664-3410 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 126 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
What’s in a Name? Reflections on Decoloniality and Heritage Nomenclature in South Africa
Names and their language renditions serve as indexes that reflect identity, culture and heritage. In colonial South Africa, Europeans activated their colonial machinery as priests and teachers systematically naming and renaming individuals, places, and geographical features. Archaeologists and heritage practitioners followed suit, naming sites and cultural units and industries in ways that celebrated foreign nomenclature while demeaning local one…
A Pandora’s Box
Indigeneity, as manifested in predominantly intangible African heritage, stands at odds with the modern heritage management style that, in South Africa, remains entangled in colonial practices. Like in other former colonies, commuting this distance between indigenous knowledge systems and Western-influenced heritage management practices is a treacherous endeavour that often opens a pandora’s box of issues relating to idealism versus practical app…
Memory Work in Mud, Stone and Wood
What happens to material knowledges and practices in the aftermath of involuntary uproot and relocation? How do displaced newcomers weave their lifeworlds, knowledges and practices into a novel context in the early stages after arrival? Anchored in a contemporary prism case in Zimbabwe, this archaeological study employs a temporally layered approach to displaced communities in southern Africa experiencing intense mobility in a dense political lan…
Chumnungwa Glass Beads
Science, Not Black Magic
Ongoing research continues to show that ancient Africans had their own versions of science that were embedded in local contexts. The apparent lack of writing systems in most of the continent, especially south of the Sahara, was used to undermine the continent’s scientific achievements. Rather than relegate Africa to a simple receiver of science and technology, ancient Africans should be celebrated for their successful improvisation and experiment…
Stringing Together Cowrie Shells in the African Archaeological Record with Special Reference to Southern Africa
Archaeological explorations of the meaning of ‘trade objects’, such as glass beads and cowrie shells, remain hampered by theoretical and methodological limitations in both their analyses and interpretations. In this paper, we develop a methodology for critically engaging in multi-scalar questions of the circulation, exchange, and value of cowrie shells in African archaeological contexts. Species, size, dorsal modifications, and depositional conte…
Preindustrial Mining and Metallurgy in Africa
Africa hosts some of the oldest mines (for exploiting ochre used in personal adornment) in the world, but the ones that relate to the transformation of rocks to metal occur much later when compared to those found in Eurasia. Throughout the world, the processes of identifying and winning ores from parent rock in order to transform them into metals and, ultimately, into usable objects is indeed considered to be a novelty. African ethno-archaeologic…
Measly but motley and manifest
No Big Brother Here
In southern Africa, there has been a long-standing but unsubstantiated assumption that the site of Khami evolved out of Great Zimbabwe's demise around ad 1450. The study of local ceramics from the two sites indicate that the respective ceramic traditions are clearly different across the entire sequence, pointing towards different cultural affiliations in their origins. Furthermore, there are tangible typological differences between and within the…
Copper wire objects from Jahunda and Little Mapela
The present study explores the archaeometallurgy of flexible cuprous wound wires recovered from two precolonial Shona centres of power, Jahunda and Little Mapela, separated by 60 kilometres in Gwanda, southwestern Zimbabwe. Widely believed to have been fashion accessories, archaeologists have traditionally consigned such objects to appendices in site reports and other publications. Chronological and technological information gathered from this ca…
Are drylands marginal? The case of Mananzve, Shashi region, southwestern Zimbabwe
The general conviction in the Iron Age archaeology of southern Zambezia is that drylands such as the Shashi region are marginal landscapes that did not host any significant food producing communities in the past. Resultantly, for those communities that occupied these landscapes, their settlement histories have been always portrayed as short-lived, since their existence is mostly understood as by chance and not choice. However, new data recovered …
The chronology, craft production and economy of the Butua capital of Khami, southwestern Zimbabwe
This paper explores the material culture of Khami, the precolonial capital of the Butua kingdom in southwestern Zimbabwe, with a view to understanding its chronology, as well as patterns of production and distribution based on the objects recovered from walled and non-walled areas of the site. The recovery of production debris in multiple contexts across the site suggests that household-based production was a feature of households across Khami. M…
Elites and commoners at Great Zimbabwe
