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the oxford handbook of

african
archaeology
This page intentionally left blank
the oxford handbook of

AFRICAN
ARCHAEOLOGY

Edited by
PET ER M I TCH E L L

and

PAUL LANE

1
 1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Oxford University Press 2013
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2013
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available

ISBN 978–0–19–956988–5

As printed and bound by

CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4yy
 Contents

List of Figures xi
List of Tables xx
List of Contributors xxi

PA RT I I N T RODU C T ION
1. Introducing African archaeology 3
Peter Mitchell and Paul Lane

PA RT I I D OI N G A F R IC A N A RC HA E OL O G Y:
T H E ORY, M E T HOD, P R AC T IC E
2. Archaeological practice in Africa: a historical perspective 15
Graham Connah

3. Oral history, oral traditions, and archaeology: the application

of structural analyses 37
Peter Schmidt
4. Language, linguistics, and archaeology: their integration in the
study of African prehistory 49
Roger Blench

5. Genetics and archaeology 65

Scott MacEachern
6. Archaeology and migration in Africa 77
Ceri Ashley
7. Ethnoarchaeological research in Africa 87
Diane Lyons
8. Studying African stone tools 103
Christian Tryon

9. A century of ceramic studies in Africa 117

Olivier Gosselain and Alexandre Livingstone Smith
vi contents

10. The archaeology of African metalworking 131

Shadreck Chirikure
11. Rock art research in Africa 145
Benjamin W. Smith
12. The archaeology of ritual and religions in Africa 163
Timothy Insoll
13. Material culture, space, and identity 177
Stephanie Wynne-Jones
14. Landscape archaeology 189
Jeffrey Fleisher

15. Maritime archaeology in Africa 201

Colin Breen
16. Managing Africa’s archaeological heritage 213
Noemie Arazi and Ibrahima Thiaw
17. Museums and public archaeology in Africa 227
Chapurukha Kusimba and Carla Klehm
18. Archaeology and education 239
Amanda Esterhuysen and Paul Lane

19. Politics, ideology, and indigenous perspectives 253

John Giblin

PA RT I I I B E C OM I N G H UM A N
20. Hominin evolution as the context for African prehistory 269
Robert A. Foley
21. The Oldowan: early hominins and the beginning of human culture 289
Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo
22. The African Acheulean: an archaeological summary 307
Mohamed Sahnouni, Sileshi Semaw, and Michael Rogers
23. Genetic and fossil evidence for modern human origins 325
Marta Mirazon Lahr
24. Beyond modernity 341
Lawrence Barham
 contents vii

PA RT I V H U N T E R S , G AT H E R E R S ,
A N D I N T E N SI F I E R S : T H E DI V E R SI T Y
OF A F R IC A N F OR AG E R S
25. Theoretical frameworks for understanding African
hunter-gatherers 355
Lyn Wadley
26. Hunter-gatherers in southern Africa before 20,000 years ago 367
Marlize Lombard
27. The Middle Stone Age of eastern Africa 387
Laura Basell

28. Hunting and gathering in Africa’s tropical forests at the end of the
Pleistocene and in the early Holocene 403
Els Cornelissen
29. Hunter-gatherers of the Nile Valley and the Sahara before
12,000 years ago 419
Elena Garcea
30. Hunter-gatherers of the Maghreb 25,000–6,000 years ago 431
Nick Barton and Abdeljalil Bouzouggar
31. Hunter-gatherer-fishers of the Sahara and the Sahel
12,000–4,000 years ago 445
Barbara E. Barich
32. Hunter-gatherer-fishers of eastern and south-central
Africa since 20,000 years ago 461
Sibel Barut Kusimba
33. Southern African hunter-gatherers of the last
25,000 years 473
Peter Mitchell

PA RT V F O OD F OR T HO U G H T: T H E
A RC HA E OL O G Y OF A F R IC A N PA S TOR A L I S T
A N D FA R M I N G C OM M U N I T I E S
34. Domesticating animals in Africa 491
Diane Gifford-Gonzalez and Olivier Hanotte
viii contents

