Joshua Kumbani

Artsoundscapes collaborator César Villalobos

Keywords: archaeoacoustic, rock art, musical instruments, southern African archaeology

 

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Joshua Kumbani is an archaeologist whose research focuses on the sound archaeology of southern Africa. His research interests include archaeoacoustics, rock art and music-related artifacts found in the archaeological record. He completed his PhD at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2020. His doctoral thesis focused on evidence of music and sound production in the Holocene period of South Africa. He has published on aerophones (bullroarers, bone tubes, spinning disks, woer woers, flutes, trumpets and whistles), chordophones (musical bows), ideophones (bells, rattles), and membranophones (drums) found in the archaeological record of Southern Africa from prehistoric to modern times. He joined the Artsoundscapes project in October 2023.

RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS

  • Kumbani, J., & Díaz-Andreu, M. 2025. The art of music. The representation of musical instruments in the rock art of Zimbabwe. Azania 60(1), 4-34. https://doi.org/10.1080/0067270X.2024.2415211.
  • Kumbani, J., & Díaz-Andreu, M. 2025. Exploring dance scenes in South African rock art: From Kwazulu-Natal to the Western Cape. Telestes 5, 13-42. https://doi.org/10.19272/202514701002.
  • Kumbani, J. (2023) Drumming things up: a possible depiction of a drum at Grootvlei 158 (Got 1), South Africa. South African Archaeological Bulletin 78 (218), 3-10.
  • Kumbani, J. (2023) Idiophones or Palettes? An Analysis of Flat Bone and Shale Implements from Matjes River Site Southern Cape of South Africa. Critical Arts. South-North Cultural and Media Studies 37 (1), 72-86. https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2023.2220368.
  • Kumbani, J. and Vogels, O.2022. Musicals bows in the Rock Art of Southern Africa. Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Anthropology. Musical Bows in the Rock Art of Southern Africa | Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Anthropology.
  • Rust, R., Kumbani, J., Rusch, N. and Wurz, S. 2022. Flute-playing in the rock art of the Klein Karoo and Cederberg, South Africa; a link to ancient sound. Rock Art Research: The Rock Art Research: Journal of the Australian Rock Art Research Association (AURA). 39(1): 104-113.
  • Kumbani, J. 2020. Music and sound-related archaeological artefacts from southern Africa from the last 10,000 years. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 55: 217-241.
  • Kumbani, J., Bradfield, J., Rusch, N. and Wurz, S., 2019. A functional investigation of southern Cape Later Stone Age artefacts resembling aerophones. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 24: 693-711.
  • Mercader, J., Patalano, R., Favreau, J., Itambu, M., Kumbani, J. and Marufu, H., 2016. Acheulean prepared core technologies from the eastern Zimbabwe escarpment, Maunganidze. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 8: 47-62.