16:00 - 17:30
Room: Arts – Lecture Room 7
Stream: African Historiography, Vernacular Epistemology, and the Invention of An Archive in Toyin Falola’s Scholarship
Chair/s:
Abikal Borah
African ‘Historians, Are Archaeologists Your Siblings?’: Evaluating Toyin Falola’s Contribution to the Archaeology of Africa and the African Diaspora
Benjamin Nutor
University of Texas at Austin, Austin

In “Historians Are Archeologists Your Siblings,” Jan Vansina discusses the complicated relationship between historians and archaeologists. Vansina outlined the contribution of archaeology to African history while highlighting the methodological differences and differing research interests that prevent scholars from the two disciplines from working together. Toyin Falola’s eclectic approach to understanding the African past, however, transcends this disciplinary divide, as he successfully explored the archaeology of the Atlantic world. This paper discusses Toyin Falola’s journey into the world of archaeologists via his “Archeology of Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora” and similar collaborative works. It analyses his broader research perspective and his call for new methodological approaches, including the use of “ritual archives,” in studying the African past. The paper argues that such epistemological approach to unravelling the African past would, among others, require greater collaboration between historians, archaeologists and anthropologists, or the training of the next generation of African historians in African material culture and materiality.


Reference:
Tu-A07 Toyin Falola's Scholarship 1-P-002
Presenter/s:
Benjamin Nutor
Presentation type:
Panel
Room:
Arts – Lecture Room 7
Chair/s:
Abikal Borah
Date:
Tuesday, 11 September
Time:
16:15 - 16:30
Session times:
16:00 - 17:30