35. Domesticating plants in Africa 507

Dorian Fuller and Elisabeth Hildebrand
36. The emergence and spread of herding in Northern Africa:
a critical reappraisal 527
Savino di Lernia
37. Early farming societies along the Nile 541
Randi Haaland and Gunnar Haaland
38. Pathways to food production in the Sahel 555
Peter Breunig
39. Archaeological evidence for the emergence of food production
in the Horn of Africa 571
Matthew Curtis
40. The archaeology of pastoralism and stock-keeping in East Africa 585
Paul Lane
41. The Stone to Metal Age in West Africa 603
Joanna Casey
42. The appearance and development of metallurgy south of the Sahara 615
Bertram B. B. Mapunda
43. Archaeologies of the Bantu expansion 627
Pierre de Maret
44. The archaeology of herding in southernmost Africa 645
Karim Sadr

45. Early Farming Communities of southern and south-central Africa 657

Peter Mitchell

46. The archaeology of agricultural intensification in Africa 671

Daryl Stump

PA RT V I P OW E R , P R E S T IG E , A N D
C ON SUM P T ION : A F R IC A N TOW N S
A N D STAT E S A N D T H E I R N E IG H B O U R S
47. The archaeology of African urbanism 689
Paul Sinclair
48. The archaeology of the precolonial state in Africa 703
J. Cameron Monroe
 contents ix

49. The archaeology of clan- and lineage-based societies in Africa 723

Matthew Davies
50. Pharaonic Egypt 737
Ian Shaw
51. Kerma and Kush and their neighbours 751
Derek Welsby
52. Berber, Phoenicio-Punic, and Greek North Africa 765
Farès K. Moussa
53. Roman Africa and the Sahara 777
Anna Leone and Farès K. Moussa

54. Medieval and post-medieval states of the Nile Valley 789

David N. Edwards
55. Complex societies of the Eritrean/Ethiopian highlands
and their neighbours 799
David W. Phillipson
56. States, trade, and ethnicities in the Maghreb 817
Said Ennahid
57. Complex societies, urbanism, and trade in the western Sahel 829
Kevin MacDonald

58. States and trade in the central Sahel 845

Detlef Gronenborn
59. Towns and states of the West African forest belt 859
Akinwumi Ogundiran
60. Recent farming communities and states in the Congo
Basin and its environs 875
Pierre de Maret

61. The emergence of states in Great Lakes Africa 887

Andrew Reid
62. The Swahili world 901
Adria LaViolette
63. The Zimbabwe Culture and its neighbours: origins, development, and
consequences of social complexity in southern Africa 915
Innocent Pikirayi
x contents

64. Southern African late farming communities 929

Alex Schoeman
65. Madagascar: from initial settlement to the growth of kingdoms 943
Chantal Radimilahy

PA RT V I I A F R IC A N S O C I E T I E S A N D
T H E M ODE R N WOR L D SYS T E M
66. The archaeology of the Ottoman empire in northern and
northeastern Africa 957
Intisar Soghayroun el-Zein
67. Contexts of interaction: the archaeology of European exploration and
expansion in western and southern Africa in comparative perspective 971
Natalie Swanepoel

68. An archaeological perspective on West Africa and the

post-1500 Atlantic world 983
Ibrahima Thiaw and François Richard
69. Connecting the archaeologies of the Atlantic world: Africa
and the African diasporas 999
Kenneth G. Kelly

