Songezo Mabece spoke to Prof Shadreck Chirikure - Head of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cape Town

Professor Shadreck Chirikure is one of only 10 recipients of the inaugural and fiercely competitive British Academy Global Professorships. He won this accolade last month for his work dating historical artefacts and the study of pre-colonial urban societies in Africa. Chirikure, whose Archaeological Materials Laboratory is Africa's only facility dedicated to the study of pyrotechnology practiced by farming communities of the last 2000 years of the sub-Saharan, is also the editor-in-chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African Archaeology and a senior editor of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology…