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ARCL0198: AFRICAN HERITAGE
2018-2019
INSTITUTE OF ARCHAEOLOGY ROOM 209, THURSDAYS, 1-3PM
15 CREDITS, MASTERS MODULE
Turnitin Class ID: 3885729 Password: IoA1819
Deadline for coursework: 20/2/2019 and 3/5/2019 Marked assignments returned by: 7/3/2019 and 17/5/2019
Co-ordinators: Dr Rachel King (RK) and Professor Kevin MacDonald (KCM) E-mail: [email protected] (RK); [email protected] (KCM)
T: 020 7679 7507 (RK) 020 7679 1534 (KM) Internal: 27507 (RK) 21534 (KM)
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1. Overview
1.1. Summary
This module provides a background to Saharan & Sub-Saharan African archaeology and to thematic issues in African heritage management. Both tangible and intangible heritage are considered, as well as interpretive and preservation issues.
1.2. Schedule
Session 1 10th January Introduction: Constructions of African pasts (KCM and RK)
Session 2 17th January Regional survey I: West Africa and the Sahara from 6,000bp (KCM)
Session 3 24th January Regional survey II: East, Central, and Southern Africa (RK)
Session 4 31st January African museums, archives, and interpretation (RK)
Session 5 7th February Looting and the ethics of studying and displaying cultural materials (KCM)
Reading week
Session 6 21st February Heritage of memory: Oral traditions (KCM)
Session 7 28th February Beyond monuments: Landscapes and intangible heritage (RK)
Session 8 7th March Nature, culture, and heritage (RK)
Session 9 14th March Heritage and development (RK)
Session 10 21st March African heritage and the Atlantic Diaspora (KCM)
1.3. Basic Reference Texts
Arazi, N. and Thiaw, I. 2013. Managing Africa’s archaeological heritage. Pp. 213. In Mitchell, P. and Lane, P. (eds). The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Ashley, C. and Bouakaze-Khan, D., 2011. Conservation and management of archaeological sites in sub-Saharan Africa. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, 13: 95-102. And other papers in this special issue.
Basu, P. and Modest, Wayne, M. eds. 2015. Museums, Heritage, and International Development. New York and London: Routledge.
Coombes, A. E., Hughes, L. and Karega-Munene (eds) 2014. Managing Heritage, Making Peace: History, Identity and Memory in Contemporary Kenya. London: IB Tauris.
Harrison, R., 2013. Heritage: critical approaches. London: Routledge.
Keitumetse, S.O. 2016. African Cultural Heritage Conservation and Management. Theory and Practice from Southern Africa. Springer.
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Lane, P. 2011. Possibilities for a postcolonial archaeology in sub-Saharan Africa: indigenous and usable pasts. World Archaeology 43: 7-25.
Mitchell, P. and Lane, P. (eds) 2013. The Oxford handbook of African archaeology. OUP Oxford.
Ndoro, W., Chirikure, S., and Deacon, J. eds. 2017 Managing Heritage in Africa: Who Cares? London: Routledge.
Peterson, D., Gavua, K. and Rassool, C. 2015. The Politics of Heritage in Africa: Economies, histories and infrastructures. New York, Cambridge University Press.
Phillipson, D.W. 2005. African Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (3rd edition).
Robertshaw, P. ed. 1990. A History of African Archaeology. Oxford, UK: James Currey.
Schramm, K. 2010. African Homecoming: Pan-African Ideology and the Politics of Heritage. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
Schmidt, P.R. and McIntosh, R.J. (eds.) 1996. Plundering Africa’s Past. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Waterton, E. and Watson, S. (eds). 2015. The Palgrave handbook of contemporary heritage research. Palgrave Macmillan.
1.4. Methods of assessment
This module is assessed by means of two pieces of coursework, each of 1,900-2,100 words, which each contribute 50% to the final grade for the course.
1.5. Teaching methods
This module is taught through lectures and seminars. The format will vary from week to week, sometimes with two 50 minute lectures, sometimes with a shorter lecture (or lectures) and roundtable seminar discussion. Details of each session’s format are described below.
1.6. Workload
There will be 10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars and/or practical sessions for this course. Students will be expected to undertake around 70 hours of reading for the course, plus 40 hours preparing and producing the assessed work, and up to 10 further hours for field trips. This adds up to a total workload of some 150 hours for the course.
2. Aims, Objectives, and Assessment
2.1. Aims
This course aims to:
Familiarise students with the diversity of Africa’s tangible and intangible heritage.
Provide an understanding of the multiple threats to this heritage and how it may be protected, managed, and preserved.
Provide students with an understanding of how to interpret and communicate African heritage values and threats to diverse communities and stakeholders.
Critically examine the production and politics of heritage in Africa.
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2.2. Objectives
On successful completion of this course a student will have gained knowledge and understanding of:
Africa’s major historic, cultural and archaeological sites
The diversity and value of intangible African cultural forms such as performance, oral history, and indigenous knowledge, among others
The challenges of protecting and preserving these diverse forms of heritage
The contemporary significance of heritage values within diverse spheres including education, identity and politics
2.3. Coursework
2.3.1. Assessment tasks
This course is assessed by means of a total of 4,000 words of coursework, divided into two essays of 1,900-2,100 words. The topics and deadlines for each assessment are specified below.
Assignments
1. Essay 1 (1,900-2,100 words). Please respond to one of the following questions in a
critical essay. The assignment makes up one half of the course marks. Submission
deadline: 20th February (Wednesday), 2019. 1. How would you define the boundaries of ‘African heritage’? Defend your answer with
reference to the differing perspectives of international organisations (e.g. UNESCO),
continental (e.g. African World Heritage Fund), and national governments.
2. Which stakeholders hold the right to manage, preserve and present a cultural heritage
site? Answer with reference to one or more African case-studies.
3. What has been the traditional role of museums on the African continent and what
prospects are there for this role to change?
4. Should looted African artefacts never be studied or displayed in museums? In making
your argument consider contemporary cases from both Mali and Nigeria.
5. How has heritage featured in post-independence (or, in South Africa’s case, post-
democratisation) government policies, citizen activism, and socio-political conflict?
Discuss with reference to at least two countries.
2. Essay 2 (1,900-2,100 words). Please respond to one of the following questions in a
critical essay. The assignment makes up one half of the course marks. Submission
deadline: 3rd May (Friday), 2019.
1. Should the preservation (recording and archiving) of African oral traditions merit
comparable resources to protecting African built-heritage? Build a case for a major
effort at preserving local oral history.
2. Using examples from sub-Saharan Africa, critically discuss the concept of ‘intangible
heritage’ in Africa. Is it (as many UNESCO sceptics say) too broad to be useful, or is
there something more to the concept?
3. What forms might a ‘useable’ African past take? Answer with reference to either
a. Development projects implicating heritage
b. Post-conflict healing
4. Can or should we manage natural and cultural heritage separately in Africa? Discuss
with respect to either parks or natural resource management.
5. Consider the difficulties in presenting the history of slavery to diverse groups at
heritage sites in Africa and the Americas. What issues would you focus upon and why?
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2.3.2. Word counts The following should not be included in the word count: title page, contents pages, lists of figures and tables, abstract, preface, acknowledgements, bibliography, lists of references, captions and contents of tables and figures, and appendices.
Penalties will only be imposed if you exceed the upper figure in the range. There is no penalty for using fewer words than the lower figure in the range: the lower figure is simply for your guidance to indicate the sort of length that is expected.
