Listening to History Performed in Pilgrimage
Listening to History Performed in Pilgrimage
Understanding a community’s things, practices, and words from their situated perspective motivates alternative histories. This chapter examines how an archaeologist’s practice might shift in circumstances where observing and listening to people are necessities. The case study addresses repurposed objects, ritual acts of healing, and the spoken words of healers to remake aspects of the Zigua past in lowland northeastern Tanzania. Knowing the meanings of their expressions – including an annual pilgrimage to gather healing items - creates an intellectual space for Zigua history within a global history. Living among the Zigua helps to understand them and to employ their historical approach and social condition to make an alternative history they render meaningful. As the Zigua case shows, an approach to science that values people first is transformative to African history.
Keywords: Healing, Ritual, Repurposed objects, Tanzania, Zigua
Florida Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
