I applaud Richard's article for continuing to move forwards the study of historical archaeology in African contexts. This article seems to fit within an ever-growing dynamic field of historical archaeologists who move easily between the realms of archaeological data, documentary and oral histories (e.g. Dawdy 2008; Voss 2008). As highlighted by Reid and Lane (2004a; see also contributions to Reid and Lane 2004b) it is perhaps better to conceptualize the study of historical archaeology on the African continent as a field of historical archaeologies, where pluralistic theoretical and methodological directions can be attended to, driven by a diversity of locally contextualized research agendas.