Why Lesotho’s archaeology matters

ABSTRACT: Last month’s ASAPA conference in Lesotho makes this the
right moment to consider the broader international significance of that
country’s archaeology. In this presentation, I highlight several reasons why
archaeologists working within the broader southern African region - and
beyond - should pay attention to it. First, Lesotho helps build a vital
inland counter-narrative to understandings of past hunter-gatherers that
emphasise Fynbos and coastal settings. Second, its mountainous terrain
and very different climate encourage us to develop models of past hunter-
gatherer societies that are not restricted to or by Kalahari-based
analogies. Third, Lesotho’s incredibly rich rock art includes the only sites
in southern Africa for which images were interpreted by a nineteenth-
century Bushman individual, Qing, for whom painting is likely to have been
a still-living tradition. Fourth, it has produced a series of sites that offer
unique insights into how Later Stone Age societies lived and how their
nineteenth-century descendants coped with the challenges of the colonial
era. And finally, in this bicentennial year of the country’s nationhood,
Lesotho’s archaeology provides multiple opportunities for investigating
processes of change such as state-building and religious conversion
crucial for understanding how modern-day southern Africa came to be, as
well as pointing the way forward for how we can successfully build
archaeological capacity and engage productively with local communities.
BIO: Prof. Peter Mitchell studied Archaeology and Anthropology at
Cambridge (1980-1983) and then moved to Oxford, where his doctorate
on the significance and wider context of the Robberg Industry at
Sehonghong, Lesotho, was supervised by Ray Inskeep. He visited
Lesotho for the first time in 1985, returning in 1988 to excavate at
Tloutle, only a few kilometres from the NUL campus, and then along the
Phuthiatsana River as a British Academy post-doctoral research fellow.
A temporary lectureship (1990) and a post-doctoral research fellowship
(1992-1993) at the University of Cape Town allowed him to conduct
further fieldwork, notably at Sehonghong, followed by two further
seasons at the nearby site of Likoaeng later in the 1990s. Peter returned
to Britain in 1993, teaching first at the University of Wales and, since
1995, at the University of Oxford, where he is Professor of African
Archaeology and Tutor and Fellow in Archaeology at St Hugh’s College.
He combines these positions with being a Research Associate of the
Rock Art Research Institute (RARI) at the University of the
Witwatersrand. Peter has continued to maintain an active interest in
Lesotho’s archaeology, supervising several doctoral, masters, and
honours theses relating to it and acting as senior heritage consultant
during the building of the Metolong Dam (2008-2012). He was President
of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists (SAfA) from 2004 to 2006,
served for two decades on the Governing Council of the British Institute
in Eastern Africa, and has been co-editor of Azania: Archaeological
Research in Africa since 2009. Peter’s books include African
Connections: Archaeological Perspectives on Africa and the Wider World
(AltaMira Press, 2005), The First Africans (CUP, 2008, co-authored with
Larry Barham), and Horse Nations: The Worldwide Impact of the Horse
on Indigenous Societies Post-1492 (OUP, 2015). The Oxford Handbook
of African Archaeology (OUP, 2013, co-edited with Paul Lane) and
African Islands: A Comparative Archaeology (Routledge, 2022) were
both awarded the SAfA Book Prize. A second edition of The Archaeology
of Southern Africa was published by Cambridge University Press on 6
June this year.