Abstract
Ten years and more after the political transition of 1994 South African archaeologists found themselves at the center of a divisive and bitterly contested public dispute.
This chapter is adapted from an article originally published in the Journal of Social Archaeology (Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 3–28) in 2007.
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Notes
- 1.
A number of people and institutions have assisted with the preparation of this paper. I would like to thank my colleagues in the Project on Public Pasts, Leslie Witz, Ciraj Rassool, Premesh Lalu, and Noeleen Murray for advice and comments. The usual disclaimers apply. My thanks go to Christian Ernsten and Gerard Ralphs, graduate students in the Centre for African Studies, for assistance in constructing the archive around Prestwich Street. I gratefully acknowledge financial assistance from the National Research Foundation of South Africa. Particular thanks are due to Eustacia Riley and Janine Dunlop for their exemplary research assistance.
- 2.
Part of the story of Prestwich Street is the story of the dispersal and proliferation of sources. At the same time, the status of these sources is ambiguous, existing as they do in a semipublic domain, or in a public/private domain. I would like to place on record my appreciation of the role played by Antonia Malan, and by Andre van der Merwe, the Project Facilitator acting for the developer, in allowing substantial access to their personal archives on Prestwich Street. SAHRA, a publicly accountable body, only allowed me to copy material from their archive after protracted negotiations, and after I had signed a release form saying that I would not use the material to “perjure” the organization or its representatives.
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Shepherd, N. (2011). Archaeology Dreaming: Postapartheid Urban Imaginaries and the Remains of the Prestwich Street Dead. In: Okamura, K., Matsuda, A. (eds) New Perspectives in Global Public Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0341-8_12
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