Mapping movement in turbulent times: Waypoints towards a theoretically grounded geospatial archaeology

In the last two decades, the mobilities turn in anthropology and archaeology has resulted in a widened scope for mobility studies. This includes a renewed interest in ontological questioning of the human condition, new methods for mapping humans and nonhumans (things, materials and ancestral beings) alike, and a wider range of scalar levels of analysis. Somewhat paradoxically, however, given this widened scope, during the same period African archaeology has undergone a main crisis, characterised by inter- and intra-disciplinary siloing and seclusion from stakeholders and policymakers. Geospatial technologies have a vast potential in contributing to solve this crisis. However, after more than a decade of promising geoarchaeological approaches seeking to harness universalist geospatial technologies into localised, context-sensitive insights, the potential remains unfulfilled, as geospatial archaeology is largely detached from other ways of doing archaeology. In this article, we evaluate the status thereof more than 10 years after a major call for alternatives and identify a continued epistemic standstill as a main cause for the siloing of geospatial archaeology from other research fields that may offer the necessary empirical, methodological and theoretical grounding. We explore ways to generate digital archives that enable not only the incorporation of existing archives from various disciplines but also critical, decolonialising evaluation of such archives, thereby offering new platforms on which to engage in mutually informing collaboration across disciplinary divides and with the wider public. Anchored in a prism case in southern Africa, we offer a set of waypoints for a theoretically grounded geospatial archaeology that promotes analysis of richly textured past movement on African soils instead of universalist and sterile still-images from above.