70. The archaeology of colonial encounters in eastern Africa 1013

Sarah Croucher
Index 1023
 List of Figures

2.1 Growth and changes in African archaeology from 1947–2005 18

2.2 Sites, locations, and areas mentioned in Chapter 2 19
2.3 The recovery of the dugout canoe from Dufuna, northeastern Nigeria 22
2.4 Ground plan of the eastern unit in the stone-walled settlement at
Boschoek, near Johannesburg, South Africa 27
3.1 Interlacustrine East Africa, with the Bigo and Rugomora Mahe
sites highlighted 38
3.2 Location of Buhaya in northwestern Tanzania 39
3.3 The kikale or palace of Rugomora Mahe (1650–1675), Buhaya, Tanzania 40
3.4 Kaiija Tree, Buhaya, Tanzania (c. 1970) 41
3.5 The landscape around Kaiija Tree, Buhaya, Tanzania 42
4.1 Outline distribution of Africa’s language families 50
4.2 Potential overlaps between the distributions of Cushitic and Khoe speakers 57
7.1 The chief of Sukur’s compound, northern Cameroon 91
7.2 Decoration of pottery, northern Cameroon 93
7.3 Learning how to make pottery, eastern Tigray, Ethiopia 94
7.4 Iron smelting in northern Cameroon 95
8.1 Examples of African stone artefacts 104
8.2 Key processes and terms involved in percussion flaking 106
8.3 Schematic representation of the process of manufacturing a
Levallois point and a Levallois flake 111
9.1 Pottery collected from the coastal region of Congo-Kinshasa,
early 20th century 118
9.2 An Ila (Zambia) potter employing the coil-building technique 121
10.1 A typical iron smelting site, Tswapong Hills, Botswana 132
10.2 A tall natural draught furnace from Malawi 134
10.3 A low shaft furnace decorated with breasts and waist belt,
Nyanga National Park, Zimbabwe 135
10.4 A bowl furnace used in southern Africa 135
10.5 Transmitted plane polarized photomicrograph of Late Iron
Age tin slag from the Rooiberg, South Africa 139
xii list of figures

11.1 An example of the Central African geometric tradition art

including rare examples of handprints 146
11.2 San rock art, southern uKhahlamba-Drakensberg, South Africa 148
11.3 The release of supernatural potency by a dying eland, San rock art,
South Africa 149
11.4 Khoekhoen tradition rock engravings from the central interior
of South Africa 149
11.5 Northern Sotho boys’ initiation rock art from northern South Africa 150
11.6 Settlement pattern rock engraving from eastern South Africa 151
11.7 Red geometric tradition rock paintings from central Malawi 152
11.8 Boys’ initiation rock art from central Malawi linked to the
nyau secret society 152
11.9 Human forms in the hunter-gatherer rock art of central Tanzania 153
11.10 Paintings of Maa-speaker cattle brands, western Kenya 154
11.11 ‘Ethiopian-Arabian’ tradition rock art from Ethiopia 155
11.12 Bovidian period rock paintings, southeastern Algeria 156
12.1 Ritual figurines in situ, Yikpabongo, Ghana 165
12.2 Ceramic spread and accompanying stone arrangements,
Nyoo Shrine, Tong Hills, Ghana 166
12.3 Possible aisle of a mosque, Gao Ancien, Mali 169
13.1 Sites and regions discussed in Chapter 13 178
13.2 Idealized plan of the ground floor of a Swahili stonehouse. 179
13.3 Esu figure, Lakaaye Chambers, 2011, Nigeria 181
15.1 Principal places mentioned in Chapter 15 202
15.2 A Bellin 1764 coastal chart of the historic port of Alexandria, Egypt 204
15.3 ‘Zanzibar Town from the Sea’ in the late 19th century 207
16.1 Art students drawing exhibition models to appropriate and valorize
precolonial heritage in the context of Africa’s decolonization movements 215
16.2 Senegalese models reaffirming African beauty via clothing, hairstyle,
and jewellery 217
16.3 The looted site of Gao-Saney, Mali 220
16.4 Salvage excavation at the future site of a gas-fired power plant at
Kribi, Cameroon 222
17.1 Entrance to the Nairobi National Museum, Kenya 230
17.2 Exterior of the Khama III Museum in Serowe, Botswana 231
17.3 Community interactive space at the Khama III Museum in
Serowe, Botswana 232
17.4 A school visit to the National Museum of Lubumbashi, Congo-Kinshasa 233
 list of figures xiii

