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This thesis explores the dynamic role of archaeological ceramics through an examination of variability and change within communities of Great Lakes Africa, in the first and early-mid second millennia AD. It will be argued that ceramic evidence presents a multifaceted archaeological resource, providing detailed empirical evidence of variation and anthropogenic patterning, as well as a powerful insight into wider social, cultural and economic structures of the past. Despite this acknowledged importance, it is believed that Great Lakes ceramic studies have historically failed to capitalise on this potential, and continue to portray ceramic phenomena as passive correlates of fixed and immutable social identities. It is suggested that this dormant role for ceramics emanates from a wider reliance on narrow culture historical models of archaeology, in which society is viewed as discretely bounded, internally homogenous and lacking in self detenrunation and will. Ceramic variability therefore, is typically seen as co-terminous with these putative social boundaries, and ceramics have thus become proxy indicators for wider archaeological 'cultures'. Drawing on a range of theoretical approaches from material culture studies, ethnoarchaeology, and from wider modelling in archaeology and anthropology, this thesis argues that such an approach is unduly simplistic, and masks the depth of empirical diversity as well as restricting interpretive scope. In response to this situation this thesis proposes an alternative approach to ceramic evidence, emphasising diversity and variability, and thus, by extrapolation, social diversity and variability as well. This alternative approach to ceramic variability, is applied in an examination of a substantial new body of ceramic data from the northern shores of Victoria Nyanza, a previously poorly documented area, which is typically regarded as a geographical and conceptual 'periphery7, in discussions of Great Lakes social and political dynamics. Five case study areas have been identified within this region, and individually investigated for micro scales of patterning. By selecting this specific geographical area, and this localised scale of analysis, this study is re-centring attention on the 'hidden' or 'forgotten' communities of the Great Lakes. As a result, research findings have provided unprecedented evidence of ceramic variability, identifying internal variation within known ceramic typologies as well as completely new ceramic phenomena. Interpreting these ceramic patterns, this thesis proposes local, site-specific explanations (inter community contact, regional variation) as well as exploring macro, diachronic patterns that suggest a slow decline in the role and prominence of ceramic technology, linked to a speculated decline in domestic authority. This thesis concludes with some speculation on future research directions and potential.

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Lever Brothers' early interests in the Gold Coast/Ghana, the formation of the United Africa Company and its changing commercial activities throughout the period are examined. The company passed through three phases as the management perceived potential for growth in different sectors of the economy. Relationships with the colonial government and the changing political atmosphere are shown to affect the company's policies. The organisational structure altered and with it the distribution of its activities. Statistical data is used to support the argument. Part I gives a brief survey of the Gold Coast in the 1920s and covers the first phase, an era of market penetration. Intense competition in West African trade culminated in a series of mergers which led to the formation of the United Africa Company (U. A. C. ) in 1929. Trade was in the export of cocoa and the import of general merchandise. A close network of small trading stations developed. Part II outlines the second phase, from 1930 to 1945, characterised by consolidation, U. A. C. was the largest trading organisation in the Gold Coast and political tensions developed. Head office exerted financial control and policies concentrated on expansion of turnover. Wasteful inter-company competition was slowly eliminated and the country was divided into districts. Some specialisation began but the major activities were still in cocoa trading and general merchandise. Part III deals with the third phase, from 1945 to 1965, one of redeployment. Overall policies were dictated by considerations of return on capital employed. Intense criticism from the government and nationalists affected the company's decisions. The role of specialist merchant and industrialist was adopted. A strongly vertical organisation developed typical of a multinational company and this was reflected in the distribution of offices and branches. Partly summarises U. A. C. 's commercial activities within the country's economy.

This thesis examines the second world war as a watershed in the socio-economic development of Southern Rhodesia. It begins with an analysis of the specific contributions of the settler colony to the imperial war effort - e. g., the Empire Air Training Scheme and the Rhodesian African Rifles, which are discussed in chapters one and two. The next chapter focuses on changes in the major sectors of the economy - mining, agriculture and manufacturing. It examines settler responses to the increased internal and external demand for agricultural produce; the growth of a manufacturing sector induced by wartime import restrictions and the expansion of the internal market; and the role of the state in these developments. The last four chapters concentrate on the experience of Africans in the rural areas and the expanding. urban centres. It is argued that, under the guise of support for the war effort, undercapitalized settler producers - who were unable to attract an adequate supply of labour through a dependence on market forces - used their political influence to pressure the government into coercing Africans into wage employment. Wartime coercion helped to resolve some of the historic problems of 'labour shortages' by accelerating the process of "proletarianization" of the African peasantry in Southern Rhodesia. Some of those who fled the compulsory labour gang recruiters found voluntary employment in the cities or the Union of South Africa, where wages were much higher. The influx of workers into the cities - centres of increased economic activity during the war - caused a strain on urban resources such as housing. This, combined with wartime inflation and undemocratic labour legislation, helped to produce deteriorating conditions of work and life for the majority of urban labourers. Africans were not passive in face of these events and, like workers elsewhere on the continent, they sought to redress their grievances through spontaneous and organized action in the immediate post-war years, the most notable episodes being the 1945 rail strike and the 1948 general strike

'Where there are no distinctively political authorities to be either superseded or subordinated, only stateless societies', writes Professor L<:M, 1 '... the :imperial pcMer is engaged in the extIemely difficult task of creating a distinctively political authority for the first time'. In manyareas of tropical Africa, European colonial pcMerS delegated that task to local African agents to undertake on their behalf. 'Bukedi' was one such erea, and the Baganda chiefs British offic:ials employedin that area during the first years of this centuIy were one such set of agents. nus study analyses British political behaviour tCMardsthose chiefs, and suggests that local British officials possessed nuch less freedan of political JIDVementhtan they were prepared to admit in official cor.oospondencewith london. Ideologically, it argues that those officials were restricted first by a diffused and inarticulate Imwinianism', then by that amorphous mixture of notions associated with 'Indirect Rule'. F\lrt:hernOle , it enphasizes that besides being prisoners of successive European ideologies, those officd.als were also the captives of their African collaborators. fuch of this study is concerned with reoonstnlcting the dlaracter . of that captivity from a variety of local historioal sources,vernacular as well as English, oral as well as documentary. Given such an approach, and given such sources , it is hardly surprising that more attention is devoted to the African chief whom one of his European contemporaries called 'a very useful pioneer and imperialist , notwithstanding his black facet 1 than to any other single political figure.

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