Idden Pretoria

Archaeological Perspectives on Contested and Political Landscapes

This book focuses on alternative definitions of landscape in archaeology, particularly those that explicitly address landscapes’ political aspects. In doing so, this volume emphasizes the non-static, dialogic nature of landscape within a community and acknowledges how a community’s composition and its relationship with the landscape can lead to tensions and even violent conflicts with other groups. It highlights the relevance of considering movement, borders, and conflict as sources for understanding how people create their own landscapes and how they reshape them in times of political conflict. For example, in contexts of colonization and war, people are forced to adapt to new politics and hierarchies as they see their personal and communal understanding of the world deeply transformed, something visible even today as political tensions constantly reshape local and global landscapes. Understanding how landscapes were created and contested in the past is essential for understanding their political, economic, and cultural manifestations in the present in order to better organize ourselves for a truly integrative future.

Hidden Pretoria

Despite being South Africa’s capital city, Pretoria has often played a supporting role to bold and brash Johannesburg and Cape Town’s cosmopolitan charms. However, when it comes to architectural heritage, the Jacaranda City is well-endowed. From the skyline-dominating Union Buildings and Voortrekker Monument, to the imposing edifices of its administrative precincts, Pretoria might be deserving of a second moniker: the city of sandstone, brick and granite. But when you look beyond the impressive façades, soaring columns and linear planes of buildings that were intended to convey power and authority, you’ll find light-filled interiors embellished with decorative touches that are only hinted at from the outside. Murals, mosaics, domes, galleries, stained-glass windows, gleaming brass and impressive woodwork are often hidden from view behind doors that are closed to the public. And even those museums, buildings and places of worship that are open to all have noteworthy architectural and design features that are easily overlooked. The history of the city, and of the country, has been played out in many of the buildings featured in Hidden Pretoria. This book captures facets of our diverse heritage, historic and contemporary, so that a new generation might recognise the need to embrace the past in order to build our common future.

Highways and Agricultural Engineering, Current Literature