Journal of African Archaeology 17 (2019) 23-35 brill.com/jaa A German Rifle Casing and Chief Mkwawa of the Wahehe: the Colonial and Post-Colonial Significance of Mlambalasi Rockshelter, Iringa Region, Tanzania Pamela R. Willoughby Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
[email protected] Katie M. Biittner Department of Economics, Anthropology, and Political Science, MacEwan University, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
[email protected] Pastory M. Bushozi Department of Archaeology and Heritage, University of Dar es Salaam, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
[email protected] Jennifer M. Miller Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
[email protected] Abstract everything. It is not just the context of the find nor of the site but this context must necessarily include the larger During the 2010 excavations of Mlambalasi rockshelter, Iringa historic and cultural fact of the communities in which Region, Tanzania, a single rifle bullet casing was recovered. archaeologists work and increasingly work for (Shepherd Analysis of this casing found that it was manufactured in 1877 2002). While Mlambalasi rockshelter, located in Iringa at the munitions factory in Danzig for the German infantry’s Region, Tanzania (Fig. 1) is an important Iron Age and Mauser 71 rifle. This casing is thus directly linked to the period Stone Age archaeological site (Biittner et al. 2017), it also of German colonization of Tanganyika, during which Iringa was plays a significant place in local and national history. a key centre of anti-colonial resistance. Mlambalasi was the lo- In Tanzania, reflecting a broader trend in African and cation of the last stand of Chief Mkwawa of the Hehe people, Africanist archaeologies, research is increasingly devoted and this bullet casing provides a tangible link to his uprising to analyzing what archaeologists are doing, for whom they during the 1890s.