Abstract
Salt mining is one of the earliest forms of mining in East Africa. In southwestern Uganda, it has been carried out for several centuries, if not millennia. This seminar is based on oral stories collected during field research in the Katwe village. It presents a reconstruction of the region’s long-term environmental history in terms of temporal layers, each of which highlights specific events that are related to, and overlap with, the others. In doing so, it also examines the complex metabolism of Lake Katwe and how it has changed over time due to human intervention. It explores the relationships between human and non-human inhabitants (e.g. birds, bacteria and spirits) and their contributions to this metabolism.
Demonstrating how Katwe’s environmental history is intertwined with the country’s political and cultural history, as well as the lives of those dependent on the salt economy, the seminar problematises the relationship between history, anthropology, and geology.
Bio
Lorenzo D’Angelo is a socio-cultural anthropologist with interests in natural resources and extractive industries, environmental and economic anthropology. He has carried out fieldwork in Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Uganda. In 2024 he founded the Laboratory of Anthropology of Social Change in Tanzania (Lab-Tanzania).
