Africa, Historical Archaelogy

Introduction. Historical archaeology first emerged as a distinct subfield of the broader discipline in North America during the mid-twentieth century. However, many of the definitions and approaches that now dominate the field are not entirely suited to the African continent. This is partly because in many areas, especially away from the coastal zones, the temporal depth of documentary sources is fairly limited, and a European presence in these areas only dates from the nineteenth century.

A key feature of historical archaeology, regardless of which definition is preferred, is that it seeks to integrate and interrogate both strictly archaeological types of sources (such as artifactual, ecofactual, structural, and architectural remains and their contextual, spatial, and temporal associations and characteristics), with other nonarchaeological sources that can be broadly defined as ‘historical’. In this respect, a useful distinction can be made between ‘external’ and ‘internal’ sources. By the former is meant sources produced by outsiders, either as direct observers, or as often in African contexts, transcribers and copiers of verbal accounts provided by others.

Thus, examples might include the large number of published first-hand accounts of voyages of discovery and exploration in Africa by different individuals of European origin that begin to appear from c. CE 1500 onward, and especially after 1800; the numerous official documents produced by the different European colonial powers that are now lodged in archives in Africa, Europe, and elsewhere; the records kept by different trading companies, ship captains, and others engaged in commercial activity; personal diaries and letters written by European missionaries, explorers and administrators; and also the various pre-1500CE descriptions and guides to parts of Africa written in Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Chinese.

By internal sources is meant the range of historical sources produced by, in this case, different African societies. Most obviously, these include the oral traditions and histories, myths, and personal memories that have been transcribed by professional historians and anthropologists.

However, there also exist various texts written in the local vernacular for certain parts of the continent, as well as some indigenous writing systems, notably the Vai script developed in what is now Liberia, the Nsibidi script found in Cross River State, Nigeria, and the Barnum hieroglyphs that occur in Cameroon.

Just as archaeological sources are subject to a wide range of processes that can affect their formal, spatial, biochemical, and contextual characteristics which may influence the integrity of the scientific information they carry, so too can oral, textual, and documentary sources be subject to a wide range of factors that may introduce different kinds of bias and selectivity (see Historical Archaeology: Methods).

For the African continent, both the specific and general value of oral traditions as reliable sources of historical information have been discussed at some length and various methods of source criticism devised. There is also widespread recognition of the need for detailed source criticism when handling documentary and archival sources. In terms of the latter, racial bias is obviously one factor, but many others also came into play. Equally, European perceptions of and attitudes to Africans were by no means uniform, varying between individuals, different nationalities, and different kinds of sources.