Archives of Times Past by Cynthia Kros

ISBN: 9781776147274

Publisher: Wits University Press, 1 February 2022

Paperback, 360 pages

An exploration of the archive on southern Africa’s past in the pre-colonial era, bringing new ideas about source material and archiving from scholars in southern Africa and elsewhere. It focusses on the question: ‘How do we know, or think we know, what happened in the times before European colonialism?’

Archives of Times Past explores particular sources of evidence on southern Africa’s time before the colonial era. It gathers recent ideas about archives and archiving from scholars in southern Africa and elsewhere, focusing on the question: ‘How do we know, or think we know, what happened in the times before European colonialism?’
The essays by well-known historians, archaeologists and researchers engage these questions from a range of perspectives and in illuminating ways. Written from personal experience, they capture how these experts encountered their archives of knowledge beyond the textbook.
The essays are written at a time when public discussion about the history of southern Africa before the colonial era is taking place more openly than at any other time in the last hundred years They will appeal to students, academics, educationists, teachers, archivists, and heritage, museum practitioners and the general public.