Royal relics in Madagascar confer legitimacy on rulers.
Articles on Ancestors
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In South Africa’s Makanaskop, the kraal is a sacred space for rituals but small plots with outside toilets undermine this cultural use.
Across the US, heirs’ property laws hamstring families that want to build housing or leverage their land for loans. One Alabama project shows how policy reform and savvy design can build a way forward.
Genealogical and genetic ancestors aren’t the same thing. A DNA match − or a lack of one − may not tell you what you imagine it does about your family tree.
Researching family history is a popular hobby. But hobbyists can find themselves unearthing details of ancestors behaving badly or treated cruelly – or family secrets and trauma.
South Africa’s land reform programme is designed for a socio-economic context that doesn’t exist.
Zulu spirituality and the legacy of the ancestors, personal and musical, are the concerns of the saxophonist and composer.
His life’s work was asserting the humanity and history of the Bantu people, while proposing that the soul was able to bring knowledge of the past and of the future into the present.
Mining companies and some heritage consultants don’t understand the sacredness attached to ancestral remains, and the meaning of land in African communities.
Analysis of bones from over hundreds and thousands of years ago suggests that our skeleton today is more fragile than that of our ancestors.
Archaeologists have discovered the world’s oldest cheese, and it reveals how our ancestor’s cooking methods helped the human diet adapt.
The genocide memory in Rwanda is diverse and dynamic.
Trying to save Neolithic rock art made by our ancient ancestors is no easy task. But it tells us how people used to live.
The pain of grief is part of human existence. Daoist and Confucian philosophy can help find meaning in grief.
Archaeology is not only about stones and bones: it is mainly about the people of the past. DNA is one way to get from the stones and the bones to the people and their stories.
An old technique to explore the inside of fossils unfortunately ended up destroying some unique specimens. New technology has been used to reconstruct one such fossil.
When it comes to valuable African fossils, much is at stake. They often unearth disputed ways of debating archaeology as a science of ‘discovery’.
Top contributors
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Lecturer, Rhodes University
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Professor with Research Focus in Stone Age Archaeology, Palaeo-Research Institute, University of Johannesburg
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Lecturer, Rhodes University
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Associate professor in Vertebrate Palaeontology, University of the Witwatersrand
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Senior lecturer, Rhodes University
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Reader in Heritage Studies, Newcastle University
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Associate Professor of Philosophy and Asian/Asian American Studies, University of Connecticut
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Professor of Archaeology, Durham University
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Lecturer in Archaeology, University of York
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Lecturer Department of African Studies and Linguistics, University of Cape Town
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Visiting Fellow, Newcastle University
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Honorary Associate, University of the Witwatersrand
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Assistant Professor in Sport and Exercise Sciences & Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing, Durham University
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Lecturer, UMass Boston
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Group Leader, Department of Archaeogenetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology