The Interpretation of Evidence in African History

In the preceding essay Janet Ewald has rightly stressed the critical importance of field work in revealing the manifold relations among different factors, institutions, and events in the past as well as those between the past and the present. She has also noted the disparate, eclectic, and even anarchic nature of the data obtained, making interpretation and analysis of the data a second, a perhaps even more difficult, hurdle that African historians must face between overcoming the confusions and complexities of field work and confronting the third hurdle of historical analysis. Having collected the evidence, then, our task shifts to its interpretation. African history has been called the decathalon of the social sciences as we sought to employ seemingly complementary methodologies, data, and theoretical perspectives of history, archaeology, comparative linguistics, anthropology, ethnography, and oral traditions to overcome the limited amount of documentary material available to us. The move was an audacious assault on disciplinary boundaries, but one that sometimes resulted in naive uses of data and analysis without proper consideration of the complexities of other fields. Wars between historians and anthropologists have been endemic. But we have all become more sophisticated in our use of other disciplinary perspectives in the process, so that today we see emerging both an increasingly sensitive anthropological history as well as a more subtle historical anthropology

Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy · Linguistics · Political science · African history and culture studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Media, Communication, and Education · Philosophy

• Swahili Worlds in Globalism

  Open Access•Chapurukha M Kusimba•Swahili Worlds in Globalism•2024

  Incluir item

• In Search of Kaditshwene

  Jan C A Boeyens•The South African Archaeological…•2000

  Incluir item

• When Did the Swahili Become Maritime

  Open Access•Chapurukha M Kusimba, Jonathan R Walz•American Anthropologist•2018

  Incluir item

• Refining the chronology of Kua Ruins

  Annalisa Christie, Annalisa C Christie•Azania Archaeological Research in…•2013

  Incluir item

• The Kaya complex, a history of the Mijikenda peoples of the Kenya coast to 1900

  Thomas T Spear•The Kaya complex, a history of…•1978

  Incluir item

• Oral Tradition as History

  Jan Vansina, Jan M Vansina•Oral Tradition As History•1985

  Incluir item

• The Swahili

  Derek Nurse, Thomas Spear•Swahili•1985

  Incluir item

• Oral Traditions

  Open Access•Thomas Spear•History in Africa•1981

  Incluir item

• The African Past Speaks

  Open Access•Lucy Mair, Joseph C Miller•RAIN•1980

  Incluir item

• Kenya's past

  Godfrey Muriuki, Thomas Spear•The International Journal of…•1984

  Incluir item

• Experience and Speculation

  Janet J Ewald•The International Journal of…•1985

  Incluir item