18.1 Pupils and staff visiting excavation of a Pastoral Neolithic–Pastoral Iron

Age burial cairn 241
18.2 Education programmes allow learners to participate in excavations 244
18.3 One of the many posters distributed by government in celebration
of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site 246
18.4 Report of the history/archaeology working group 249
19.1 Archaeological excavation of a c. 4th-century ad burial in Rwanda 261
20.1 Classification and nomenclature for human evolution 270
20.2 Principal areas for sources of information about human evolution in Africa 271
20.3 Chronological distribution of hominins 274
20.4 Hominin phylogeny 281
21.1 Some examples of stone tools from the oldest archaeological site in the world:
OGS7 at Gona (Ethiopia) 290
21.2 Archaeological localities mentioned in Chapter 21 290
21.3 Hierarchical agglomerative cluster analyses of several bone assemblages
from spotted hyena dens, leopard dens, lion-consumed carcasses, and
the Olduvai Bed I sites 299
22.1 Major Acheulean sites in Africa mentioned in Chapter 22 310
22.2 Acheulean bifaces 311
23.1 Phylogenetic tree of human mitochondrial DNA, highlighting the
distribution of lineages in time throughout Africa 329
26.1 Approximate locations of sites mentioned in the text and in Table 26.1 372
26.2 Bone tools from MSA contexts, scale bars = 1cm 374
26.3 Marine shell beads from MSA contexts, scale bars for 3a and 3c = 1cm
and scale bars for 3b and 3d = 1mm 376
26.4 Engraved and painted objects from MSA contexts, scale bars = 1cm 378
26.5 Hafting and hunting technologies associated with backed pieces from the
Howieson’s Poort, South Africa, ~60–64 ka, scale bars = 1cm 380
27.1 Map of key eastern African Middle Stone Age sites 388
27.2 Middle Stone Age sites in eastern Africa by country, indicating the
relative antiquity of sites, past site situation, and associated hominin remains 389
27.3 Cultural modification of the Herto adult and child crania, Ethiopia 394
27.4 Map of distribution of point styles in the African Middle Stone Age 397
28.1 Current distribution of forests in West and Central Africa,
archaeological and palaeoenvironmental sites cited in Chapter 28 404
28.2 Illustration of hypothetical reconstructions of maximum and
minimum extent of forests in response to climate changes 405
28.3 Core-axes and other implements in polymorphic sandstone
from lower Congo (Congo-Kinshasa) 407
xiv list of figures

28.4 Selection of stone artefacts from the Katanda sites, Semliki

Valley, Congo-Kinshasa 410
29.1 Sites mentioned in Chapter 29 420
29.2 Saharan megalake basins and possible routes out of Africa 422
29.3 Aterian tools from the Jebel Gharbi, Libya 423
30.1 Distribution of major Iberomaurusian and Capsian sites in the Maghreb 433
30.2 Anterior and left lateral views of the Hattab II skull showing
dental evulsion of the upper incisors 434
30.3 Iberomaurusian lithic microliths, Taforalt Cave, Morocco 435
30.4 The Afalou modelled clay zoomorphic, Algeria 436
31.1 The Sahara and the Nile Valley, with sites mentioned in Chapter 31 446
31.2 Microlithic industry from Niger 447
31.3 Dotted wavy line pottery from Ti-n-Torha East, Libya 448
31.4 Site E-75–6 at Nabta Playa, Egypt 451
31.5 View of the hut in the Ti-n-Torha East Shelter, Libya 452
31.6 View of Ti-n-Torha Two Caves Shelter, Libya 452
31.7 Rock art image in the Roundhead Style, Tassili, Algeria 456
33.1 Southern Africa, showing the major localities and archaeological
sites discussed in Chapter 33 474
33.2 Elands Bay Cave, a major source of information for the
Pleistocene/Holocene transition 477
33.3 Painting of a rain animal, Doring Valley, Western Cape Province, South Africa 479
33.4 Painting of cattle from the Caledon Valley, South Africa 482
34.1 The genetic make-up of African cattle 493
34.2 Djallonke sheep from Guinea 496
34.3 N’Dama bull, cow, and calf in Guinea 498
34.4 Chickens in a portable cage on a bicycle in a market in western Kenya 501
35.1 Selected crops of African origin, including cereals, pulses, and the tuber
crop enset 508
35.2 Probable geographic locations of the five centres of indigenous
crop domestication in Africa 513
35.3 Sites with early archaeobotanical evidence for the spread of major
African crops 514
36.1 North Africa with the location of sites with the earliest domesticates 529
36.2 Suggested models for the spread of small livestock in Africa 533
37.1 Main sites mentioned in Chapter 37 543
37.2 Ceramic vessel from the Mesolithic site of Aneibis, Atbara, Sudan 544
37.3 Calciform beaker from the Neolithic site of Kadero, Sudan 549
 list of figures xv

