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Archaeology and Historical Reconstruction: The Nigerian Case
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 May 2019
Extract
In studying the remote past of nonliterate peoples in Africa (and throughout the world), the historian depends for pratically all his material on archaeology. This means that the empahsis in the methodology of African history is differentfrom the emphasis in that of other histories. This is not to say that attempts to accurately reconstruct the remote past of peoples outside Africa do not involve a similar technique of discovery from material as well as physical remains, but that a greater part of their history is documented and is revealed through the use of conventional historical methods.
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- Copyright © African Studies Association 1972
References
1 Shaw, Thurstan, “The Approach Through Archaeology to Early West African History,” in Ajayi, J. F. Ade and Espie, Ian (ed.) A Thousand Years of West African History. (Ibadan University Press, 1970), p. 26.Google Scholar
2 Willet, Frank, “Ife and its Archaeology,” Journal of African History, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1960, p. 245 Google Scholar. This conclusion to a great extent gives credit to the African genius-unlike that of Professor Flinders-Petrie. The latter would have us believe that “The style of art and the solid modelling stamp these as of the same school as the best modelled heads found at Memphis in the Persian Age.” The attribution of a foreign origin to an African artifact or civilization is also found in Meyerowitz, Eva L.R., “Ancient Nigerian Bronzes,” Burlington Magazine, Vol. 79, 1941, pp. 89–93 and 121-128Google Scholar.
3 Thurstan Shaw, “The Approach through Archaeology to Early West African History,” op. cit., p. 27.
4 Davies, Oliver, West Africa Before the Europeans: Archaeology and Pre history (London, Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1967), p. 32.Google Scholar