Profile

Biography

Daryl Stump has worked as an archaeologist since 1991, specialising in African archaeology from 1998.  He completed a BA in Social Anthropology and African Archaeology at SOAS in 1999, and an MA and PhD in African Archaeology at UCL in 2001 and 2006; this post-graduate work focusing on the Late Iron Age agricultural landscape at Engaruka, Tanzania. Since joining the HEEAL project in 2007 he has been exploring the landscape history of the Pare Mountains in northeastern Tanzania, with a particular emphasis on intensive agriculture but including research into how historic ironworking impacted upon forest resources. In 2010 he returned to Engaruka, leading a team drawn from the BIEA and the Universities of York, Dar es Salaam, Nairobi and Sheffield.  He is also the principal investigator for a project researching the long-term history of local soil and water conservation techniques in the Konso area of Ethiopia, funded by the British Academy and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

Research

Overview

Recent and current research combines an interest in agricultural history, applied archaeology and in the later archaeology and ethnography of eastern Africa, and aims to add temporal detail to rural development projects which seek to adapt or extend indigenous agricultural systems. His PhD research focused on the 14th- to 18th-century AD site of Engaruka, Tanzania, whilst his current work with the HEEAL project aims to explore the origins and history of extant intensive agricultural systems in eastern Africa.

Current projects

• HEEAL
• Towards an applied archaeology of east African agricultural systems

Research group(s)

Publications

Selected publications

• Stump, D.  2010a.  ‘Ancient and backward or long-lived and sustainable: the role of the past in debates concerning rural livelihoods and resource conservation in eastern Africa’, World Development 38 (9): 1251-62.
• Stump, D.  2010b.  ‘Intensification in context: archaeological approaches to precolonial field systems in eastern and southern Africa’, African Studies 69 (2): 255-278.  Special issue History and Archaeology in Conversation – South Africa meets East Africa Workshop edited by P. Delius and A. Schoeman.
• Stump, D. and Tagseth, M.  2009. The history of precolonial and early colonial agriculture on Kilimanjaro: a review’, in T. Clack, (ed.), Culture, History and Identity: Landscapes of Inhabitation in the Mount Kilimanjaro Area, Tanzania. BAR International Series 1966. Oxford: Archaeopress. pp. 107-124
• Stump, D.  2008. ‘Hamo Sassoon’s personal archive. Comments on material recently gifted to the BIEA’, African Archaeological Review 25:169-174.
• Stump, D.  2006.  ‘The development and expansion of the field and irrigation system at Engaruka, Tanzania’.  Azania 41: 69-94

Full publications list

Teaching

External activities

Memberships

Invited talks and conferences

Invited to give the first in a series of seminars for the World Historical Ecology Network (WHEN), Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, 8th April 2010, speaking on ‘The role of the past in developmental discourse in eastern Africa’.

Invited speaker at the 3rd Five Hundred Year Project Workshop, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, 24th-26th July 2009.

Selected conference papers

‘Archaeological perspectives on indigenous conservation in precolonial Pare, Tanzania’.  Unpublished paper presented to the 1st World Congress of Environmental History, Copenhagen, 4th-8th August 2009.

‘Applied archaeology and historical ecology: archaeological approaches to the definition and application of historic resource exploitation strategies’.  Conference session co-organised with Christian Isendahl for the World Archaeology Congress, Dublin, 29th June-4th July 2008. 

‘The historical ecology of east African intensive agriculture’.  Unpublished paper presented to the Society of Historical Archaeology Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 9th-13th January 2008.