Who Works in African Archaeology?

Summary

There are shortages of professional archaeologists in many African countries. It is a widely held view that there just aren’t enough professional experts in Africa to carry out the work needed in projects, both large and small, that are affecting African cultural heritage and landscapes.

And these views are relevant, and important, and true – but they are often anecdotal rather than evidence-based. The first step in building capacity is to measure current capacity, then to use the results to identify what is needed and how to move towards.

The Heritage Management Organization, together with Landward Research Ltd, is developing a project with the support of the PanAfrican Archaeological Association and the Society of Africanist Archaeologists to measure African countries’ professional archaeological capacities.

Learning from previous work in Europe (www.discovering-archaeologists.eu), we want to look at how many people work in archaeology across Africa (in all work situations – academia, private companies, governmental), what they actually do, what their ages, genders and qualifications are, and how archaeology "operates" in each country.

This project is building up a network of partners in Africa who want to share methodologies and results to support African archaeology today and to plan for its development tomorrow.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20790