In the 2018-19 session penalties for over-length work will be as follows:
For work that exceeds the specified maximum length by less than 10% the mark will be reduced by five percentage marks, but the penalised mark will not be reduced below the pass mark, assuming the work merited a Pass.
For work that exceeds the specified maximum length by 10% or more the mark will be reduced by ten percentage marks, but the penalised mark will not be reduced below the pass mark, assuming the work merited a Pass.
2.4. Coursework submission procedures.
All coursework must normally be submitted both as hard copy and electronically. (The only exceptions are bulky portfolios and lab books which are normally submitted as hard copy only.)
You should staple the appropriate colour-coded IoA coversheet (available in the IoA library and outside room 411a) to the front of each piece of work and submit it to the red box at the Reception Desk.
All coursework should be uploaded to Turnitin by midnight on the day of the deadline. This will date-stamp your work. It is essential to upload all parts of your work as this is sometimes the version that will be marked.
Instructions are given below.
Note that Turnitin uses the term ‘class’ for what we normally call a ‘course’. 1. Ensure that your essay or other item of coursework has been saved as a Word doc., docx. or PDF document, and that you have the Class ID for the course (available from the course handbook) and enrolment password (this is IoA1819 for all courses this session - note that this is capital letter I, lower case letter o, upper case A, followed by the current academic year) 2. Click on http://www.turnitinuk.com/en_gb/login 3. Click on ‘Create account’ 4. Select your category as ‘Student’ 5. Create an account using your UCL email address. Note that you will be asked to specify a new password for your account - do not use your UCL password or the enrolment password, but invent one of your own (Turnitin will permanently associate this with your account, so you will not have to change it every 6 months, unlike your UCL password). In addition, you will be asked for a “Class ID” and a “Class enrolment password” (see point 1 above). 6. Once you have created an account you can just log in at http://www.turnitinuk.com/en_gb/login and enrol for your other classes without going through the new user process again. Simply click on ‘Enrol in a class’. Make sure you have all the relevant “class IDs” at hand. 7. Click on the course to which you wish to submit your work. 8. Click on the correct assignment (e.g. Essay 1).
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9. Double-check that you are in the correct course and assignment and then click ‘Submit’ 10. Attach document as a “Single file upload” 11. Enter your name (the examiner will not be able to see this) 12. Fill in the “Submission title” field with the right details: It is essential that the first word in the title is your examination candidate number (e.g. YGBR8 In what sense can culture be said to evolve?), 13. Click “Upload”. When the upload is finished, you will be able to see a text-only version of your submission. 14 Click on “Submit” .
If you have problems, please email the IoA Turnitin Advisers on [email protected], explaining the nature of the problem and the exact course and assignment involved.
One of the Turnitin Advisers will normally respond within 24 hours, Monday-Friday during term. Please be sure to email the Turnitin Advisers if technical problems prevent you from uploading work in time to meet a submission deadline - even if you do not obtain an immediate response from one of the Advisers they will be able to notify the relevant Course Coordinator that you had attempted to submit the work before the deadline.
2.5 Coursework Return Dates
All coursework is marked and returned within two weeks of the essay deadline, or if submitted late within two weeks of its submission. You can expect your first piece of coursework to be returned with a mark and comments by 6th March, 2019. You can expect the second piece of coursework by 17th May.
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3. Syllabus
Session 1. Introduction: Constructions of African pasts Kevin MacDonald and Rachel King
This lecture introduces the module. It provides an overview of the history of heritage studies in sub-Saharan Africa and develops a critical understanding of how the concept of heritage has been employed. The lectures will begin by considering what constitutes ‘Africa.’ The lecture also focuses on the politics and ethics of heritage – who does heritage belong to? Who defines what constitutes heritage? How do universal values and understandings championed by organisations such as UNESCO sit with more localised an approaches? Finally, we will review current trends within African Heritage studies, including heritage destruction due to conflict.
Essential reading
De Jong, F. and Rowlands, M. 2008. Reclaiming Heritage: Alternative Imaginaries of
Memory in West Africa. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. Chapter 1.
Haviser, J.B. and MacDonald, K.C. African Re-Genesis: Confronting Social Issues in the
Diaspora. London: UCL Press/Routledge. Read Chapters 1, 4, 5.
Mudimbe, V.Y. 1988. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of
Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Introduction and Chapter 1.
Peterson, D., Gavua, K. and Rassool, C. 2015. The Politics of Heritage in Africa:
Economies, histories and infrastructures. New York, Cambridge University Press.
Introduction and browse other chapters.
Robertshaw, P. ed. 1990. A History of African Archaeology. Oxford, UK: James Currey.
Browse a few chapters.
Further reading
Basic heritage concepts:
Harrison, R. 2012. Heritage: Critical Approaches. London: Routledge.
Lafrenz Samuels, K. and Rico, T. (eds.) 2015. Heritage Keywords: Rhetoric and
Redescription in Cultural Heritage. Boulder: University of Colorado Press.
Meskell, L. (ed.) 2015. Global Heritage: A Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Heritage, Politics, and Conflict:
Arazi, N. 2009. Cultural Resource Management in Africa: challenges, dangers and
opportunities. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 44: 95-106.
Coombes, A.E. 2011. Monumental Histories: Commemorating Mau Mau with the Statue of
Dedan Kimathi. African Studies 70: 202-223.
Fontein, J. 2006. The silence of Great Zimbabwe: Contested landscapes and the power of
heritage. Walnut Creek: Left Coast.
Giblin, J. 2012. Decolonial Challenges and Post-Genocide Archaeological Politics in
Rwanda. Public Archaeology 11: 123-143.
Kigongo, R. and Reid, A. 2007. Local Communities, Politics, and Management of the
Kasubi Tombs, Uganda. World Archaeology 39: 371-384.
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MacDonald, K.C. 2013. Timbuktu under Threat. Current World Archaeology 58: 26-31.
Ogundiran, A. 2014. The Osun-Osogbo Grove as a Social Common and an Uncommon
Ground: An Analysis of Patrimonial Patronage in Postcolonial Nigeria. International
Journal of Cultural Property 21: 173-198.
Peterson, D. 2016. A History of the Heritage Economy in Yoweri Museveni’s Uganda.
Journal of Eastern African Studies 10: 789-806.
Shepherd, N. 2002. The politics of archaeology in Africa. Annual Review of Anthropology
31: 189-209.
Sulas, F. Wynne-Jones, S. and Spence, K. 2011. Africa’s fragile heritages. Special Issue
African Archaeological Review 28:1-3. Introduction and browse other papers.
Defining and Decolonising African Heritage:
Alkebulan, A.A. 2007. Defending the Paradigm. Journal of Black Studies 37: 410-427.
Holl, A. 1990. West African Archaeology: Colonialism and Nationalism, pp.296-308, In P.
Robertshaw (ed.) A History of African Archaeology, London: James Currey. (and other
regional chapters on Eastern and Southern Africa in this volume)
Howe, S. 1999. Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes. London: Verso.
Katsamudanga, S. 2016. Consuming the Past: Public Perceptions towards the Discipline
of Archaeology in Zimbabwe. Public Archaeology 14: 172-190.
Manyanga, M. and Chirikure, S. (eds.) 2017. Archives, Objects, Places, and Landscapes:
Multidisciplinary Approaches to Decolonised Zimbabwean Pasts. Bamenda: Langaa
Research and Publishing.
