Peter R. Schmidt

Archaeologists tend to rely on scientific methods to reconstruct past histories, an approach that can alienate local indigenous populations and limit the potential of archaeological research. Essays in this volume argue that listening to and learning from local and descendant communities is vital for...

Archaeologists tend to rely on scientific methods to reconstruct past histories, an approach that can alienate local indigenous populations and limit the potential of archaeological research. Essays in this volume argue that listening to and learning from local and descendant communities is vital for...

This volume provides new insights into the distinctive contributions that community archaeology and heritage make to the decolonization of archaeological practice. Using innovative approaches, the contributors explore important initiatives which have protected and revitalized local heritage, initiatives that involved archaeologists as co-producers rather than...

Since the eighteenth century, the concept of prehistory was exported by colonialism to far parts of the globe and applied to populations lacking written records. Prehistory in these settings came to represent primitive people still living in a state without civilization and its foremost...

Historical Archaeology in Africa is an inquiry into the questions that count, proposing different ways of thinking about historical archaeology. Peter Schmidt challenges readers to expand their horizons beyond the ethnocentrism of archaeology, as it is defined and practiced in North America. Confronting topics...

" . . . one of the best books yet written on preindustrial African ironworking." --Geoarchaeology"Peter Schmidt has written an important synthesis of two decades' work on the iron technology of the Haya people of Tanzania." --African Studies Review" . . . essential reading...

"An important book at a time when the booming illicit trade in African antiquities and the despoiling of some of the continent's prime archeological sites generate little concern in the art world." --Foreign Affairs"This benchmark publication challenges all of us to be part of...

Africa, the birthplace of humanity, offers an untold wealth of information about the human past--untold because of severe limits on archaeological research there. This volume pulls the veil from previous representations of African archaeology to show that archaeologists working in Africa are still very...