Page 62 - 2020 SoM Journal Vol 73 No 1 FINAL_Neat

54 The Society of Malawi Journal

first book to use not only oral history, but also documents written by early
Portuguese explorers, traders and government officials, as well as archaeology, to
piece together the early history of the Chewa.
The author is an archaeologist, who discovered the first major Chewa
settlement, Mankhamba, near the southern part of Lake Malawi. His excavations
have enabled a more scientific chronology of the migrations of the Chewa into
what is today Malawi and have provided physical proof of their early history as
well as their material and spiritual culture and way of life.
There are several historians and archaeologists working in the area of
early Malawian history, but their work remains largely in the domain of academia
and is inaccessible to the general public. Professor Yusuf Juwayeyi has written
and documented a very readable history of the Chewa as revealed by archaeology
and demonstrates the value of combining oral tradition together with archaeology
to arrive at a more accurate picture of the history of a pre-literate society. With
many illustrations, this book will be appealing not only to historians,
archaeologists and anthropologists, but also the general reader interested in
African history and in Malawi's history in particular.

Yusuf Juwayeyi is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Long
Island University, New York. He was at one time Director of the Department of
Antiquities in Malawi and the National Commissioner for Culture. His research is
in archaeology and physical anthropology in Malawi, specifically on prehistoric
economies of the Later Stone Age and the Iron Age.