Archaeological indicators of inequality at major historic centres of power have long been poorly understood. This paper is the first to address the archaeology of class and inequality at Great Zimbabwe (AD 1000–1700) from an African-centred viewpoint. Data from new excavations, combined with insights from Shona philosophy, practice and ethnography, suggest that the categories of ‘elite’ and ‘commoner’ were situational and transient, and that they…
Typological and technological attributes of metallurgical crucibles from Great Zimbabwe (1000–1700 CE)'s legacy collections
Seen but Not Told
Decisive Evidence for Multidirectional Evolution of Sociopolitical Complexity in Southern Africa
The Production, Distribution and Consumption of Metals and Alloys at Great Zimbabwe
The legacy of vandalism and almost a century of continuous focus on drystone wall masonry is that little is known about metal craft production and consumption activities at Great Zimbabwe. Within these limitations, this paper attempts to explore the metallurgy of Great Zimbabwe, guided by the framework of archival, chronological and fieldwork‐ and laboratory‐based studies. The paper contends that residents of various components of Great Zimbabwe …
The mobility of memory
The relocation of ceramic craft activities to workshops creates new arenas for knowledge transmission and the acquisition of skills. But it may also cause tensions, due to the breakage or severance of ties to the spaces previously associated with craft learning. Exploring the interplay between the practice and knowledge of ceramic technology on the one hand and the spaces in which technology unfolds on the other, this article focuses on craft kno…
A technological and anthropological study of iron production in Venda, Limpopo Province, South Africa
This study investigates the technology and sociology of indigenous iron production in Venda, northern South Africa, within a framework of ethnographies, historical documents and archaeometallurgical analyses. Investigations revealed that indigenous iron production in the study area, like elsewhere in southern Africa, was based on the direct process in which high-grade iron ores were reduced to metallic iron in charcoal fuelled low-shaft furnaces.…
Eiland crucibles and the earliest relative dating for tin and bronze working in southern Africa
Indigenous A frican Furnace Types and Slag Composition—Is there a Correlation
Within variation, three major iron smelting furnaces were used in the Iron Age of sub‐Saharan A frica, ranging from the natural draught driven tall shaft to the forced draught powered low shaft and bowl furnaces. These furnace types are, however, mostly known from the ethnographic context. Often, archaeologists are confronted with remnants from the smelting process, forcing them to speculate on the anatomy of the extant furnaces. The presence of …
The Archaeology and Technology of Metal Production in the Late Iron Age of the Southern Waterberg, Limpopo Province, South Africa
The inception of metallurgy in southern Africa was relatively late, compared to other regions in Africa, and as a result, this part of the sub-continent was mistakenly thought to have been less innovative during the Iron Age. On the contrary, dedicated materials analyses are showing that starting from the terminal first millennium AD, southern Africa is replete with innovations that include the growth of state systems, specialised long-distance t…
Ores Sources, Smelters and Archaeometallurgy
The Southern Waterberg in Limpopo Province is archaeologically rich, especially when it comes to evidence of pre-colonial mining and metal working. Geologically, the area hosts important mineral resources such as copper, tin and iron which were smelted by agriculturalists in the precolonial period. In this region however, tin seems to be the major attraction given that Rooiberg is still the only source of cassiterite in southern Africa to have pr…
A Bayesian chronology for Great Zimbabwe
Great Zimbabwe is one of the most iconic sites in southern Africa and indeed the world, but like so many famous monuments it has suffered from the attention of early excavators who have destroyed key categories of evidence. Chronology is crucial to understanding the development of the various elements of Great Zimbabwe and its relationship to other important regional centres such as Mapungubwe. A number of radiocarbon dates are available, however…
Decisive Evidence for Multidirectional Evolution of Sociopolitical Complexity in Southern Africa
The Production, Distribution and Consumption of Metals and Alloys at Great Zimbabwe
The legacy of vandalism and almost a century of continuous focus on drystone wall masonry is that little is known about metal craft production and consumption activities at Great Zimbabwe. Within these limitations, this paper attempts to explore the metallurgy of Great Zimbabwe, guided by the framework of archival, chronological and fieldwork‐ and laboratory‐based studies. The paper contends that residents of various components of Great Zimbabwe …
Stringing Together Cowrie Shells in the African Archaeological Record with Special Reference to Southern Africa
Archaeological explorations of the meaning of ‘trade objects’, such as glass beads and cowrie shells, remain hampered by theoretical and methodological limitations in both their analyses and interpretations. In this paper, we develop a methodology for critically engaging in multi-scalar questions of the circulation, exchange, and value of cowrie shells in African archaeological contexts. Species, size, dorsal modifications, and depositional conte…
