Historian of religions, using archival and ethnographic methods. A decade in Namibia on ritual, memory, and the dead who orient the living. I write Where Sacred Fires Burn; subscriptions support the Etanga Development Foundation. ajbeall.substack.com
My discomfort with academia in one line: when the world finally needs the humanities to explain a hard word, genocide, say, the people who know the most tend to stay quiet up in the tower. The full story: ajbeall.substack.com/p/plastic-ba...
Plastic Bag EpistemologyMy Search for Warmth and Wisdomajbeall.substack.comAndean ritualists opened August burning llama offerings to Pachamama on La Cumbre, above La Paz. The month is hers: after the dry season the earth must be fed before it feeds. The full story: religionnews.com/2026/08/05/p...
Photos of the Week: Arbaeen pilgrimage, Pachamama offerings(RNS) — This week’s photo selection includes the annual Arbaeen pilgrimage to Karbala, Bolivian offerings to Pachamama and more.religionnews.comRepatriation is not one event but a chain of hands. This return of ancestral remains from the Thomson Collection to the Yolŋu clans shows what it looks like when the chain holds.
RCN Worldwide Media NetworkStatement by Laureate Professor Marcia Langton AO on the repatriation of Ancestral remains from The Donald Thomson Collection to the Dhaḷwaŋu, Maḏarrpa, Djapu, Dhuḏi-Djapu, Maŋgalili and Marrakulu Clans rcnaustralia.blogspot.com/2026/08/stat...
A method that traveled disturbingly well across a century and three continents: move people, fix them in space, harden the borders, normalize the enforcement, classify the bodies, repeat. The full story: ajbeall.substack.com/p/our-obsess...
Our Obsession with the Nazi AnalogyBorders, Camps, and American Forgettingajbeall.substack.com“Dead body politics” is not an exotic theory I imported from Namibia. The full story: ajbeall.substack.com/p/who-gets-a...
Who Gets a StoneDead Body Politics at Homeajbeall.substack.comA TikToker filmed Ibadan's Oloolu masquerade, forbidden to record, and was cleansed for it. Its power lives in what may not be seen; the phone only tests that line. The full story: www.vanguardngr.com/2026/08/oloo...
Namibia was not free until 1990. For decades South Africa simply refused to hand back the territory the world said it could not keep, and the petitions kept going to the UN while the apartheid state drew its “homelands” northward. The full story: ajbeall.substack.com/p/the-widow-...
The Widow Who StayedA missionary's wife, a war for independence, and the last town before the bushajbeall.substack.comA PanAfrican Archaeological Association congress at Eduardo Mondlane, with the African archaeology collection opened up to mark it. Scholarship rooted on the continent and reaching everyone. Worth a look.
Antiquity JournalThe PanAfrican Archaeological Association congress is ongoing at Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique 🏺 To celebrate, our collection of #AfricanArchaeology is completely free to access! Check out the latest research in Antiquity 🆓 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Barbed wire began as a cheap way to manage cattle on the American plains. Then it fenced reservations, corralled civilians in the Boer War, enclosed forced-labor camps in Namibia, and finally spanned occupied Europe. The full story: ajbeall.substack.com/p/our-obsess...
Our Obsession with the Nazi AnalogyBorders, Camps, and American Forgettingajbeall.substack.comA missionary’s widow still runs the guesthouse in Opuwo: a guesthouse, a church, and a school, kept going on her own effort. Whether I agree with the mission is beside the point, and runs counter to it. The full story: ajbeall.substack.com/p/the-widow-...
The Widow Who StayedA missionary's wife, a war for independence, and the last town before the bushajbeall.substack.comAn ivory-bleaching yard in Tempelhof, the same firm that fed Benin bronzes into Berlin. Colonial trade turned elephants and communities' sacred objects alike into commodities. Exhibitions that trace that chain, back to where the things came from, are the memory work that counts.
Decolonial MemoriesDekolonial Erinnern in Berlin-Tempelhof: Faszinierende Ausstellung des Museums @batempschbg.bsky.social zur Produktion von Elfenbeinware aus kolonialen Quellen. Fabrikant Francke hat auch Benin-Bronzen an @kulturspk.bsky.social geliefert. h/t RM* via @rbb24.de www.rbb24.de/kultur/beitr...
I live somewhere between buffoon and academic. A decade of training taught me to write clean, structured, footnoted prose for a narrow audience. This publication is the other thing, the story that did not fit in the footnotes. The full story: ajbeall.substack.com/p/welcome
Welcome to Sacred FiresContested Histories, Ancestral Worship, and Religious Worldviewsajbeall.substack.comI had to stop asking “do you believe in witchcraft?” and start asking “have you ever been afraid of a curse?” One is a yes or no box built by centuries of Protestant thought. The full story: ajbeall.substack.com/p/beyond-bel...
Beyond BeliefChristianity, Ancestors, and Witchcraftajbeall.substack.comHitler pointed to the American West as a model: the conquest of Indigenous nations, race-based citizenship law, precedent for his own ambitions. The full story: ajbeall.substack.com/p/our-obsess...
Our Obsession with the Nazi AnalogyBorders, Camps, and American Forgettingajbeall.substack.comHow conservation can make cultural heritage invisible: oral histories and land claims in north-west Namibia. Anyone who has walked conservancy land in Kunene knows how much history the tourism map leaves out. Worth your time.
Prof. Sian Sullivan🌍 New co-authored article in the Namibian Journal of Environment - special issue on #Conservation and #Land (more below!) Cover by Clarance Geingob, who has completed multiple illustrations for research we're doing on one of the first anti-colonial Uprisings in north-west #Namibia (1897-1898)
Several times a year, an activist goes out to the mass graves on the edge of Swakopmund with a shovel and covers the genocide victims’ exposed bones back over with sand. The institutions will not. So he does. The bones keep surfacing. The full story: ajbeall.substack.com/p/who-gets-a...
Who Gets a StoneDead Body Politics at Homeajbeall.substack.comZambia's Lunda court has barred party regalia from Saturday's Umutomboko rite. Religion and politics have never sat far apart; the line between them is redrawn in every age. The full story: www.zambiamonitor.com/political-re...
The same five-kilo bags of maize meal we once bought as a goodwill offering are now twenty-kilo sacks. The smallest jug of oil is now the largest. The full story: ajbeall.substack.com/p/the-widow-...
The Widow Who StayedA missionary's wife, a war for independence, and the last town before the bushajbeall.substack.comAfter 120 years, the railway workers' collection is home in Usakos. Restitution is not only about famous bronzes; it is a town getting back the objects that carry its ancestors' labor and memory.
All Namibian NewsThis is not about saving anyone. When the chief I have worked with for years finally made a request, it was not for my theories. It was for cattle. Livestock revitalization. Because a herd is not just economic out there. The full story: ajbeall.substack.com/p/welcome
Welcome to Sacred FiresContested Histories, Ancestral Worship, and Religious Worldviewsajbeall.substack.com