11 - Heritage Resources and Armed Conflicts: An African Perspective

Summary

INTRODUCTION

It has been demonstrated that archaeology can contribute to establishing the antiquity of conflict (Stone 2007). The Christian bible has also demonstrated that conflicts leading to the destruction of lives and properties have always been part and parcel of human society, with the story of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4, 1–15) being one of the earliest of such conflicts. It is therefore obvious that conflicts can occur at different levels, from that between individuals to that within and between groups of peoples, within and between communities, within and between tribes and ethnic groups, and within and between nations. Conflicts at these different levels take different forms and present different consequences for life and properties. It is important, therefore, to define the subject of conflict as used in this chapter, as ‘armed conflict’ may convey different meanings depending on the contexts.

AFRICA: THE LAND OF CONFLICTS?

Probable archaeological evidence for, at least the potential for, violent conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa is represented by the discovery of defensive systems of various time periods in the form of standing mud walls, ditches and embankments. The Sungbo Eredo earth rampart in Yorubaland, south-west Nigeria, is probably one of the earliest defensive structures in Africa and is reputed to be the largest single precolonial monument in Africa. It is more than 160 kilometres in circumference and it encloses an area 40 kilometres from north to south and 35 kilometres from east to west. The age of the rampart is not known but it is speculated that it was built over 1000 years ago. Similar walls and ditches in western Nigeria include earthworks around Ile Ife, Ilesha, and the Benin Iya, forming a 6500-kilometre series of connected but separate earthworks in Edo State (Wikipedia 2010a*). These earthworks are the archaeological evidence for the formation of early states in the forest zone of West Africa that were probably comparable in age to the early states of the 14th to 16th centuries in the savannah zone.

PRE-COLONIAL PERIOD

The history of the early states of Western and Central Sudan is replete with internal and external conflicts leading to the rise and fall of states in succession.