Reconnecting Tswana Archaeological Sites with their Descendants: The Challenge of Developing Southern Africa’s Cultural Heritage for Everyone

Archaeologists in southern Africa who wish to provide public access to visible sites face the challenge of widespread farm privatization and the associated displacement of African communities. Most of today’s six million Tswana speakers cannot access the private farms where many stonewall settlements built by their ancestors are located. Recent research in southern Botswana identified a site on communal land in close proximity to people who can identify it as part of their heritage. In 2017, preparations got underway to develop the large stonewall capital of Makolontwane as a cultural heritage tourism destination. Makolontwane was built by the Tswana-speaking (Ba)Ngwaketse in the eighteenth century as part of their raiding state. Efforts to preserve and restore Makolontwane are grounded in a desire to make such history accessible to all visitors, including Tswana speakers who have been routinely alienated from their own archaeological heritage.