Landscape Transformations and the Archaeology of Impact : Social Disruption and State Formation in Southern Africa

An attempt to use archaeological materials to investigate the colonization of southeastern Africa during the period 1500 to 1900. Perry demonstrates the usefulness of archaeology in bypassing the biases of the ethnohistorical and documentary record and generating a more comprehensive understanding of history.

Special attention is paid to the period of state formation in Swaziland and a critique of the `Settler Model', which the author finds to be invalid.