Justine Wintjes

Justine Wintjes is a humanities researcher at the KwaZulu-Natal Museum and a research associate at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. She is deputy editor of the journal Southern African Humanities, devoted to archaeology, anthropology, history and related fields, with a particular focus on material culture. She is interested in the ‘biographies’ of ethnological and archaeological objects.

The project

Title: "South-eastern Africa in French museums: creating context"

"My project aims to explore archaeological and anthropological collections originating in south-eastern Africa in French museums with a view to improving knowledge of their provenance. In particular I seek opportunities to retrace specific histories of individuated objects. My focus is on rock paintings and engravings removed from rock-shelters as well as ‘ethnographic’ objects that lend themselves to a ‘biographical’ approach. Beyond these object-centred studies, I am reflecting on the issues, interrogations and problems specific to southern African materials, the variety of existing object itineraries and the potential for imaginative recontextualization in the present."

Host institution : Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle

Selective Bibliography

• Wintjes, J. 2022. Fuze’s gourd: Umuntu kafi aphele. In: L. De Harde, ed., Inherited obsessions: conversations with an Exhibition. Pretoria: ESI Press, pp. 73–85.
• Wintjes, J. 2022. A lion’s life: tracking the biography of an archaeological artefact. In: C. Kros, J. Wright, M. Mbongiseni & H. Ludlow, eds, Archives of times past: conservations about South Africa’s deep history. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, pp. 217–226.
• Wintjes, J. 2022. The archive in pictures: a visual essay. In: C. Kros, J. Wright, M. Mbongiseni & H. Ludlow, eds, Archives of times past: conservations about South Africa’s deep history. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, pp. 271–318.
• Viestad, V. M. & Wintjes, J. 2021. A tale of three aprons. In: Charlton, J., Rankin-Smith, F., Nettleton, A., Mokgojwa, K., Leyde, L. & Cohen, L. (eds), Seen, Heard and Valued: WAM celebrates 40 years of the Standard Bank African Art Collection. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Art Museums, pp. 160–171.
• Wintjes, J. 2021. Three painted rock panels from ‘Upper Cingati’ rock shelter. Southern African Humanities 34: 205–233.