No Big Brother Here
In southern Africa, there has been a long-standing but unsubstantiated assumption that the site of Khami evolved out of Great Zimbabwe's demise around ad 1450. The study of local ceramics from the two sites indicate that the respective ceramic traditions are clearly different across the entire sequence, pointing towards different cultural affiliations in their origins. Furthermore, there are tangible typological differences between and within the…
Elites and commoners at Great Zimbabwe
Archaeological indicators of inequality at major historic centres of power have long been poorly understood. This paper is the first to address the archaeology of class and inequality at Great Zimbabwe (AD 1000–1700) from an African-centred viewpoint. Data from new excavations, combined with insights from Shona philosophy, practice and ethnography, suggest that the categories of ‘elite’ and ‘commoner’ were situational and transient, and that they…
Eiland crucibles and the earliest relative dating for tin and bronze working in southern Africa
The mobility of memory
The relocation of ceramic craft activities to workshops creates new arenas for knowledge transmission and the acquisition of skills. But it may also cause tensions, due to the breakage or severance of ties to the spaces previously associated with craft learning. Exploring the interplay between the practice and knowledge of ceramic technology on the one hand and the spaces in which technology unfolds on the other, this article focuses on craft kno…
A Bayesian chronology for Great Zimbabwe
Great Zimbabwe is one of the most iconic sites in southern Africa and indeed the world, but like so many famous monuments it has suffered from the attention of early excavators who have destroyed key categories of evidence. Chronology is crucial to understanding the development of the various elements of Great Zimbabwe and its relationship to other important regional centres such as Mapungubwe. A number of radiocarbon dates are available, however…
Ores Sources, Smelters and Archaeometallurgy
The Southern Waterberg in Limpopo Province is archaeologically rich, especially when it comes to evidence of pre-colonial mining and metal working. Geologically, the area hosts important mineral resources such as copper, tin and iron which were smelted by agriculturalists in the precolonial period. In this region however, tin seems to be the major attraction given that Rooiberg is still the only source of cassiterite in southern Africa to have pr…
Are drylands marginal? The case of Mananzve, Shashi region, southwestern Zimbabwe
The general conviction in the Iron Age archaeology of southern Zambezia is that drylands such as the Shashi region are marginal landscapes that did not host any significant food producing communities in the past. Resultantly, for those communities that occupied these landscapes, their settlement histories have been always portrayed as short-lived, since their existence is mostly understood as by chance and not choice. However, new data recovered …
The chronology, craft production and economy of the Butua capital of Khami, southwestern Zimbabwe
This paper explores the material culture of Khami, the precolonial capital of the Butua kingdom in southwestern Zimbabwe, with a view to understanding its chronology, as well as patterns of production and distribution based on the objects recovered from walled and non-walled areas of the site. The recovery of production debris in multiple contexts across the site suggests that household-based production was a feature of households across Khami. M…
Copper wire objects from Jahunda and Little Mapela
The present study explores the archaeometallurgy of flexible cuprous wound wires recovered from two precolonial Shona centres of power, Jahunda and Little Mapela, separated by 60 kilometres in Gwanda, southwestern Zimbabwe. Widely believed to have been fashion accessories, archaeologists have traditionally consigned such objects to appendices in site reports and other publications. Chronological and technological information gathered from this ca…
Seen but Not Told
Typological and technological attributes of metallurgical crucibles from Great Zimbabwe (1000–1700 CE)'s legacy collections
Indigenous A frican Furnace Types and Slag Composition—Is there a Correlation
Within variation, three major iron smelting furnaces were used in the Iron Age of sub‐Saharan A frica, ranging from the natural draught driven tall shaft to the forced draught powered low shaft and bowl furnaces. These furnace types are, however, mostly known from the ethnographic context. Often, archaeologists are confronted with remnants from the smelting process, forcing them to speculate on the anatomy of the extant furnaces. The presence of …
A technological and anthropological study of iron production in Venda, Limpopo Province, South Africa
This study investigates the technology and sociology of indigenous iron production in Venda, northern South Africa, within a framework of ethnographies, historical documents and archaeometallurgical analyses. Investigations revealed that indigenous iron production in the study area, like elsewhere in southern Africa, was based on the direct process in which high-grade iron ores were reduced to metallic iron in charcoal fuelled low-shaft furnaces.…
