A gentle war rages between objects and their textual and visual representations, fundamentally affecting how archaeologists and various publics understand the origins, natures and trajectories of humanity. Imprints: An Archaeology of Identity in Post-Apartheid Southern Africa attempts to intervene in this unevenness in matching objects, people and places to their representations. More than an academic investigation, this dissertation aims also to be a political intervention---specifically in post-Apartheid southern Africa---but also beyond. Archaeology is a powerful but partial set of surveillance techniques through which the past, present and even future can be examined in intellectually rigorous but socially responsible ways. My analysis is primarily textual, visual and contextual---rather than excavational. Inspired by the famous Laetoli hominin pathway in Tanzania, I use the metaphor of 'treading lightly' as a guide to imagining a post-colonial archaeology. Too narrow a focus on 'origins' and the past can ossify human achievement; reducing the genius of the present to a pale imitation or dilution of past glories. Using the metaphor of prints---both material (footprints) and textual (words), origins and formulations of identity may be presented as oscillating trajectories rather than static points. The static points---archaeological sites and artefacts---are, nonetheless, useful points of material anchorage and I thus utilise five types of sites. First, are origin sites---specifically Laetoli, Sterkfontein, Matsieng and the Voortrekker Monument. Secondly, I analyse sites of naming---especially of people. Third, rock art sites provide useful instantiations of a 'reverse gaze' and of hybrid identities. Four, sites of visual culture such as the incongruously modern artefact of 'graffiti' and South Africa's post-Apartheid coat of arms open up the possibility that archaeology need not be trapped in the past; it can act as an agent of debate and change in the present. Finally, museums and monuments---in particular Great Trek memorial monuments---continue this presentist mode by allowing an investigation of how heritage is constructed in contemporary southern Africa. As part of this construction I conclude with a personal case study---an archaeology of self through Afrikaner questing and domination---as a contribution to the decolonisation of archaeological practice.
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