Mire, S. 2007. Preserving Knowledge, Not Objects: A Somali Perspective for Heritage
Management and Archaeological Research. African Archaeological Review 24: 49-71.
Nyamnjoh, F.B. 2016. #RhodesMustFall: Nibbling at Resilient Colonialism in South Africa.
Bamenda: Langaa Research and Publishing.
Pikirayi, I. 2015. The Future of Archaeology in Africa. Antiquity 89: 531-541.
Roth, A.M. 1995. Building Bridges to Afrocentrism. University of Pennsylvania African
Studies Centre Online: http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/afrocent_roth.html
Schmidt, P.R. and Pikirayi, I. (eds.) 2016. Community Archaeology and Heritage in Africa:
Decolonizing Practice. London: Routledge.
Segobye, A.K. 2005. The Revolution Will Be Televised: African Archaeology Education
and the Challenge of Public Archaeology – Some Examples from Southern Africa.
Archaeologies 1: 33-45.
Online Resources
Africa World Heritage Fund: https://awhf.net/
UNESCO World Heritage Africa Region: http://whc.unesco.org/en/africa/
UNESCO World Heritage Full List: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/
ICCROM Africa: http://www.iccrom.org/priority-areas/africa/
ICOMOS: http://www.icomos.org/en/
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Session 2. Regional survey I: West Africa and the Sahara from 6,000bp Kevin MacDonald
The purpose of this lecture is to outline the emergence of social complexity amongst West
African peoples and the early growth of urban centres, political systems, and international
trade across the middle belt of the continent. This is intended to provide context for the
cultural, political, and artistic traditions discussed in the remainder of the course for this
region. It will also make clear the important and innovative achievements of African
societies beyond the Nile valley.
Overviews
Connah, G. 2001. African Civilizations: an archaeological perspective (2nd Edition).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. note: read Chapter 5: Brilliance Beneath
the Trees
MacDonald, K.C. 2013. Complex societies, urbanism and trade in the Western Sahel, In
The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology, P. Mitchell and P. Lane (eds.), 829-
844. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mattingly, D. and K. MacDonald 2013. ‘Africa’ in P. Clark (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History, 66-82, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Further reading
Early complexity: Saharan Tumuli, Tichitt, Nok, and Zilum
Brass, M. 2007.Reconsidering the emergence of social complexity in early Saharan
pastoral societies. Sahara 18: 7-22.
Breunig, P. and N. Rupp 2016. An Outline of Recent Studies on the Nigerian Nok Culture.
Journal of African Archaeology 14: 237-255.
Holl, A. 1993. Late Neolithic cultural landscape in southeastern Mauritania: an essay in
spatiometrics. In Spatial Boundaries and Social Dynamics: Case Studies from Food-
producing societies, eds. A. Holl and T. E. Levy , 95-133, Ann Arbor: International
Monographs in Prehistory.
MacDonald, K.C. 1998. Before the Empire of Ghana: Pastoralism and the Origins of
Cultural Complexity in the Sahel, In Transformations in Africa: essays on Africa's
later past, ed. G. Connah, 71-103, London: Cassell/Leicester University Press.
MacDonald, K.C. 2015. The Tichitt Tradition in the West African Sahel, in G. Barker and
C. Goucher (eds.) The Cambridge World History, Volume II: A World with Agriculture
12000 BCE – 500 CE, 499-513, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
MacDonald, K.C. ,R. Vernet, M. Martinon-Torres and D.Q. Fuller. 2009. Dhar Néma: from
early agriculture to metallurgy in southeastern Mauritania, Azania: Archaeological
Research in Africa 44: 3-48.
Magnavita, C., Breunig, P., Ameje, J., and Posselt, M. 2006, Zilum : a mid-first millennium
BC fortified settlement near Lake Chad, Journal of African Archaeology 4: 153-170.
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Cities in the Sahel
Bedaux, R., K. MacDonald, A. Person, J. Polet, K. Sanogo, A. Schmidt, and S. Sidibé.
2001. The Dia Archaeological Project: rescuing cultural heritage in the Inland Niger
Delta (Mali) Antiquity 75: 837-48.
MacDonald, K.C., and Camara, S. 2012. Segou, Slavery, and Sifinso. in Monroe,J. C.,
Ogundiran,A. (ed.) State and Society in Atlantic West Africa. 169-190, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
McIntosh, R.J. 2005. Ancient Middle Niger: Urbanism and the Self-Organizing Landscape,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McIntosh, S.K. and McIntosh, R.J. 1993. Cities Without Citadels: understanding urban
origins along the Middle Niger. in The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals and
Towns. eds. Shaw, Sinclair, Andah and Okpoko, 622-41, London: Routledge.
Empires and Entrepots
Levtzion, N. 1981. The early states of the western Sudan to 1500, In History of West
Africa: Volume I (Third Edition), eds. J.F. Ade Ajayi and M. Crowder, 129-166,
Harlow: Longman.
MacDonald, K.C. 2011. A view from the south: Sub-Saharan evidence for contacts
between North Africa, Mauritania and the Niger, 1000 BC - AD 700. A. Dowler, and
E.R. Galvin (eds.) Money, Trade and Trade Routes in Pre-Islamic North Africa. 72-
82, London: British Museum Press.
MacDonald, K.C. 2016. Empire of Ghana. In J.M. MacKenzie (ed.) The Encyclopedia of
Empire, First Edition. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Online publication DOI:
10.1002/9781118455074.wbeoe343
MacDonald, K.C., S. Camara, S. Canos Donnay, N. Gestrich and D. Keita 2011.
Sorotomo: a forgotten Malian capital? Archaeology International 13/14: 52-64.
Nixon, S. 2009. Excavating Essouk-Tadmakka (Mali): new archaeological investigations of
early trans-Saharan trade, Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 44: 217-55.
The Forest: from Igbo-Ukwu, Ife and Benin
Ben-Amos, P. 1999. Art, Innovation and Politics in Eighteenth Century Benin. Bloomington
(In): Indiana University Press.
Blier, S. Preston 2015. Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power, and Identity,
c.1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Drewal, H.J. and E. Schildkrout 2009. Kingdom of Ife: Sculptures from West Africa.
London: British Museum Press.
Insoll, T. and T. Shaw 1997. Gao and Igbo-Ukwu: Beads, Interregional Trade, and
Beyond. African Archaeological Review 14: 9-24.
Picton, John 1997. ‘Edo Art, Dynastic Myth, and Intellectual Aporia,’ African Arts (1997):
18-25, 91-92.
Shaw, T. 1977. Unearthing Igbo-Ukwu. Ibadan: Oxford University Press.
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Session 3. Regional survey II: East, Central, and Southern Africa Rachel King
Continuing our regional survey of African archaeology, we turn to East, Central, and
Southern Africa to consider the last few millennia of human occupation there. We will
explore these areas – and their histories of demographic, linguistic, and technological
change – through the lens of the ‘internal African frontier’ (Kopytoff 1987), a concept that
treats frontiers as spaces of creative encounters between ‘firstcomers’ and ‘newcomers’.
We consider how these processes have left traces in the material culture and landscapes
of sub-Saharan Africa. We trace the major themes of migration, domestication,
identification, and authority across three major reasons, and draw out particular elements
of these long-term histories that will feature in our discussions later in the course.
