Treasure Hunting in Tanzania as a Chronopolitical Practice

In Morogoro, Tanzania, people regularly embark on treasure hunting expeditions, usually near places or buildings associated with German colonialism. In recounting their attempts to find buried wealth, treasure seekers describe their practice as anticipatory, framed by an anxiety about being “behind” (nyuma) in terms of access to prospecting technologies when compared to foreigners (wageni). Based on ethnographic participation in two treasure hunting expeditions, I propose that treasure hunting is a chronopolitical act, an intervention into time that constructs alternative futures beyond state and market logics. Treasure seekers rely on their experiences with detection tools, spiritual practice, and postcolonial history to help them locate buried treasure. As a contemporary social practice, treasure hunting bridges indigenous, vernacular, and outsider knowledge about technology to reorder postcolonial time and recuperate a degree of agency over an economic future potential. Drawing on ongoing science and technology studies (STS) scholarship about the underground and about technology in African contexts, I demonstrate that treasures, as imagined and precious entities, exemplify forms of value that precede materialization. I conclude by suggesting that STS scholarship could attend to underground matter whose value is shaped by persistent intangibility and indeterminacy.