ABSTRACT
The Katuruka heritage initiative marked a new departure in the history of African community-based research. The Christian church in Buhaya has been instrumental in effecting significant cultural change, sometimes in ways that drew on fear and charismatic preaching against the ways of Satan in indigenous religion. The demonization of rituals and beliefs attached to royal ritual paraphernalia by Hinda elders of Kihanja, by virtue of their associated Cwezi beliefs, demonstrates why the once powerful Buchwankwanzi houses have disappeared. There has been a sea change in heritage values over the last century and a quarter in Buhaya, yet there are threads of continuity in the Katuruka initiative that go back to Lwamgira's 1949 pronouncements on the importance of sacred places and oral traditions. The spectrum of community archaeology and heritage in Africa is growing wider, but it is still significantly influenced by outside institutions.
