Professor Tim Forssman

Tim specialises in the archaeology of southern Africa’s late Holocene, focusing on the relationships between forager and farmer communities and the emergence of regional political formations. His work uses landscape archaeology to study settlement dynamics, social interactions, and the development of state-level societies, integrating survey, excavation, and artefact analysis to refine long-standing historical sequences.

He currently directs an interdisciplinary research programme at Thulamela, a mid-second millennium AD hilltop settlement engaged in Indian Ocean trade. By revisiting earlier excavations and reopening selected trenches, the project addresses unresolved chronological and political questions while situating the Limpopo Valley within broader exchange networks. Parallel excavations at Gwalala Hill extend this enquiry into earlier phases of trade and regional connectivity.

Scientific collaboration is central to this work. Radiocarbon dating undertaken with the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit contributes to more secure regional chronologies, while ongoing genetic research on domestic dogs from Thulamela explores patterns of mobility and contact across southern Africa and beyond. This research aims to position southern African archaeology more fully within comparative global debates.

His upcoming books include Archaeology in Africa: Why the past matters and From the Other Shore: Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean World, c. 600 BC to AD 1900 (with Peter Delius and Linell Chewins), both of which examine Africa’s past within wider intellectual and transregional contexts.