Essential reading
Fleisher, J., de Luna, K., and McIntosh, S.K. (eds.) 2012. Special Issue: Thinking across
the African Past: Archaeological, Linguistic, and Genetic Research on the Precolonial
African Past. African Archaeological Review, 29 (2-3).
Kopytoff, I. 1987. The Internal African Frontier: The Making of African Political Culture, pp.
3-84, in I. Kopytoff (ed.) The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African
Societies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Mitchell, P. 2002. The Archaeology of Southern Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, chapters 7-11.
Further reading
Frontiers and migration in African pasts:
Ashley, C. 2013. Archaeology and Migration in Africa, in P. Mitchell and P. Lane (eds.),
The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology, pp. 77-86. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Chami, F.A. 2007. Diffusion in the Studies of the African Past: Reflections from New
Archaeological Findings. African Archaeological Review 24: 1-14.
de Luna, K.M. 2017. Conceptualizing Vegetation in the Bantu Expansion: Reflections on
Linguistics in Central African History. Quaternary International 448: 158-168.
Etherington, N. 2001. The Great Treks: The Transformation of Southern Africa, 1815-
1854. London: Longman.
Lane, P.J. 2004. The ‘Moving Frontier’ and the Transition to Food Production in Kenya.
Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, 39: 243-264.
Robertson, J.H. and Bradley, R. 2000. A New Paradigm: The African Early Iron Age
without Bantu Migrations. History in Africa 27: 287-323.
Russell, T., Silva, F., and Steele, J. 2014. Modelling the Spread of Farming in the Bantu-
Speaking Regions of Africa: An Archaeology-Based Phylogeography. PLoS ONE 9 (1):
e87854.
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Domestication and food production:
Crowther, A., Prendergast, M.E., Fuller, D.Q., and Boivin, N. 2017. Subsistence Mosaics,
Forager-Farmer Interactions, and the Transition to Food Production in Eastern Africa.
Quaternary International OnlineFirst, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2017.01.014.
de Luna, K.M. 2016. Collecting Food, Cultivating People: Subsistence and Society in
Central Africa. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Håkansson, N.T., Widgren, M., and Börjeson, L. (eds.) 2008. The Political Ecology of
Trade, Food Production, and Landscape Transformations in Northeast Tanzania: 1850-
2000. Special Issue of The International Journal of African Historical Studies 41 (3).
Katsamudanga, S. and Pwiti, G. 2017. Chronology of Early Farming Communities of
Northern Zimbabwe – A Reappraisal, in M. Manyanga and S. Chirikure (eds.),
Archives, Objects, Places, and Landscapes: Multidisciplinary Approaches to
Decolonised Zimbabwean Pasts, pp. 119-136. Bamenda: Langaa Research and
Publishing.
Marshall, F. and Hildebrand, L. 2002. Cattle before Crops: The Beginnings of Food
Production in Africa. Journal of World Prehistory 16: 99-143.
McGranaghan, M. and Challis, S. 2017. Reconfiguring Hunting Magic: Southern Bushman
(San) Perspectives on Taming and their Implications for Understanding Rock Art.
Cambridge Archaeological Journal 26: 579-599.
Mitchell, P. 2004. Some Reflections on the Spread of Food-Production in Southernmost
Africa. Before Farming 2004 (4): 1-14.
Orton, J. 2015. The Introduction of Pastoralism to Southernmost Africa: Thoughts on New
Contributions to an Ongoing Debate. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, 50:
250-258.
Sadr, K. 2008. Invisible Herders? The Archaeology of Khoekhoe Pastoralists. Southern African Humanities 20 (1): 179-203, and other papers in this special issue on herding societies in southern Africa.
Identification:
Biginagwa, T.J. and Ichumbaki, E.B. 2018. Settlement History of the Islands on the
Pangani River, Northeastern Tanzania. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa: 63-
82.
Challis, S. 2012. Creolisation on the Nineteenth-Century Frontiers of Southern Africa: A
Case Study of the AmaTola ‘Bushmen’ in the Maloti-Drakensberg. Journal of Southern
African Studies 38: 265-280.
Chirikure, S. 2007. Metals in Society: Iron Production and Its Position in Iron Age
Communities of Southern Africa. Journal of Social Archaeology 7: 72-100.
Giblin, J.D. 2013. A Reconsideration of Rwandan Archaeological Ceramics and Their
Political Significance in a Post-Genocide Era. African Archaeological Review 30: 501-
529.
Lane, P.J. 2015. Ethnicity, Archaeological Ceramics, and Changing Paradigms in East
African Archaeology, in F.G. Richard and K.C. MacDonald (eds.), Ethnic Ambiguity and
the African Past: Materiality, History, and the Shaping of Cultural Identities, pp. 245-
271.
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Lewis-Williams, J.D. and Pearce, D.G. 2004. San Spirituality: Roots, Expression, and
Social Consequences. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira.
Solway, J.S. and Lee, R.B. 1990. Foragers, Genuine or Spurious? Situating the Kalahari
San in History. Current Anthropology 31: 109-146.
Wilmsen, E.N. and Denbow. J.R. 1990. Paradigmatic History of San-Speaking Peoples and Current Attempts at Revision. Current Anthropology 31: 489-524.
Wynne-Jones, S. 2016. A Material Culture: Consumption and Materiality on the Coast of Precolonial East Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Authority:
Chirikure, S., Manyanga, M., and Pollard, A.M. 2012. When Science Alone Is Not Enough:
Radiocarbon Timescales, History, Ethnography, and Elite Settlements in Southern
Africa. Journal of Social Archaeology 12: 356-379.
Fleisher, J. and Wynne-Jones, S. (eds.) 2010. Special Issue: Power and Authority in the
African Past, Journal of World Prehistory 23 (4).
Kim, N.C. and Kusimba, C.M. 2008. Pathways to Social Complexity and State Formation
in the Southern Zambezian Region. African Archaeological Review 25: 131-152.
Klehm, C.E. 2017. Local Dynamics and the Emergence of Social Inequality in Iron Age
Botswana. Current Anthropology 58: 504-633.
Moffett, A.J. and Chirikure, S. 2016. Exotica in Context: Reconfiguring Prestige, Power,
and Wealth in the Southern African Iron Age. Journal of World Prehistory 29: 337-382.
Pikirayi, I. 2001. The Zimbabwe Culture: Origins and Decline of Southern Zambezian
States. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira.
Session 4. African museums, conservation, and interpretation Rachel King
Museums and archives occupy a difficult position in Africa. While many were originally
implanted as extensions of the colonial state and instruments of controlling knowledge in
and about Africa, in the post-independence era these spaces have been the subjects of
nationalist rehabilitation, post-colonial healing, and conflicts over identity and history.
Museums in Africa also occupy a crucial place in debates over African knowledge of
heritage and heritage management. Questions of what museums should be prompt
questions about what sorts of collections museums should hold, the necessity of curatorial
expertise in handling these, and who has the right to decide the role of museums in public
life. African museums also beg questions about repatriating African objects held outside
the continent, which will be the subject of the next session. For this session, we explore
the position of museums and archives, and the knowledge and expertise that they
generate. We discuss the different sorts of power that inhere in preserving and presenting
historical objects and records, and the ways in which heritage practitioners and publics
have engaged with these issues. We also consider the different sorts of work that
museum objects and museum spaces can do in Africa that make these institutions
different from the European templates on which they have too often been based.
