Some thoughts on glass in African archaeology: an introduction

Abstract

• The history of this collection of articles on glass dates to 2020, when one of us (Babalola) proposed a symposium on Glass in African Archaeology for the meeting of the Society for Africanist Archaeologists (SAfA) scheduled for Oxford, but eventually held virtually in 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Although the withdrawal of several panelists led to the cancellation of the symposium, new contributors were galvanized to make this set of articles possible. One result of this reorganization was to move away from the Egypt-centered discussion of archaeological glass in Africa to examine what unfolded elsewhere across the continent and beyond, and the dynamic relationships between the people and glass as a material and object.