|
Giving Voice to the "Silenced"
By
Dorothy Wright
 |
Chapurukha Makhoka Kusimba,
M.A. '89, Ph.D. '93 |
At one time, historians of technology did not consider the possibility that early Africans were capable of producing crucible steel, a highly tempered, virtually pure type of steel that is produced using a complex process. Then along came a young Bryn Mawr College doctoral student in anthropology, Chapurukha Makhoka Kusimba, M.A. '89, Ph.D. '93, who set the record straight when archaeometric analysis of artifacts he had excavated from a smelting context in coastal East Africa were revealed as crucible steel.
"We were surprised and excited, but we wanted to make sure it really was crucible steel," Kusimba recalls, "because this would have been the first discovery in Africa; moreover, it was locally manufactured."
Other scientists confirmed the composition and dated Kusimba's artifacts. "The dates were surprising because they placed these samples at around 670 A.D.," he says. "At the time, this was without a doubt the earliest dated example of crucible steel anywhere in the world."
Historians of technology knew that only people with a long history of smelting iron could have made this state-of-the-art technology." India was known to be the place where this technology originated," Kusimba explains. "At the time of our work in Africa, the earliest crucible steel from India dated from the 10th century."
Facing Skepticism
When the results of this research were published, some scholars were skeptical that these artifacts had been made in Africa. "I think that deep down, there is an unwillingness to see Africa as a key player in many fields, including technology," Kusimba observes. "I think the perception is that Africa receives technology — it cannot invent it. And even when Africa has received a technological idea, it cannot experiment and innovate with it. This perception is ingrained even in the minds of some scholars in the scientific community."
Kusimba also believes that this skepticism stemmed from the fact that a young, unknown doctoral student had reported a "first." Yet his discovery piqued the interest of other historians of technology in dating more of the early finds from the Indian subcontinent. "As a result, we now know that this process began in India and Sri Lanka in the 2nd to 3rd century A.D.," he says.
Today Kusimba is curator of African anthropology at the Field Museum, Chicago, where he has served since 1994 as a curator of African archaeological and ethnological collections. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and at Northwestern University, Chicago.
Kusimba's current research focuses on the role of trade in shaping African and Asian interaction spheres. Working with Vishas Gogte, a professor at Deccan College in Pune, India, Kusimba is in the third year of a new research project that is examining ceramics from coastal East Africa and India.
"For generations, archaeologists have defined low-fired glazed ceramics found anywhere as Islamic, usually from Iran," Kusimba explains. "We have found glazed ceramics from East Africa and West Coast Indian sites with identical glazes and dating from the same period. We also have found two pottery furnaces in India. So we have absolute evidence that these glazes are Indian — not Islamic. Even those ceramics that were once thought to be Islamic products exported to India and the Philippines are actually Indian in origin."
The Politics of History
Once again, Kusimba finds himself arguing against conventional wisdom. "What we are finding might revolutionize Indian Ocean studies," he says. "Our findings support the argument that South Asian merchants had a much larger impact on technology transfer than did Muslims, but because of Muslims' political power, we have been misled — after all, politicians write history, not merchants. In fact, Africans who have adopted Islam as a way of life mention the influence of Indians very little. In effect, the role of Indian merchants in technology transfer has been silenced in recorded history."
Another current project reveals the origins of Kusimba's interest in anthropology. He is also working with his wife, Sibel Barut Kusimba '88, an assistant professor of anthropology at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, on a new project examining mosaics from the Mt. Elgon region in western Kenya and eastern Uganda, a region that has been continuously inhabited for half a millennium. "For me, this project is a homecoming," he says. "When I was growing up in Kenya, my grandfather and I would occasionally take his cattle to the Mt. Elgon caves to lick the salt. We observed that the walls of the caves were smoke-stained, and we sometimes found arrows and grinding stones.
"Grandfather explained that people had lived in the caves and, more recently, had fled there to hide from slavers or defend their herds from cattle thieves," Kusimba recalls. "Those images were always in my mind. I grew up in a country that was rich in a history that remained unknown."
Through Kusimba's research, the question of technology transfer — who did what first — is now being explored fully. "We are learning that Africa was an innovator in the pre-industrial world," he concludes. "Indeed, it was a key player."
Dorothy Wright contributes news and feature articles on science, technology, engineering and general-interest topics to a variety of publications, including Civil Engineering and Engineering News Record .
|
