Principle Investigator
Photo: Sir Alan Fersht
Research
I am an archaeologist specialising in the study of the African past and Africa within the context of global history.
My research examines a variety of themes, from political economy and trade to questions of power, craft, exchange, gender, labour, identity and personhood. I have an interdisciplinary research strategy, drawing on a range of techniques from anthropological, historical and archaeological practice, underpinned by a strong theoretical focus on human engagement with the material world.
Biography
Much of my academic training took place at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, where I obtained a BA in history and archaeology, BA honours in archaeology followed by a PhD in archaeology in 2017. After my PhD I held a Claude Leon postdoctoral fellowship (2018-2019) before moving to the United Kingdom to take up a British Academy Newton International fellowship at the Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia (2020-2023).
Currently I am a Senior Research Associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge.
Publications
Refereed Journal Articles
Haour, A., and Moffett, A.J. 2023. Global connections and connected communities in the African past: stories from a cowrie shell. African Archaeological Review 40: 545–553. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-023-09546-5
Moffett, A., & Walz, J. 2023. Real but unrealised: Object transformations and political economy in East and southern Africa, AD 750–1250. Antiquity 97(394): 975-990. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.94
Moffett, A.J. 2023. Decoupling identities: Moving beyond gendered binaries in the southern African past. Southern African Humanities 36: 149–62. https://www.sahumanities.org/index.php/sah/article/view/505
Moffett, A.J., Nyamushosho, R., Bandama, F. and Chrikure, C. 2022. Stringing together cowrie shells in the African archaeological record with special reference to southern Africa. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 29: 862–901. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-021-09539-1
Moffett, A. J., Hall, S., and Chirikure, S. 2020. Crafting power: New perspectives on the political economy of southern Africa, AD 900–1300. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 59: 101180. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2020.101180
Moffett, A, J. 2020. The Archaeology of Metal Production in Southern Africa. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History (online). https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.602
Moffett, A. J., and Hall, S. 2020. Divining Value: Cowries, the Ancestral Realm and the Global in Southern Africa. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 30(2): 313-326. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774319000659
Chirikure, S., Mukwende, T., Moffett, A.J., Nyamushosho, R.T., Bandama, F. and House, M. 2018. No big brother here: heterarchy, Shona political succession and the relationship between great Zimbabwe and Khami, southern Africa. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 28(1): 45-66. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774317000555
Bandama, F., Moffett, A.J., and Chirikure, S., 2017. Typological and technological attributes of metallurgical crucibles from Great Zimbabwe (1000–1700CE)’s legacy collections. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 12: 646-657. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.02.029
Moffett, A.J., Maggs, T. and van Schalkwyk, J. 2017. Breaking ground: hoes in precolonial South Africa – typology, medium of exchange and symbolic value. African Archaeological Review 34(1): 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-017-9247-1
Moffett, A.J. and Chirikure, S. 2016. Exotica in Context: Reconfiguring Prestige, Power and Wealth in the Southern African Iron Age. Journal of World Prehistory 29(4): 337-382. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-016-9099-7
Bandama, F., Moffett, A.J., Thondhlana, T.P. and Chirikure, S. 2016. The production, distribution and consumption of metals and alloys at Great Zimbabwe. Archaeometry 58(1): 164-181. https://doi.org/10.1111/arcm.12248
Chirikure, S., Bandama, F., House, M., Moffett, A., Mukwende, T. and Pollard, M. 2016. Decisive evidence for multidirectional evolution of sociopolitical complexity in southern Africa. African Archaeological Review 33(1): 75-95. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-016-9215-1
Mathoho, E.N., Bandama, F., Moffett, A.J. and Chirikure, S. 2016. A technological and anthropological study of iron production in Venda, Limpopo Province, South Africa. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 51(2): 234-256. https://doi.org/10.1080/0067270X.2016.1177937
Book chapters
Moffett, A.J., 2024. Africa, South: Indian Ocean and Atlantic Connections. In: Rehren, T., Nikita, E. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Archaeology, 2nd Edition, vol. 3, pp. 169–176, London: Academic Press. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-90799-6.00076-8
Haour, A. , & Moffett, A., 2019. The Cowrie in East Africa. In Arc Humanities Press (ed.). The Encyclopedia of the Global Middle Ages. London: Bloomsbury Publishing
Chirikure, S. & Moffett, A.J. 2018. Fluid Spaces and fluid Objects: Nocturnal Material Culture in sub-Saharan Africa with special reference to southern Africa. In N. Gonlin & A. Nowell (eds). Archaeology of the Night. Life After Dark in the Ancient World. Colorado: University Press of Colorado.
Non-academic Publications
Moffett, A. Iron Age Mining Links Ancient SA to the World. The Mail and Guardian, 22 August 2014 [online]. Available at: http://mg.co.za/article/2014-08-15-iron-age-mining-links-ancient-sa-to-t…
Entangled Project 