Spring/Summer 1997
It is exciting that the next World Archaeology Congress will be held in Cape Town in 2000. Archaeologists will be impressed. By that time perhaps there will be a few more indigenous African archaeologists.What I found very impressive about my visit to South Africa was the terrific spirit of cooperation: South Africans want South Africa to succeed.	PROFESSOR EMERITUS Merrick Posnansky Recently invited as a cultural consultant to South Africa, he remains a tireless champion of historical archaeology by Marilyn Gatto AFTER A RECENT VISIT TO SOUTH AFRICA, Merrick Posnansky, a renowned scholar on historical archaeology, recalled how he first came to study in Africa, "In 1956, after earning my doctorate, completed largely on the Old Stone Age in middle England, I wanted to work overseas for a few years to see a bit of the world. Austerity ridden postwar England had been a bit dreary, and I was happy to take the first job which came up abroad. I turned down an offer to work for Israel Antiquities and went out as Warden of the Prehistoric Sites of the Royal National Parks of Kenya. I knew little of Africa and the Mau Mau emergency was still on, but the literature was still thin and I learnt a lot very quickly. At that time there were literally less than ten trained archaeologists working in the whole of tropical Africa, an area nearly three times the size of the USA with a human experience longer than that of any continent." Posnansky visited South Africa at the invitation of the US Information Agency in late January and early February to provide advice on Cultural Conservation. With the democratization of South Africa greater emphasis is being placed on the conservation, accessibility and promotion of historical sites, and the expansion of knowledge about the past of the majority population. Accompanied by Professor Edwin Hanisch of the University of Venda and Kathryn Schalow of the USIA, he inspected archaeological sites in Kruger Park and in the Northern Province. The occasion of his visit was the opening of the Thulamela archaeological site which had been excavated and conserved during the previous two years. Thulamela is a Zimbabwe-type site at which royal burials associated with gold objects had been found. Sites in Zimbabwe itself had been pillaged in the opening up of the then Rhodesia a century earlier. He also visited Mapunbubwe, near the Limpopo River, the only other major site at which gold objects had been recovered. He had talks in Pretoria with senior staff of the National Parks Service concerned with the conservation of human resources and with the staff of the National Cultural History Museum and in Johannesburg with staff of the Goldfields of South Africa who had funded the Thulamela project. He gave lectures on historical archaeology in Africa at the universities of Pretoria, Witwatersrand, and Cape Town. In Cape Town he attended a meeting of the National Monuments Council and inspected historical monuments in the Stellenbosch area. Posnansky came to UCLA in 1976 after earning his doctorate at the University of Nottingham and holding several teaching positions at universities in Africa. An esteemed scholar in historical archaeology, he has been a professor in the departments of History and Anthropology since 1980 and was director of The Institute of Archaeology from 1984 to 1987. From 1988 to 1992, he was director of the African Studies Center. He returns to Africa in October to continue work on his ethnoarchaeological study of Hani, a village in Ghana. On his recent trip to South Africa, Posnansky reports, "I had last visited South Africa in 1979. Then it was under apartheid. I had also tried to visit South Africa in 1961 but was not allowed in because I am married to a Black African. The biggest change is that real independence has come; apartheid officially no longer exists, though in the sphere of cultural conservation and archaeology there is still virtually no indigenous African involvement. White scholars have largely shaped the emphases with most work on early man sites, rock art, and Iron Age archaeology. Now there is a fair bit of work on historical archaeology involving work on sites associated with the Dutch and the English. "New work will have to done on African responses to European settlement, on early African town life, and so forth. Already there is much more cooperation with historians and others working on oral history. We visited many areas which were cut off from research as they were previously in the war zones. Archaeologically South Africa is well developed. It has at least five universities teaching courses, there are sophisticated laboratories and many researchers, and it has much to offer other African countries. It is exciting that the next World Archaeology Congress will be held in Cape Town in the year 2000. Archaeologists will be impressed. By that time perhaps there will be a few more indigenous African archaeologists. What I found very impressive about my visit to South Africa was the terrific spirit of cooperation: South Africans want South Africa to succeed." Marilyn Gatto is a volunteer in the Publications Unit and a regular writer for Backdirt.
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