14
Essential reading
Coombes, A., Hughes, L. and Karega-Munene 2014. Managing Heritage, Making Peace:
History, Identity, and Memory in Contemporary Kenya. London: IB Tauris, chapter
excerpts on Moodle.
Kusimba, C. and Klehm, C. 2013. ‘Museums and public archaeology in Africa’, in P.
Mitchell and P. Lane (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology, pp. 227-
238. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kreps, C.F. 2003. Liberating Culture: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Museums, Curation,
and Heritage Preservation. London: Routledge.
Mbembe, A. 2002. The Power of the Archive and Its Limits, in C. Hamilton et al. (eds.)
Refiguring the Archive, pp. 19-27. London: Kluwer.
Further reading
Museums and colonialism:
Byala, S. 2013. MuseumAfrica: Colonial Past, Postcolonial Present. South African
Historical Journal 65: 90-104.
Coombes, A.E. 1994. Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture, and Popular
Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England. New Haven: Yale University
Press.
Hellman, A.H. 2014. The Grounds for Museological Experiments: Developing the Colonial
Museum Project in British Nigeria. Journal of Curatorial Studies 3: 74-96.
Longair, S. 2015. Cracks in the Dome: Fractured Histories of Empire in the Zanzibar
Museum, 1897-1964. London: Routledge.
Wingfield, C. 2017. ‘Scarcely More Than A Christian Trophy Case’? The Global
Collections of the London Missionary Society Museum (1814-1910). Journal of the
History of Collections 29: 109-128.
Wintle, C. 2016. Decolonizing the Smithsonian: Museums as Microcosms of Political
Encounter. American Historical Review 121: 1492-1520.
Archives and archival science:
Basu, P. and De Jong, F. 2016. Utopian Archives, Decolonial Affordances. Introduction to
Special Issue. Social Anthropology 24: 5-19.
Engmann, R.A.A. 2012. Under Imperial Eyes, Black Bodies, Buttocks, and Breasts: British
Colonial Photography and Asante ‘Fetish Girls’. African Arts 45: 46-57.
Harris, V. 2011. Jacques Derrida Meets Nelson Mandela: Archival Ethics at the Endgame.
Archival Science 11: 113-124.
Molins-Lliteras, S. 2013. From Toledo to Timbuktu: The Case for a Biography of the Ka’ti
Archive, and its Sources. South African Historical Journal 65: 105-124.
Peterson, B. 2002. The Archives and the Political Imaginary, in C. Hamilton et al. (eds.)
Refiguring the Archive, pp. 29-35. London: Kluwer.
15
Museums and conflict:
Anderson, D.M. and Lane, P.J. 2017. The Unburied Victims of Kenya’s Mau Mau
Rebellion: Where and When Does the Violence End?, in J.-M. Dreyfus and É. Gessat-
Anstett (eds.) Human Remains in Society: Curation and Exhibition in the Aftermath of
Genocide and Mass-Violence, pp. 14-37. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Basu, P. 2007. Palimpsest Memoryscapes: Materializing and Mediating War and Peace in
Sierra Leone, in F. De Jong and M. Rowlands (eds.) Reclaiming Heritage: Alternative
Imaginaries of Memory in West Africa, pp. 231-260. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast
Press.
Giblin, J.D. 2014. Post-Conflict Heritage: Symbolic Healing and Cultural Renewal.
International Journal of Heritage Studies 20: 500-518.
Rassool, C. 2007. Community Museums, Memory Politics, and Social Transformation in
South Africa: Histories, Possibilities, and Limits, in I. Karp et al. (eds.) Museum
Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations, pp. 286-321. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.
Museums and nationalism:
Corsane, G. 2006. Using Ecomuseum Indicators to Evaluate the Robben Island Museum
and World Heritage Site. Landscape Research 31: 399-418.
Karega-Munene2011. Museums in Kenya: Spaces for Selecting, Ordering, and Erasing
Memories of Identity and Nationhood. African Studies 70: 224-245.
Munjeri, D. 2009. The Reunification of a National Symbol. Museum International 61: 12-
21.
Contemporary museum cultures:
Coombes, A.E. 2003. History after Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a
Democratic South Africa. Durham: Duke University Press.
Court, E. 1999. Africa on Display: Exhibiting Art by Africans, in E. Barker (ed.)
Contemporary Cultures of Display, pp. 147-174. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Mawere, M., Chiwaura, and Thondhlana, T.P. (eds.) 2015. African Museums in the
Making: Reflections on the Politics of Material and Public Culture in Zimbabwe.
Bamenda: Langaa Research and Publishing.
Zetterström-Sharp, J. 2017. ‘I Cover Myself in the Blood of Jesus’: Born Again Heritage
Making in Sierra Leone. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23: 486-502.
16
Session 5. Looting and the ethics of studying and displaying cultural materials Kevin MacDonald
The looting of Africa’s cultural heritage reached epidemic levels in the 1980s and a variety
of responses have been enacted to preserve the continent’s portable heritage in context.
In discussing these initiatives, particular light will be cast on the case of the Nok and
Djenne terracottas, some of Africa’s most oft-pillaged and highly valued antiquities.
Notions of trans-culturally appropriated items and their display (and repatriation) will also
be explored and the ethics of publishing unprovenanced (i.e. looted) African
archaeological objects will be discussed. Finally, we will consider recent developments in
the repatriation of African cultural properties from museums outside of the continent.
Essential Reading
Brent, M. 1996. A View Inside the Illicit Trade in African Antiquities. pp. 63-78. In Schmidt,
P.R. and McIntosh, R.J. (eds.) Plundering Africa’s Past. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Diaby, B. 2000. Fixed and Moveable Heritage in Djenné: Problems of Conservation and
Protection pp.22-28 In Ardouin, C and Arinze, E. (eds.) Museums and History in West
Africa. Washington DC: Smithsonian
McIntosh, R.J., Togola, T., McIntosh, S.K. 1995. The Good Collector and the Premise of
Mutual Respect among Nations. African Arts 28: 60-9.
The current call for the repatriation of African Cultural Properties from outside the
continent is moving quickly and there is a lack of scholarly publication on the subject at
present. I suggest Googling ‘Repatriation African Museums’ and reading your way
through some of the many current short news stories on the subject, such as:
France Urged to Return Museum Artefacts to Africa, Financial Times 23 Nov, 2018
https://www.ft.com/content/a3658484-ef37-11e8-8180-9cf212677a57
Repatriation of African Artefacts from French Museums… Nature 27 Nov, 2018
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07560-1
Further Reading
Brodie, N. 2009. An Archaeologists View of the Trade in Unprovenanced Antiquities,
pp.52-63 In B. Hoffman (ed.) Art and Cultural Heritage: Law Policy and Practice.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Coombes, A. E. 1994. Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular
Imagination. New haven: Yale.
Karoupas, M.P. 1995. US Efforts to Protect Cultural Property: Implementation of the 1970
UNESCO Convention. African Arts 28: 32-41.
MacDonald, K. 2005. Ethics and the African Archaeologist: the Case of Mali. pp.33-6 In
Niall Finneran (ed.) Safeguarding Africa’s Archaeological Past. Oxford: BAR.
McIntosh, R.J. 1996. Just Say Shame: excising the rot of cultural genocide. pp. 45-62. In
Schmidt, P.R. and McIntosh, R.J. (eds.) Plundering Africa’s Past. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
17
Panella, C. 2014. Looters or Heroes? Production of Illegality and the culture of looting in
Mali. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 20: 487-502.
