(Re)making Landscape and Place: An Archaeology of the Lake Ngami Mission (1893-96), Khwebe Hills, Botswana

Nineteenth-century missionaries to southern Africa sought materially to remake and reshape the peoples and places they encountered according to notions of virtuous living, correct behaviour and Christian morality. This article explores attitudes to landscape and place in a short-lived London Missionary Society mission in the Khwebe Hills of Ngamiland, Botswana, which was occupied between 1893 and 1896. Combining archaeological evidence with archival records, the article will examine the factors that shaped Alfred Wookey's approach to this new landscape, and how he tried to create a utopian settlement in the Khwebe Hills, far from the corrupting dangers of the Batawana town, or the threat to health of Lake Ngami. The failure of the mission after just three years can be seen as a result of this isolation, both in terms of the struggle for survival and as a political strategy by the Batawana Kgosi Sekgoma Letsholathebe to ostracise the mission politically.