On behalf of Natanya Duncan, PhD, Director QC Africana Studies Good Day! The QC Spring Sit N Write Works in Progress will take place on April 17, 2024, at 12:15 in PH333 and via Zoom. Robert Nyamushosho of QC Anthropology will be joined in discussion by Dr. Jeffery Fleisher Department Chair and Professor of Anthropology at Rice University. Their dialogue will focus on Nyamushosho's "Chumnungwa glass beads: New insights into the geochemistry, circulation, and consumption patterns of pre-European glass beads in Iron Age southern Africa, CE 980 – 1650". Abstract: Glass beads in southern Africa's archaeological record, circa mid-first millennium CE, mark early links between the region, East African coast, and the Indian Ocean rim. Key research focused on glass beads, particularly from notable southern African polities, like the renowned Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe sites, has laid the groundwork for a regional taxonomic series of these beads, emphasizing their role as indicators of wealth and social status. New findings from Chumnungwa, a lesser-known Zimbabwe culture site, reveal five glass bead series. Analysis, using non-invasive techniques like Laser Ablation-ICP-MS, identifies compositions (v-Na-Al and m-Na-Al) widely circulated in Asia and Africa from the 10th to 17th centuries. Chumnungwa stands out as the first Zimbabwe culture site with m-Na-Al 6 beads. The study highlights challenges in typological categorization without scientific methods, offering insights into bead consumption and sociality in Iron Age southern Africa. We look forward to having you, your colleagues, and your students join us for this event. Please feel free to share our flier for the event. To participate via Zoom please register at: https://tinyurl.com/yufjjmtv We will have light refreshments for those who join us in person in PowderMaker Hall 333. Sit n Write would like to thank Dean Kate Pechenkina and CETLL<https://www.qc.cuny.edu/cetll/> for their continued support. Sincerely, Natanya Duncan, PhD Director QC Africana Studies Associate Professor of History [cid:5a4fd357-6e27-4090-8780-8635649c57b4] “Black intellectual practice not as an approach to omniscience but as a perpetual desire activated in community as community.” Alexis Pauline Gumbs “The burden of working for racial justice is laid on the very people bearing the brunt of the injustice, and not the powerful people who maintain it. I say to you: I refuse." Nikole Hannah-Jones "Black people cannot and will not become integrated into American society on any terms but those of self-determination and autonomy." Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
