that the researchers who claim to be theory free in fact traffic in hidden paradigms and hypotheses: Arab civilization as the deus ex machina for the complexation of society south of the Sahara or in Madagascar, ceramic or lithic “families” corresponding to bounded peoples or ethnic groups, or the presumption that all lithic sequences of the Old World replicate stages already revealed and interpreted in France.

Francophone Africans express resentment when this contempt for theory becomes a tool for exclusivity, for the argument that access to different national research styles should be limited. Because the minister of cooperation controls publishing subvention funds, some African archaeologists feel penalized when they have difficulty publishing their experiments in “Anglo-Saxon” hypotheses or models. There is widespread resentment by those returning with an American Ph.D. for the way they are treated initially by their home research institutes, where the local “barons” are French trained.

All of this feeling comes together under a growing impression of recolonization. Arguments for mystical linkage and intellectual exclusivity certainly do not encourage international cooperation or collaboration, and such positions contradict one of the principal arguments of this article, namely, that francophone African archaeology has advanced most quickly in places such as the Malian middle Niger and Madagascar where respect for local research priorities combines with the creative tension of multiple national research styles. There is the very real danger that an exclusive concept of La Francophonie will frustrate the ability of archaeologists to demonstrate the world-class nature of prehistoric processes in francophone Africa.

Roderick Jacques McIntosh

See also

Africa, Sahara; Africa, Sudanic Kingdoms; Bordes, François; French Archaeology in Egypt and the Middle East; Graebner, Fritz; Jenné and Jenné-jeno; Maghreb; Rock Art

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