Price, S. 2007. Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac’s Museum on the Quay Branly. Chicago :
University of Chicago Press.
Shaw, T. and MacDonald, K.C. 1995. Out of Africa and Out of Context. Antiquity 69:
1036-9.
Willett, F. 2000. Restitution or Recirculation: Benin, Ife and Nok. Journal of Museum
Ethnography 12: 125-131.
Session 6. Heritage of memory: Oral traditions
Kevin MacDonald.
Oral Traditions have long been excluded from discourse of the preservation of African
Heritage – yet they are only very partially recorded and highly fragile, vanishing daily with
the death of elders. In this lecture we will consider oral memory, the sort of information
and cultural values it preserves, how such memories are transformed & multiplied, and
how they are lost. Epic traditions will be distinguished from memories preserved by elders
at a local or regional scale. The field recording and archival preservation of oral traditions
and their analytical use to reconstruct different perspectives on Africa’s pasts will be
presented and discussed.
General Readings on Oral Traditions
Belcher, S. 1999. Epic Traditions of Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Falola, T. and C. Jennings 2003. Sources and Methods in African History: Spoken,
Written and Unearthed. Rochester: University of Rochester Press.
Schmidt, P.R. 2006. Historical Archaeology in Africa: Representation, Social Memory and
Oral Traditions. Lanham (MD): Altamira.
Vansina, J. 1985. Oral tradition as History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press
Vansina, J. 1961 [2009]. Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology. London: Aldine
Transaction.
White, L., S.F. Miescher, and D.W. Cohen 2001. African Words, African Voices: Critical
Practices in Oral History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Two Versions of Sunjata
Niane, D.T. 1995. Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali, London: Longman.
Conrad, D. 2004. Sunjata: A West African Epic of the Mande peoples. London: Hackett.
Austen, R.A. 1999. In Search of Sunjata: The Mande Oral Epic as History, Literature and
Performance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
18
Local Oral Tradition versus Epic (Griotic) Traditions in Practice
Conrad, David C. [ed.] 1990. A State of Intrigue: the Epic of Bamana Segu according to
Tayiru Banbera. London: The British Academy/ Oxford University Press.
MacDonald, K.C. 2012. “’The least of their inhabited villages are fortified’: the walled
settlements of Segou” Papers in Honour of Graham Connah, (special book issue edited
by D. Gronenborn and S. MacEachern), Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 47:
343-364.
MacDonald, K.C. and Camara, S. 2011. Segou: Warfare and the Origins of a State of
Slavery, in P. Lane and K. MacDonald (eds.) Slavery in Africa: Archaeology and
Memory, 25-46, London: The British Academy/ Oxford University Press.
MacDonald, K. C., N. Gestrich, S. Camara, and D. Keita 2018. The ‘Pays Dô’ and the
origins of the Empire of Mali. In T. Green and B. Rossi eds. Landscapes, Sources and
Intellectual Projects of the West African Past: Essays in Honour of Paulo Fernando de
Moraes Farias, 63-87. Leiden: Brill.
Session 7. Beyond monuments: Landscapes and intangible heritage Rachel King
Among heritage practitioners based in Europe and North America, landscapes and
intangible heritage have emerged as a ‘grassroots’ solution to models of heritage
management that were Euro-centrically focused on monuments, and which helped bring
sub-Saharan Africa into the fold of agencies like UNESCO. But landscapes and intangible
heritage – as well as the different sorts of knowledge, memory, social relationships, and
material practices that these entail – have long been part of distinctly African ways of
understanding and using heritage. This session examines this interface of the global and
the local: how relatively new heritage concepts like intangible heritage have made a place
for African pasts on the international stage, while on-the-ground experiences are rooted in
longstanding heritage conversations and are often not intangible at all. We begin with the
globalization of landscape and intangible heritage, and Africa’s position in this process.
We then move on to consider whether these forms of heritage are better understood as
related to African knowledge about the past that implicates tangibles and intangibles in
complex relationships. We ask whether it is useful to think about these complex sorts of
heritage as indigenous ways of knowing, and if so how this relates to managing the past in
Africa.
Essential reading
Munjeri, D. 2004. Tangible and Intangible Heritage: From Difference to Convergence.
Museum International 56: 12-20.
UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, available at
https://ich.unesco.org/en/convention.
19
Further reading
International frameworks:
Labadi, S. 2013. UNESCO, Cultural Heritage, and Outstanding Universal Value. Value-
Based Analyses of the World Heritage and Intangible Cultural Heritage Conventions.
Lanham, MD: AltaMira.
Meskell, L., Liuzza, C., Bertacchini, E., and Saccone, D. 2015. Multilateralism and
UNESCO World Heritage: Decision-Making, States Parties and Political Processes.
International Journal of Heritage Studies 21: 423-440.
Rössler, M. 2006. World Heritage Cultural Landscapes: A UNESCO Flagship Programme
1992-2006. Landscape Research 31: 333-353.
Intangible and more-than-tangible heritage:
Bwasiri, E.J. 2011. The Challenge of Managing Intangible Heritage: Problems in
Tanzanian Legislation and Administration. South African Archaeological Bulletin 66:
129-135.
De Jong, F. 2007. A Masterpiece of Masquerading: Contradictions of Conservation in
Intangible Heritage, in F. de Jong and M. Rowlands (eds.) Reclaiming Heritage:
Alternative Imaginaries of Memory in West Africa, pp. 161-184. London: Routledge.
Deacon, 2004. Intangible Heritage in Conservation Management Planning: The Case of
Robben Island. International Journal of Heritage Studies 10: 309-319.
Keitumetse, S. 2006. UNESCO 2003 Convention on Intangible Heritage: Practical
Implications for Heritage Management Approaches in Africa. South African
Archaeological Bulletin 61: 166-171.
Mire, S. 2007. Preserving Knowledge, Not Objects: A Somali Perspective for Heritage
Management and Archaeological Research. African Archaeological Review 24: 49-71.
Nic Eoin, L. and King, R. 2013. How to Develop Intangible Heritage: The Case of
Metolong Dam, Lesotho. World Archaeology 45: 653-669.
Schmidt, P.R. 2017. Community-Based Heritage in Africa: Unveiling Local Research and
Development Initiatives. London: Routledge., especially pp. 95-168.
Landscape perspectives:
Davies, M.I.J. and Moore, H.L. 2016. Landscape, Time, and Cultural Resilience: A Brief
History of Agriculture in Pokot and Marakwet, Kenya. Journal of Eastern African
Studies 10: 67-87.
Fontein, J. 2015. Remaking Mutirikwi: Landscape, Water, and Belonging in Southern
Zimbabwe. Woodbridge: James Currey.
Jopela, A. and Fredriksen, P.D. 2015. Public Archaeology, Knowledge Meetings and
Heritage Ethics in Southern Africa: An Approach from Mozambique. World
Archaeology 47: 261-284.
Keitumetse, S.O., Matlapeng, G., and Monamo, L. 2007. Cultural Landscapes,
Communities, and World Heritage: In Pursuit of the Local in the Tsodilo Hills,
Botswana, in D. Hicks (ed.) Envisioning Landscape: Situations and Standpoints in
Archaeology and Heritage, pp. 101-119. London: Routledge.
20
Kleinitz, C. and Merlo, S. 2014. Towards a Collaborative Exploration of Community
Heritage in Archaeological Salvage Contexts: Participatory Mapping on Mograt Island,
Sudan, Aus der Archäologie 25: 161-175.
