This tribute to Jan Vansina explores the role of archaeology in the investigation of early African history, arguing for more work on the relationship between politics and the practice of ritual. The well-trodden topic of migrations of Bantu-speakers is revisited to examine the potential of genetics and archaeology to contribute to their investigation. Vansina often claimed to be a positivist and empiricist but there are contradictions in his writings that are tied to his changing vision of the purpose of precolonial African historiography. His view that African history must be meaningful to Africans resonates with recent developments in African archaeology.

Analysis of glass beads from the Ingombe Ilede burials provides additional information that supports McIntosh and Fagan's new dating of burials 3 and 8, and that also clarifies the chronology of some of the other burials. Following an unsuccessful attempt to locate the Ingombe Ilede beads in the Livingstone Museum, we analysed beads from a card with samples of Ingombe Ilede beads that had been originally prepared by A.P. du Toit (1965), and later sold to MuseuMAfricA in Johannesburg (Figure 1). The beads were chemically analysed using LA-ICP-MS, as part of a larger project on ancient African glass bead chemistry (Robertshaw et al.2003). All analysed beads from burials 3 and 8 belong to the Khami series produced in India and traded into southern and south-central Africa from the mid fifteenth to mid seventeenth centuries. Some beads of an earlier type were present in other graves, and may have been kept as heirlooms.

Communication between the practitioners of the two disciplines [history and archeology] is still often difficult.

Five years ago Jan Vansina asked historians whether archeologists were their siblings. The question seems to have been rhetorical, since Vansina himself offered the opinion that, at least “when archaeologists offer specific reconstructions of history, as they often do in their site reports, they are historians.” However, he also admitted that archeology “is a discipline in its own right.” Since no historians were sufficiently riled by these assertions to offer a response to Vansina's article, we must assume that archeologists are accepted, though not necessarily with open arms, in the family of historians. But what did archeologists say about their adoption? Nothing it appears, though perhaps many archeological practitioners missed Vansina's article because it was published in an historical, not an archeological, journal. I stumbled across the article a couple of years ago and plunged in with both anticipation and trepidation. Which archaeologist could resist reading a critique of his discipline by a respected historian? My feelings turned out to be justified. I was both excited and a little dismayed by what I read, though I was relieved to find that my own archeological efforts in Uganda were favorably viewed by the eminence grise.

The results of recent archaeological research in the Upper Nile basin are summarized and placed within the context of the anthropological-historical debate concerning the origins of the Nuer, Dinka and Atuot as distinct ethnic groupings. The archaeological evidence demonstrates a considerable antiquity for cattle-keeping in the region, the existence of what appears to be a very widespread cultural tradition in the late first millennium a.d. characterized by a distinctive form of burial, and a hiatus in settlement in the area east of Rumbek early in the present millennium, possibly around the time when humped cattle were introduced further north. The implications of these data for the explanation of the origins of the Luo migrations are discussed.

This review provides a new interpretative framework for the ‘Neolithic’ in East Africa. A seriation of pottery assemblages is used to delineate several archaeological traditions, the implications of which include rejection of the use of the terms ‘Neolithic’ and ‘Pastoral Neolithic’, and the demise of previous attempts at archaeological—linguistic correlations. Evaluation of the dating evidence brings into question the validity of early dates for domestic stock and cultivated crops in the region. A new model for the development of specialized herd management strategies in the Central Rift Valley is outlined. This model rests upon the definition of pastoralism as an ideological system rather than as a subsistence strategy. Finally, the archaeological evidence for the antecedents of the early pastoral communities of East Africa is examined and the ascription of some of these assemblages to the ‘aquatic civilization of Middle Africa’ is questioned.

Obsidian hydration dating has been successfully applied to East African archaeological sites. Chemical sourcing of obsidian artefacts has documented long-distance movement of obsidian from the Central Rift valley. A date in the ninth or eighth century b.c. has been obtained for iron objects in the Er Renk District of the Southern Sudan. Tentative culture-historical sequences are available from excavations around the Sudd and in the Lake Besaka region of Ethiopia. Archaeological research has begun in the interior of Somalia. In northern Kenya, claims that Namoratunga II is an archaeo-astronomical site have been challenged. Excavations at Mumba-Höhle and Nasera have shed new light on the transition from the Middle to Later Stone Age in northern Tanzania perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 years ago. Knowledge of the Elmenteitan Tradition has been considerably advanced by excavations in south-western Kenya. Iron-smelting furnaces with finger-decorated bricks have been discovered in south-eastern Kenya, though not yet dated. New dates falling in the last few centuries have caused first millennium a.d. dates obtained previously for Engaruka to be rejected. Excavations at several sites on the East African coast indicate that the beginnings of coastal occupation from the Lamu archipelago to Mozambique fall in the ninth century a.d. In Malawi the Shire Highlands seem to have been settled around the tenth century a.d. Investigations of large smelting-furnaces in central Malawi indicate that they were used as concentrators of poor-quality iron ore. Excavations in rock-shelters on the southern edge of the Copperbelt have produced a culture-historical sequence spanning the last 18,000 years. The western stream of the Early Iron Age was established in the Upper Zambezi valley by about the mid fifth century a.d.

The histories of pre-colonial states in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa have engaged scholars for more than a century. First encountered by Europeans in the 1860s during the search for the source of the Nile, these states and their rulers inspired both admiration and frustration in their visitors. On the one hand, explorers were impressed by the power of the rulers and the complexities of their bureaucracies, but on the other, they were annoyed by the apparent vacillation of the monarchs in responding to their demands. From the historian's perspective, these initial encounters soon led to questions about the origins and longevity of these states. Stories of origins were encapsulated in myths and legends that missionaries began to record around the turn of the twentieth century, while efforts to elicit lists of kings who had ruled each state introduced African leaders to European-style historiography.