Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2002. 31:189-209 doi: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.31.040402.085424 Copyright © 2002 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved First published online as a Review in Advance on May 16, 2002 THE POLITICS OF ARCHAEOLOGY IN AFRICA Nick Shepherd Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, Private Bag, Rondebosch 7700, South Africa: email: shepherd@humanities.uct.ac.za Key Words colonialism, postcolonialism, nationalism, apartheid, construction of knowledge • Abstract "Africa is various," writes Kwame Anthony Appiah in deflance of the Eurocentric myth of a unitary and unchanging continent. The politics of archaeology in Africa has been no less marked by variety. Yet, underlying this multiplicity of historical experience are a number of common themes and ideas. This review traces the engagement between archaeology and politics in Africa through an exploration of these common themes:flrst,as a colonial science in the context of European conquest and the subjugation of African people and territories; second, in the context of colonial administration and the growth of settler populations; third, in the context of resistance to colonialism and a developing African nationalism; and fourth, in a postcolonial context, among whose challenges have been the growing illicit trade in antiquities originating in Africa, and (in the past two decades) the decline in direct funding for departments of archaeology in universities and museums. INTRODUCTION: A NOTE ON METHOD "Africa is various," writes Kwame Anthony Appiah (1992) in defiance of the Eu- rocentric myth of a utiitary and unchanging continent. The politics of archaeology in Africa has been no less marked by variety. From the savants who accompanied Napoleon's army of conquest in Egypt to the fiercely nationalist archaeologists of Africa's independence, from the overtly colonialist agendas of early researchers to contemporary debates over human origins and racial diversification, and from projects of excavation aimed at uncovering the glories of indigenous states to those aimed at recalling the horrors of slavery, archaeologists have been implicated di- rectly in political struggles and debates. As we might expect from a discipline that takes as its province of concem nothing less than the narrative of human origins and the coming into being of cultiure and society, such sites of political identi- fication span the range of issues of race, culttire, and identity, and have placed archaeologically constructed knowledge in relation to phenomena of colonialism, nationalism, apartheid, slavery, and neocolonialism. Yet, for all of this web of political association and implication, references to the politics of archaeology in Afhca are remarkably few and far between. In fact, as a subject for a review essay "the politics of archaeology in Africa" hardly exists—or 0084-6570/02/1021-0189$14.00 189