The Archaeology and Technology of Metal Production in the Late Iron Age of the Southern Waterberg, Limpopo Province, South Africa
The inception of metallurgy in southern Africa was relatively late, compared to other regions in Africa, and as a result, this part of the sub-continent was mistakenly thought to have been less innovative during the Iron Age. On the contrary, dedicated materials analyses are showing that starting from the terminal first millennium AD, southern Africa is replete with innovations that include the growth of state systems, specialised long-distance t…
Chumnungwa Glass Beads
Measly but motley and manifest
Ores Sources, Smelters and Archaeometallurgy
The Southern Waterberg in Limpopo Province is archaeologically rich, especially when it comes to evidence of pre-colonial mining and metal working. Geologically, the area hosts important mineral resources such as copper, tin and iron which were smelted by agriculturalists in the precolonial period. In this region however, tin seems to be the major attraction given that Rooiberg is still the only source of cassiterite in southern Africa to have pr…
A Bayesian chronology for Great Zimbabwe
Great Zimbabwe is one of the most iconic sites in southern Africa and indeed the world, but like so many famous monuments it has suffered from the attention of early excavators who have destroyed key categories of evidence. Chronology is crucial to understanding the development of the various elements of Great Zimbabwe and its relationship to other important regional centres such as Mapungubwe. A number of radiocarbon dates are available, however…
Indigenous A frican Furnace Types and Slag Composition—Is there a Correlation
Within variation, three major iron smelting furnaces were used in the Iron Age of sub‐Saharan A frica, ranging from the natural draught driven tall shaft to the forced draught powered low shaft and bowl furnaces. These furnace types are, however, mostly known from the ethnographic context. Often, archaeologists are confronted with remnants from the smelting process, forcing them to speculate on the anatomy of the extant furnaces. The presence of …
The Archaeology and Technology of Metal Production in the Late Iron Age of the Southern Waterberg, Limpopo Province, South Africa
The inception of metallurgy in southern Africa was relatively late, compared to other regions in Africa, and as a result, this part of the sub-continent was mistakenly thought to have been less innovative during the Iron Age. On the contrary, dedicated materials analyses are showing that starting from the terminal first millennium AD, southern Africa is replete with innovations that include the growth of state systems, specialised long-distance t…
Eiland crucibles and the earliest relative dating for tin and bronze working in southern Africa
Seen but Not Told
Decisive Evidence for Multidirectional Evolution of Sociopolitical Complexity in Southern Africa
The Production, Distribution and Consumption of Metals and Alloys at Great Zimbabwe
The legacy of vandalism and almost a century of continuous focus on drystone wall masonry is that little is known about metal craft production and consumption activities at Great Zimbabwe. Within these limitations, this paper attempts to explore the metallurgy of Great Zimbabwe, guided by the framework of archival, chronological and fieldwork‐ and laboratory‐based studies. The paper contends that residents of various components of Great Zimbabwe …
The mobility of memory
The relocation of ceramic craft activities to workshops creates new arenas for knowledge transmission and the acquisition of skills. But it may also cause tensions, due to the breakage or severance of ties to the spaces previously associated with craft learning. Exploring the interplay between the practice and knowledge of ceramic technology on the one hand and the spaces in which technology unfolds on the other, this article focuses on craft kno…
A technological and anthropological study of iron production in Venda, Limpopo Province, South Africa
This study investigates the technology and sociology of indigenous iron production in Venda, northern South Africa, within a framework of ethnographies, historical documents and archaeometallurgical analyses. Investigations revealed that indigenous iron production in the study area, like elsewhere in southern Africa, was based on the direct process in which high-grade iron ores were reduced to metallic iron in charcoal fuelled low-shaft furnaces.…
Typological and technological attributes of metallurgical crucibles from Great Zimbabwe (1000–1700 CE)'s legacy collections
Measly but motley and manifest
No Big Brother Here
In southern Africa, there has been a long-standing but unsubstantiated assumption that the site of Khami evolved out of Great Zimbabwe's demise around ad 1450. The study of local ceramics from the two sites indicate that the respective ceramic traditions are clearly different across the entire sequence, pointing towards different cultural affiliations in their origins. Furthermore, there are tangible typological differences between and within the…
Copper wire objects from Jahunda and Little Mapela
