RECLAIMING THE PLATEAU MINDSCAPE: MEMORY, TERRITORY AND POWER IN THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF JOS PLATEAU AND ITS ADJOINING LOWLANDS

Abstract

The historiography of the Jos Plateau and its adjoining lowlands has been shaped largely by colonial administrative records, missionary ethnographies, and externally driven archaeological interpretations. While these sources remain indispensable, they have often fragmented Plateau history by privileging colonial territorial boundaries, fixed ethnic typologies, and extractive political economies over indigenous epistemologies. This article advances the concept of the Plateau mindscape the historically grounded interplay of memory, territorial and power as the frame work for reconstructing Plateau history from within. Drawing on oral traditions, spatial memory, indigenous political institutions, archaeological synthesis, and critical archival analysis, the study demonstrates that memory functioned as a living archive structuring authority, land relations and social order. It argues that colonial and post-colonial intervention reconfigured but did not erase these indigenous systems, producing layered and competing narratives of identity and belonging. By centering indigenous epistemologies, this article challenges static historiographical models and presents plateau history as a dynamic negotiated process in dialogue with Professor Monday Yakiban Mangvwat’s periodization, this study extends his legacy by offering reflexive indigenous centered historiographical framework for understanding the Jos plateau and Nigeria’s middle belt.