Navigation – Plan du site

AccueilLa revueAppels à contributionsCold Cases? The Archives of Archa...

Cold Cases? The Archives of Archaeology as Sources of the African Past

This issue is edited by Léa Roth (Università degli Studi di Pavia, Italy/Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, UMR 8167 Orient & Méditerranée, France), Gérard Chouin (William & Mary, USA), and Chloé Capel (CNRS, UMR 8167 Orient & Méditerranée, France).

Call for papers for a thematic issue of Afriques to be published in 2025

  • 1 See, for example, the Transcrire platform, initiated by the Institut des mondes africains (IMAF - F (...)
  • 2 For example: N. Shepherd, The Mirror in the Ground: archaeology, photography and the making of a di (...)

The field archives of scientists (archaeologists, historians, anthropologists, geologists, geographers, etc.) as well as those of travelers (administrators, military officers, explorers, scholars, etc.) contain a large amount of raw archaeological data that has rarely been fully exploited by its authors, if they were even fully aware of its value. Over the last few decades, the gradual passing away of these men and women has resulted in the accumulation of personal archives held in private or public collections. During the past twenty years, these multifaceted collections of ‘grey literature’, often with largely unpublished content, have been the subject of conservation and promotion initiatives, thanks to the widespread use of digital descriptive and archiving tools. Curators, historiographers, and anthropologists have taken notice of these corpuses and used them first and foremost for heritage purposes, including the preparation of inventories, preservation, and broadened educational and social access.1 Others have looked beyond this managerial approach and have used these collections to develop epistemological studies related to the social and political history of archaeology as a discipline in colonial and post-colonial contexts.2 Few researchers, however, have actually examined these archives with the aim of studying them as firsthand sources of archaeological data, providing new information about ancient societies, especially those in Africa.

  • 3 For example: C. Aillet, P. Cressier, S. Gilotte (eds), 2017, Sedrata. Histoire et archéologie d’un (...)
  • 4 For example: C. Capel, 2021, « Le Tombeau à Colonnes de Koumbi Saleh (Mauritanie –xie-xiie siècle)  (...)
  • 5 B. Van Dosselaere, Le roi et le potier : étude d’un assemblage céramique de Koumbi Saleh, Mauritani (...)
  • 6 J.A. Baird, L. McFadyen, “Toward an archaeology of archaeological archives”, Archaeological Review (...)

Yet re-examining these archives in the light of the questions, methods, and tools of the discipline of archaeology in the 21st century can produce convincing results. It can help to reconstruct past excavations that had previously been little or inadequately documented;3 it can lead to the extraction of valuable archaeological data from observations made by researchers affiliated to other disciplines or by travelers;4 finally, the use of archaeo-sciences can give a second life to material left in storage.5 Re-studying these archival and material collections therefore makes it possible to considerably enrich raw data collected at a time when the tools of analysis that are commonplace today had not yet been developed (spatial, environmental, pedological, stratigraphic, taphonomic, statistical, geochemical analyses, etc.). The reopening of these archives thus results in the production of ‘legacy’ data,6 adding to the documentary resources available on past societies and providing material for the updating of knowledge on sites that have been neglected or are subjected to new excavations. This scientific heritage is also essential when the documented sites have since disappeared (looting, urban development, environmental disaster, erosion) or become inaccessible (armed conflict, insecurity, militarized area).

For this reason, a thematic issue of the journal Afriques. Débats, méthodes et terrains d’histoire entitled “Cold Cases? The Archives of Archaeology as Sources of the African Past” will bring together contributions on the use of archaeological archives to produce new historical results and insights into the past societies of the African continent. These articles will be based on the different types of corpus mentioned above: excavation archives, all the ‘grey’ field documentation containing archaeological information (observations by geologists, anthropologists, explorers, etc.), and the material collected during excavations or surveys. These papers should present the archaeological results extracted from these archives, describing the context in which the corpus was produced, the methods of analysis used, the obstacles faced, and any failures and limitations of the approach adopted. The aim of this issue is to demonstrate the potential and limits of using archaeological research archives to reveal raw content, and beyond this to produce data sets that can serve as a basis for the development of a renewed historical discourse. In this regard, this issue of Afriques. Débats, méthodes et terrains d’histoire seeks to highlight an approach that is different from current practices, with their socio-political, educational, epistemological, and heritage-related concerns.

In parallel with this issue, the “Sources” section of Afriques will welcome shorter informative notes alerting readers to the existence of little-used archaeological collections for further study.

Deadline

Proposals should be submitted in the form of an abstract, in French or English, of around 500 words, to lea.roth0@gmail.com, glchouin@wm.edu, and chloe.capel@cnrs.fr by 15 May 2024. Final papers are due by 15 January 2025 for publication at the end of 2025.

Notes

1 See, for example, the Transcrire platform, initiated by the Institut des mondes africains (IMAF - France) and now supported by the Humathèque Library (Campus Condorcet - France). This is a public and participatory tool for transcribing digitized handwritten documents from the archives of researchers in the humanities and social sciences. [online: https://transcrire.huma-num.fr].

2 For example: N. Shepherd, The Mirror in the Ground: archaeology, photography and the making of a disciplinary archive, Johannesburg, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2015, [online: https://mirrorintheground.com/].

3 For example: C. Aillet, P. Cressier, S. Gilotte (eds), 2017, Sedrata. Histoire et archéologie d’un carrefour du Sahara médiéval à la lumière des archives inédites de Marguerite van Berchem, Madrid, Casa de Velázquez, (« Collection de la Casa de Velázquez », 161) ; L. Roth, G. Chouin, A. Ogunfolakan, 2021, “Lost in Space? Reconstructing Frank Willett’s excavations at Ita Yemoo, Ile-Ife, Nigeria: Rescue Excavations (1957-1958) and Trench XIV (1962-1963)”, Afrique : Archéologie & Arts, 17, p. 77-114. DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/aaa.3328

4 For example: C. Capel, 2021, « Le Tombeau à Colonnes de Koumbi Saleh (Mauritanie –xie-xiie siècle) : appropriation et réinterprétation d’une expression architecturale orientale en terres sahariennes », Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 149, p. 237-262. DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/remmm.16109

5 B. Van Dosselaere, Le roi et le potier : étude d’un assemblage céramique de Koumbi Saleh, Mauritanie (ve/vie-xviie siècles AD), Africa Magna Verlag, 2014.

6 J.A. Baird, L. McFadyen, “Toward an archaeology of archaeological archives”, Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 29 (2), 2014.

Haut de page
Rechercher dans OpenEdition Search

Vous allez être redirigé vers OpenEdition Search