Leach, M. and Mearns, R. 1996. The Lie of the Land: Challenging Received Wisdom on
the African Environment. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Straight, B., Lane, P., Hilton, C. and Letua, M. 2016. ‘Dust People’: Samburu Perspectives
on Disaster, Identity, and Landscape. Journal of Eastern African Studies 10: 168-188.
Online resources
*UNESCO Intangible Heritage: http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/ ;
http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/en/what-is-intangible-heritage-00003
UNESCO Cultural Landscapes: http://whc.unesco.org/en/culturallandscape/
Sierra Leone Heritage online: http://www.sierraleoneheritage.org/
Session 8. Nature, culture, and heritage Rachel King
Post-modern theorists like Bruno Latour and anthropologists like Philippe Descola have
argued that Western philosophy maintains an artificial distinction between nature and
culture: humans are neither separate from nor masters of the natural world. Throughout
colonial Africa, this dichotomy was made all too real through programmes of nature
preservation (often for recreational reasons rather than scientific ones) that forcibly
resettled African communities to maintain ‘pristine’ wildernesses. The past six decades
have seen these nature parks reclaimed and re-purposed as sites of tourism,
conservation, and land management through African custodianship. Indeed, arguing for
African custodianship of nature has been decidedly less controversial globally than similar
arguments to do with culture, despite obvious interconnections of the two. This session
explores the relationships between nature, culture, and heritage, and how they translate
into heritage management strategies. We examine how presenting biodiversity and nature
conservation as an unproblematic ‘good’ obscures struggles over land rights and
environmental knowledge, and relies on the notion that custodianship requires a
‘primordial’ or ‘timeless’ connection to the land in question. Finally, we consider how these
themes are very visibly packaged and consumed in the sphere of international tourism.
Essential reading
Lane, P.J. 2015. Sustainability: Primordial Conservationists, Environmental Sustainability,
and the Rhetoric of Pastoral Cultural Heritage in East Africa, in K. Lafrenz Samuels and
T. Rico (eds.) Heritage Keywords: Rhetoric and Redescription in Cultural Heritage, pp.
259-284. Boulder: University of Colorado Press.
Meskell, L. 2011. The Nature of Heritage: The New South Africa. Malden, MA: Wiley-
Blackwell.
21
Further reading
Displacement and Fortress Conservation:
Brockington, D. 2002. Fortress Conservation: The Preservation of the Mkomazi Game
Reserve, Tanzania. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Cock, J. and Fig, D. 2000. From Colonial to Community Based Conservation:
Environmental Justice and the National Parks of South Africa. Society in Transition
2000: 22-35.
Hughes, L. 2006. Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Tourism:
Boswell, R. and O’Kane, D. 2011. Introduction: Heritage Management and Tourism in
Africa. Special issue of Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 29.
Duval, M. and Smith, B. 2013. Rock Art Tourism in the uKhahlamba/Drakensberg World
Heritage Site: Obstacles to the Development of Sustainable Tourism. Journal of
Sustainable Tourism 21: 134-153.
Giblin, J.D., Mugabowagahunde, M., and Ntagwabira, A. 2017. International Heritage
Tourism in Rwanda: Paving over the Past at Musanze Caves. Conservation and
Management of Archaeological Sites 19: 126-140.
Markham, A., Osipova, E., Lafrenz Samuels, K., and Caldas, A. 2016. World Heritage and
Tourism in a Changing Climate. United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi,
Kena, and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Paris,
France.
Silverman, R. 2015. Of Chiefs, Tourists, and Culture: Heritage Production in
Contemporary Ghana. In D. Peterson, K. Gavua, and C. Rassool (eds.) The Politics of
Heritage in Africa: Economies, Heritage, and Infrastructures, pp. 113-132. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Sustainability and conservation politics:
Büscher, B, Sullivan, S., Neves, K., Igoe, J., and Brockington, D. 2012. Towards a
Sythesised Critique of Neoliberal Biodiversity Conservation. Capitalism Nature
Socialism 23: 4-30.
Fox, G.R. 2018. The 2017 Shooting of Kuki Gallmann and the Politics of Conservation in
Northern Kenya. African Studies Review 61: 210-236.
Grenier, C. 2012. Unexpected Consequences: Wildlife Conservation and Territorial
Conflict in Northern Kenya. Human Ecology 40: 415-425.
Lafrenz Samuels, K. 2016. The Cadences of Climate: Heritage Proxies and Social
Change. Journal of Social Archaeology 16: 142-163.
Marchant, R. and Lane, P. 2014. Past Perspectives for the Future: Foundations for
Sustainable Development in East Africa. Journal of Archaeological Science 51: 12-21.
Masuku van Damme, L.S. and Meskell, L. 2009. Producing Conservation and Community
in South Africa. Ethics, Place & Environment 12: 69-89.
22
Nature as culture:
Cormack, Z. 2016. The Promotion of Pastoralist Heritage and Alternative ‘Visions’ for the
Future of Northern Kenya. Journal of Eastern African Studies 10: 548-567.
Davies, M.I.J., Kipruto, T.K., and Moore, H.L. 2014. Revisiting the Irrigated Agricultural
Landscape of the Marakwet, Kenya: Tracing Local Technology and Knowledge over
the Recent Past. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa 49: 486-523.
Ekblom, A., Notelid, M., and Witter, R. 2017. Negotiating Identity and Heritage through
Authorised Vernacular History, Limpopo National Park. Journal of Social Archaeology
17: 49-68.
Harrison, R. 2015. Beyond ‘Natural’ and ‘Cultural’ Heritage: Toward an Ontological Politics
of Heritage in the Age of Anthropocene. Heritage & Society 8: 24-42.
Session 9. Heritage and development Rachel King
The United Nations Development Programme (as well as numerous other international funding agencies) have identified different aspects of culture as key investment points to promoting sustainable development in Africa: gender equality, education, peace-building, spurring research and technological innovation all channel substantial amounts of funding to state and para-statal organisations to support activities related to heritage. But for several decades before the introduction of Millennium Development Goals, Sustainable Development Goals, and other related schemes, international funding for heritage in much of Africa was related to a different sort of development: mitigation or salvage of heritage due to be impacted by the creation of large infrastructure like dams and mines, funded by consortia of private and governmental resource developers. Heritage in this context was not about using heritage to support communities, but prioritizing objects of scientific or artistic value that would otherwise be destroyed. While the last two decades have seen a growing awareness that these practices need revision, the tensions between the two senses of development just described permeate efforts to put heritage to work for a better future in Africa. In this session, we explore the changing relationships between heritage and development, asking how far we have really come from frameworks that treat the two as in tension with one another. We also critique the notion of development as betterment, and consider the consequences of casting heritage as either an obstacle to or part and parcel of narratives about economic progress. We discuss what ‘usable’ heritage could entail, and what sorts of value is implied by notions of utility and progress.
Essential reading
Kreps, C. 2015. Cultural Heritage, Humanitarianism, and Development: Critical Links, in
P. Basu and W. Modest (eds.) Museums, Heritage, and International Development, pp.
250-271. London: Routledge.
Lane, P. 2011. Possibilities for a postcolonial archaeology in sub-Saharan Africa:
indigenous and usable pasts. World Archaeology 43: 7-25.