The present study explores the archaeometallurgy of flexible cuprous wound wires recovered from two precolonial Shona centres of power, Jahunda and Little Mapela, separated by 60 kilometres in Gwanda, southwestern Zimbabwe. Widely believed to have been fashion accessories, archaeologists have traditionally consigned such objects to appendices in site reports and other publications. Chronological and technological information gathered from this ca…
Are drylands marginal? The case of Mananzve, Shashi region, southwestern Zimbabwe
The general conviction in the Iron Age archaeology of southern Zambezia is that drylands such as the Shashi region are marginal landscapes that did not host any significant food producing communities in the past. Resultantly, for those communities that occupied these landscapes, their settlement histories have been always portrayed as short-lived, since their existence is mostly understood as by chance and not choice. However, new data recovered …
The chronology, craft production and economy of the Butua capital of Khami, southwestern Zimbabwe
This paper explores the material culture of Khami, the precolonial capital of the Butua kingdom in southwestern Zimbabwe, with a view to understanding its chronology, as well as patterns of production and distribution based on the objects recovered from walled and non-walled areas of the site. The recovery of production debris in multiple contexts across the site suggests that household-based production was a feature of households across Khami. M…
Elites and commoners at Great Zimbabwe
Archaeological indicators of inequality at major historic centres of power have long been poorly understood. This paper is the first to address the archaeology of class and inequality at Great Zimbabwe (AD 1000–1700) from an African-centred viewpoint. Data from new excavations, combined with insights from Shona philosophy, practice and ethnography, suggest that the categories of ‘elite’ and ‘commoner’ were situational and transient, and that they…
Preindustrial Mining and Metallurgy in Africa
Africa hosts some of the oldest mines (for exploiting ochre used in personal adornment) in the world, but the ones that relate to the transformation of rocks to metal occur much later when compared to those found in Eurasia. Throughout the world, the processes of identifying and winning ores from parent rock in order to transform them into metals and, ultimately, into usable objects is indeed considered to be a novelty. African ethno-archaeologic…
Stringing Together Cowrie Shells in the African Archaeological Record with Special Reference to Southern Africa
Archaeological explorations of the meaning of ‘trade objects’, such as glass beads and cowrie shells, remain hampered by theoretical and methodological limitations in both their analyses and interpretations. In this paper, we develop a methodology for critically engaging in multi-scalar questions of the circulation, exchange, and value of cowrie shells in African archaeological contexts. Species, size, dorsal modifications, and depositional conte…
Science, Not Black Magic
Ongoing research continues to show that ancient Africans had their own versions of science that were embedded in local contexts. The apparent lack of writing systems in most of the continent, especially south of the Sahara, was used to undermine the continent’s scientific achievements. Rather than relegate Africa to a simple receiver of science and technology, ancient Africans should be celebrated for their successful improvisation and experiment…
Chumnungwa Glass Beads
A Pandora’s Box
Indigeneity, as manifested in predominantly intangible African heritage, stands at odds with the modern heritage management style that, in South Africa, remains entangled in colonial practices. Like in other former colonies, commuting this distance between indigenous knowledge systems and Western-influenced heritage management practices is a treacherous endeavour that often opens a pandora’s box of issues relating to idealism versus practical app…
Memory Work in Mud, Stone and Wood
What happens to material knowledges and practices in the aftermath of involuntary uproot and relocation? How do displaced newcomers weave their lifeworlds, knowledges and practices into a novel context in the early stages after arrival? Anchored in a contemporary prism case in Zimbabwe, this archaeological study employs a temporally layered approach to displaced communities in southern Africa experiencing intense mobility in a dense political lan…
What’s in a Name? Reflections on Decoloniality and Heritage Nomenclature in South Africa
Names and their language renditions serve as indexes that reflect identity, culture and heritage. In colonial South Africa, Europeans activated their colonial machinery as priests and teachers systematically naming and renaming individuals, places, and geographical features. Archaeologists and heritage practitioners followed suit, naming sites and cultural units and industries in ways that celebrated foreign nomenclature while demeaning local one…
Archaeology and Rock Art Studies (22 works) · Archaeology (21 works) · History (18 works) · Geography (13 works) · History (9 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (8 works) · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Ancient history (7 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (6 works)