Black History Month webinar sponsored by the Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS) and the Department of Anthropology.

Repatriating Africa’s Looted Heritage: Progress and Process

The repatriation of over 900 looted artifacts to Mali in December 2021 highlights the serious issue of ongoing looting of the rich archaeological heritage in West Africa. The rapacious looting of Africa’s cultural heritage extends back in an unbroken line through the colonial period. This talk explores how the process to stem looting in the postcolonial period has relied largely on international agreements, such as the 1970 UNESCO Convention on Cultural Property, which provides a process for repatriation. For items looted in the course of colonial imperialism, however, source countries have had little recourse until very recently. Beginning with President Macron’s 2017 remarks about prioritizing restitution of African heritage to Africa, voluntary or negotiated museum repatriations have risen dramatically. We are entering a hopeful new era of progress and process.

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Susan Keech McIntosh is Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Anthropology and recently completed two years as interim Dean of Social Sciences. She holds an M.A. in archaeology from Cambridge University and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on West African societies living along the Niger and Senegal Rivers over the past 2500 years, with a specific interest in the early emergence of large-scale, complex societies and long-distance trading networks associated with the formation of the Empire of Ghana. She also studies past responses of African societies to climate and environmental change, and writes and teaches on the politics of archaeology and archaeological representations. In the face of massive looting of terracotta statuettes from Niger River archaeological sites, she became involved in issues of archaeological heritage and cultural property and was appointed by President Clinton to two terms (1996-2003) on the Presidential Advisory Committee on Cultural Property. She serves on the editorial boards of numerous journals and is a past president of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists. She is a member of the newly established Center for African and African-American Studies at Rice.

This lecture is open to the entire Rice community and the public. For more information, email caaas@rice.edu.