West African Communities Past & Present seen through Nigerian & British Museum Collections

West African Communities Past & Present seen through Nigerian & British Museum Collections by Professor Abubakar Sani Sule

There has been growing public and academic interest in the use of archaeological collections within museums as both subject and source matter. These debates are informed by concerns with ethical recording and curation, with adding value to existing collections, and with the acknowledged power of artefacts to aid public understanding of plural pasts and presents. African collections in UK museums have been at the centre of these discussions, but this lecture turns the spotlight on collections within Nigerian museums that arise from collaborations between British and Nigerian institutions since the 1960s. The research focuses on the large and under-researched ethnographic and archaeological collections from northern Nigeria, which are of global significance in terms of the history of trade and polities in the medieval period.

This lecture will present the results of recent research ameliorating documentation practices relating to key sites, and initiating exhibitions and activities in schools to present the material culture and architecture of the Hausa city-states and the place of powerful and legendary figures linked to them. The work brings new understandings of African history and UK/Nigerian research histories, while helping remedy current post-colonial issues concerning the role and value of museum collections.

Professor Abubakar Sani Sule (PhD University of East Anglia, 2013) is a Professor in African Archaeology at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, and British Academy Global Professor at the University of East Anglia, UK. A field archaeologist, educator, and collections management researcher, he is interested in the settlement history, material culture, and socio-political development of northern Nigeria over the last millennium, drawing from primary field and oral sources. His key recent work is his book Imprints of the Archaeology of Northern Nigeria (BAR, 2021), combining archaeological, ethnographic and historical on the Bauchi region of northern Nigeria and deploying a social theory of frontiers to understand the impact of various polities across the Sahel and savannah over the past 1500 years.

This lecture was sponsored and hosted by the Society of Antiquaries of London in its apartments at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London. The Society recorded the proceedings and, with permission of the speaker(s), made them available online here, and on its website at www.sal.org.uk. All rights reserved.