Decolonizing Indigenous Histories: Exploring Prehistoric/Colonial Transitions in Archaeology

8. When Does History Begin? Material Continuity and Change inWest Africa

158 8 When Does History Begin? Material Continuity and Change in West Africa Ann B. Stahl All historians must grapple with the question of where to begin the story. (Smail 2005:1339) For historians the question “When does history begin?” elicits a variety of responses, ranging from 13 billion years ago (according to advocates of so-called Big History, who begin with the Big Bang; Christian 1991), to the emergence of modern humans some 200 thousand years ago (Northrup 2003), to the more canonical response that history begins with the earliest written texts from the ancient Near East. As amply recognized today, the canonical position underwrote a distinction between history and prehistory that shaped how past societies came into view—as exemplars of dynamic, progressive societies or as ones that instead occupied the “savage slot” (Trouillot 1991) and thus stood outside the stream of progress. As the Harvard historian Daniel Lord Smail (2005:1339) observed, prehistory was “an essential part of the story, but . . . [i]t was there only to illustrate what we are no longer.” Thus, in a narrative of rupture, the pre/history boundary provided historians with a place to begin at the same time as this canonical way of knowing diverted attention from interconnections among societies perceived as “in” or “outside” history (Fabian 1983; Lightfoot 1995; Wolf 1982; see also chapters by Hart, Liebmann, and Silliman, this volume). Clearly, many historians today reject the “no documents, no history” position that formed the basis of scientific history from the nineteenth century (Smail 2005:1351). Historians, like anthropologists, recognize the importance of incorporating Wolf’s (1982) “people without history” into historical narrative. Like many archaeologists, they see the distinction between history Material Continuity and Change in West Africa 159 and prehistory as an artifice and a question of sources rather than a substantive distinction. Some historians look to archaeology for evidence that will enable them to extend their world history courses to be more inclusive of “time’s arrow.” For Smail, an advocate of “deep history” (Smail 2008), history is a narrative of change and dynamism, “of migrations, conquests and extinctions, of changing environments and new diseases, of the complicated dance of culture, technology and biology through the millennia” that begins in Africa (Smail 2007). Archaeologists might well feel vindicated that (some) historians have come to recognize the deeper genealogies of human history. Archaeology has long been touted in North American four-field anthropology for its long-term perspective on culture change. Culture change comprises the stuff of “world prehistory”—the adoption of new technologies, the emergence of new, more complex social and political arrangements, the collapse of civilizations. If history is about change, surely archaeology can provide ample evidence with which to “deepen” history. A more reflective stance, however, encourages us to think rather more deeply about questions of change—and continuity—and the methods through which we assess threads of connection between societies past and present (see also chapters by Richard and Silliman, this volume). This takes on particular importance in light of how questions of antiquity conflate with notions of authenticity in both popular and legal imaginations, conditioning arbitrations of inclusion and possession in the present (Martindale, in press; see also chapters by Hart, Liebmann, and Silliman, this volume). Historically, archaeologists have approached change and continuity as cultural states that were present or not in material remains. Discontinuities in material culture signaled change, and therefore dynamism, with the corollary that continuities implied stability or stasis. Archaeologists have long relied on discontinuities to define boundaries between the taxonomic units through which control of archaeological time is mastered, parsing archaeological contexts into the traditions, cultures or phases that structure archaeological archives. Arguably, change has been highlighted by the questions posed in relation to the study of “world prehistory.” By contrast, continuity has proved less compelling. As in history, the absence of change has often seemed to require no explanation. I offer these prefatory remarks as a platform for forwarding two points: first, questions of change and continuity are not neutral—they have entailments, particularly for Indigenous peoples who are struggling to lay claim to resources denied to them through colonial processes. This is nowhere clearer than in the case of dispossessed Indigenous and Aboriginal peoples who are required by virtue of the legal standards that prevail in the nation states that encompass them to demonstrate community continuity over long time spans, despite sustained Ann B. Stahl...