Anne Haour
Lecturer in the Arts and Archaeology of Africa
BA (1995), Oxford; MA (1998), University College London; DPhil (2002), Oxford; British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow 2002-2005 Hertford College, Oxford; Lecturer in Archaeology 2006-2007, University of Newcastle.
General Research Interests
West African archaeology, especially archaeology of Niger; social, economic and political boundaries and connections in the Sahel in the last 1000 years; ceramic typology
Current Research
My focus is the recent, ‘medieval’, archaeology of West Africa, in particular that of the Sahelian zones. This was a time and place in which vast and powerful ‘empires’ are described in historical records as controlling the land – but little is know of them in archaeological terms. Most recently I have conducted excavations and ethnohistorical research at two Sahelian medieval sites, both in the Republic of Niger: Kufan Kanawa (Haour, 2003) and Garumele (Haour, 2008). Both these sites are said by oral tradition (and less clearly by written records) to have been involved in the formative stages of some powerful political entities: the Hausa and Kanem-Borno respectively.
This field research, then, addresses themes of wider significance: the creation and maintenance of political and cultural boundaries, the nature of the ‘early state’, the role of trade and of religion, and the interrelation of the different sources of information we have relating to the past. I have therefore developed theoretical reflections along these themes (Haour, 2005, 2007), in particular using comparative approaches. My latest book (Haour, 2007) sets side by side the central Sahel and northwest Europe to see what each region can teach us about the other. It seems to me that African archaeology has proved to be a fertile ground for theoretical debating and refining, and that its profile within the wider archaeological community will go on increasing.
I have this year been a convenor of two international workshops relating to my research interests: a Leverhulme-Trust-funded meeting dedicated to West African pottery analysis, and a workshop on the time-depth of Hausa identity, supported by a major grant from the AHRC/ESRC and with valuable assistance from the Sainsbury Research Unit. Further details on these, and other SRU research projects, can be found on the SRU Research Activities page.
Selected publications
2008. A pottery sequence from Garumele (Niger) – a former Kanem-Borno capital? Journal of African Archaeology 6(1): 3-20.
2007. Rulers, warriors, traders and clerics: the North Sea and the Central Sahel, AD 800-1500. Oxford University Press.
2005. Power and permanence in precolonial Africa: a case study from the central Sahel. World Archaeology 37(4): 552-565.
2003. Ethnoarchaeology in the Zinder region, Republic of Niger: the site of Kufan Kanawa. Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 56. Archaeopress, Oxford.
Further publications
See my personal web page for further publications.
Current courses
- SRU MA Africa seminars
- Contributions to SRU MA Core course
- ART 3rd year undergraduate course, 'A myth of timeless Africa'
Excavations in progress at Garumele, easternmost Niger
Anne Haour - Lecturer in the Arts of Africa
Potters at work in Saga, near Niamey, Niger