23
Further reading
Globalization:
Appadurai, A. 1996. Modernity at Large. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
Labadi, S. and Long, C. (eds.) 2010. Heritage and Globalization. London: Routledge.
Resource extraction and heritage salvage:
Apoh, W. and Gavua, K. 2016. ‘We Will Not Relocate Until Our Ancestors and Shrines Come With Us’: Heritage and Conflict Management in the Bui Dam Project Area, Ghana, in P.R. Schmidt and I. Pikirayi (eds.) Community Archaeology and Heritage in Africa: Decolonzing Practice, pp. 204-223. London: Routledge.
King, R. and Nic Eoin, L. 2014. Before the Flood: Loss of Place, Mnemonics, and ‘Resources’ Ahead of Metolong Dam, Lesotho. Journal of Social Archaeology 14: 196-
223.
Kleinitz, C. and Näser, C. (eds.) 2012. ‘Nihna nâs al-bahar – We Are the People of the River.’ Ethnographic Research in the Fourth Nile Cataract Region, Sudan. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz Verlag. PDF available on Moodle.
MacEachern, S. 2010. Seeing Like an Oil Company’s CHM Programme. Journal of Social Archaeology 10: 347-366.
Mire, S. 2011. The Knowledge-Centred Approach to the Somali Cultural Emergency and Heritage Development Assistance in Somaliland. African Archaeological Review 28: 71-91.
Management as development:
Keitumetse, S.O. 2011. Sustainable Development and Cultural Heritage Management in Botswana: Towards Sustainable Communities. Sustainable Development 19: 49-59.
Lafrenz Samuels, K. 2009. Trajectories of Development: International Heritage Management of Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa. Archaeologies 5: 68-91.
Makuvaza, S. and Makuvaza, V. 2013. The Challenges of Managing an Archaeological Heritage Site in a Declining Economy: The Case of Khami World Heritage Site in Zimbabwe. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites 15: 281-297.
Ndlovu, N. 2017. Bridging the Divide: Heritage Management and Development in the Twenty-First Century, in P.G. Gould and K.A. Pyburn (eds.) Collision or Collaboration: Archaeology Encounters Economic Development, pp. 103-116. Springer.
Ndoro, W. and Wijesuriya, G. 2015. Heritage Management and Conservation: From Colonization to Globalization, in L. Meskell (ed.) Global Heritage: A Reader, pp. 131-149. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons.
Heritage, betterment, and protest:
Kleinitz., K. and Näser, C. 2013. Archaeology, Development and Conflict: A Case Study from the African Continent. Archaeologies 9: 162-191.
24
Saro-Wiwa, K. 2000. Genocide in Nigeria: The Ogoni Tragedy. Saros International.
Zetterstrom-Sharp, J. 2015. Heritage as Future-Making: Aspiration and Common Destiny in Sierra Leone. International Journal of Heritage Studies 21: 609-627.
Session 10. African heritage and the Atlantic Diaspora Kevin MacDonald
The experience of slavery and the creation of new African cultures in the Americas are
topical and emotive issues, while the presentation of slavery in heritage contexts remains
a very sensitive task on both sides of the Atlantic. The growth of Diaspora archaeology
has added considerable data to the mix and is being coupled with a growing body of new
historic research. This lecture will consider these issues through recent case studies from
New York, Louisiana and Ghana (amongst others).
Essential readings
Eichstedt, Jenifer L. and Stephen Small 2002. Representations of Slavery: Race and
Ideology in Southern Plantation Museums. Washington, DC: Smithsonian.
Singleton, Theresa 1997. Facing the Challenges of a Public African-American
Archaeology. Historical Archaeology 31: 146-52.
Osei-Tutu, B. 2006, Contested Monuments: African Americans and the Commoditization
of Ghana’s slave castles, in J. Haviser and K. MacDonald (eds.) African Re-Genesis:
Confronting Social Issues in the Diaspora, pp.9-19, London: UCL Press.
Further Readings
African Heritage in North America
Chappell, Edward A. 1999. Museums and American Slavery. In T. Singleton (ed.) “I Too
Am America” Archaeological Studies of African-American Life. pp. 240-58.
Charlottesville: University of Virginia. DED 100 SIN
Gable, E., R. Handler and A. Lawson 1992. On the Uses of Relativism: Fact Conjecture,
and Black and White Histories at Colonial Williamsburg, American Ethnologist 19: 791-
805.
Barnes, J.A. and C. Steen. 2012. Archaeology and Heritage of the Gullah People: A Call
to Action. Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage 1: 167-224. IoA Online
Periodicals
Hall, G.M. 2005. Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press.
Hansen, J. and G. McGowan. 1998. Breaking Ground, Breaking Silence: the story of New
York’s African Burial Ground. New York: Henry Holt.
Haviser, J. 2005. Slaveryland: A new genre of African Heritage Abuse, Public
Archaeology 4:27-34. Online
LaRoche, C.J. and M.L. Blakey 1997. Seizing Intellectual Power: the Dialogue at the New
York African Burial Ground. Historical Archaeology 31:84-106.
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MacDonald, K.C. and D.W. Morgan. 2012. African Earthen Structures in Colonial
Louisiana: architecture from the Coincoin plantation (1786-1816), Antiquity 86: 161-
177.
Morgan, D.W., K.C. MacDonald and F.J.L. Handley 2006. Economics and Authenticity: a
collision of interpretations in the Cane River National Heritage Area, Louisiana, The
George Wright Forum 23, 44-61.
Mintz, S.W. and Richard Price 1976. The Birth of African-American Culture: an
Anthropological perspective. Boston: Beacon Press.
Thompson, Robert F. 1984. Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and
Philosophy. New York: Vintage Books.
Slavery-related sites in Africa
Bellagamba, A. 2009. Back to the Land of Roots: African Tourism and Cultural Heritage of
the Gambia. Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines 49: 453-76.
Bruner,E.M. 1996. Tourism in Ghana: the Representation of Slavery and the Return of the
Black Diaspora. American Anthropologist 98: 290-304.
Handley, F.J.L. 2006. Back to Africa: Issues of hosting “Roots” tourism in West Africa, in
J. Haviser and K. MacDonald (eds.) African Re-Genesis: Confronting Social Issues in
the Diaspora, pp.20-31, London: UCL Press.
Ogundiran, A. 2002. Of small things remembered: Beads, cowries, and cultural
translations of the Atlantic experience in Yorubaland. The International Journal of
African Historical Studies, 35: 427-457.
Thiaw, I. 2008. Every House has a Story: the archaeology of Gorée Island, Senegal. In L.
Sansone et al. eds. Africa, Brazil and the Construction of Trans-Atlantic Black
Identities, pp. 45-62, Trenton: Africa World Press. SOAS library
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4. Online resources for the Course
The course has the usual Moodle page which will contain: a copy of this document, powerpoints of each lecture (usually uploaded on the day of the lecture), and any necessary course announcements. If you have any difficulty accessing the page please let us know.
5. Additional information
5.1. Libraries and other resources
Most books on the reading list can be found in the Institute Library, other UCL libraries, or via UCL Explore online resources. Occasionally they may only be available at SOAS for which you will need to apply for a card there for access.
5.2. Information for intercollegiate and interdepartmental students
Note Institute of Archaeology essay submission procedures which may be different to
those applied in your home department. We require hard copy submission as well as
electronic submission. It is the hard copy which is marked and returned to you. Note also
that after having reviewed the marked essay you must return it to us immediately for
second marking.
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