38.1 Projectile points retouched on both surfaces from the central Sahel 557
38.2 Ceramic vessels of the Gajiganna Complex in the Chad Basin of northeastern
Nigeria (c. 1500–1000 bc) 557
38.3 West Africa, showing places mentioned in Chapter 38 and
archaeological groupings 559
38.4 The Chad Basin in northeastern Nigeria, with archaeological sites
from the pastoral and agropastoral phases of the Gajiganna Complex
(second millennium bc) 561
38.5 Geomagnetic survey of the mid-first-millennium bc settlement of
Zilum, Chad Basin, Nigeria 563
38.6 Supply of lithic raw material for the Chad Basin during the time of
the Gajiganna Complex 564
38.7 Ceramic vessels from the Maibe site, Chad Basin, northeastern
Nigeria, c. 500 bc 565
38.8 Almost life-size head of a Nok Culture terracotta, excavated from
the Nok site of Kushe, Nigeria, in March 2010 566
38.9 Schematic representation of the development of the early phases of
food production in the West African Sahel 567
39.1 The Horn of Africa, showing archaeological sites and localities
mentioned in Chapter 39 572
39.2 Barley field (foreground) and enset plants (background) in the Gamo
Highlands, southwestern Ethiopia, 2008 573
39.3 Walls of an Ancient Ona Culture early farming household of the first
millennium bc, Asmara Plateau, Eritrea 579
40.1 Key sites mentioned in Chapter 40 587
40.2 Examples of Pastoral Neolithic pottery 589
40.3 Examples of Savanna Pastoral Neolithic and Elmenteitan pottery
from Kenya 594
40.4 Examples of Pastoral Iron Age pottery from Kenya 597
41.1 Sites mentioned in Chapter 41 604
41.2 Edge-ground tool types from West Africa 606
41.3 Kintampo LSA artifacts from Ntereso, Ghana 608
42.1 Map of Africa showing sites mentioned in Chapter 42, and other important
iron smelting localities 616
43.1 Present-day distribution of Bantu languages 628
43.2 Hypothetical dispersal routes of Bantu languages from I (the Proto-Bantu
Homeland) and II (their region of secondary dispersal) 630
43.3 Central Africa, showing sites of the ‘Stone to Metal Age’ and their
main traditions 632
43.4 Examples of Stone to Metal Age pottery from Obobogo, near Yaounde,
Cameroon 633
xvi list of figures

44.1 Central and southern Africa, showing sites and boundaries mentioned
in Chapter 44 649
45.1 Likely dispersal routes of Early Farming Communities
across sub-Equatorial Africa 659
45.2 Southern Africa, showing the major localities and archaeological sites
discussed in Chapter 45 661
45.3 The Central Cattle Pattern 663
46.1 Dry-stone agricultural terracing at Konso, Ethiopia 674
46.2 Areas of precolonial intensive agriculture in eastern and southern Africa 675
46.3 Extent of cultivated fields, settlement sites, and primary irrigation furrows,
Engaruka, Tanzania 677
46.4 Irrigated dry-stone terracing within the Northern Fields, Engaruka, Tanzania 678
46.5 Dry-stone agricultural terracing at Nyanga, Zimbabwe 679
46.6 Bokoni dry-stone terracing, Verlorenkloof, South Africa 680
46.7 View west over a foggara at Taglit (Taqallit), near Ubari in Fezzan,
southwest Libya 682
48.1 Precolonial African states and sites mentioned in Chapter 48 704
48.2 Plan and monuments of Kerma, Sudan 709
48.3 Great Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe 711
48.4 View of Loango, Congo-Brazzaville, and sites in the Upemba Depression,
Congo-Kinshasa 712
48.5 Earthworks and monuments of the kingdoms of Benin, Nigeria
and Dahomey, Bénin 713
49.1 Major Pastoral Iron Age (PIA) sites in central Kenya and the
distribution of Sirikwa hollows 729
49.2 Sirikwa hollow at Chemagel, Kenya 730
49.3 Plan of Sirikwa hollow and adjacent huts at Hyrax Hill, Kenya 730
50.1 The mastaba of Ptahshepses at Abusir, Egypt 738
50.2 Egypt, showing the sites mentioned in Chapter 50 739
50.3 The Narmer Palette (Cairo JE32169) 744
50.4 Scene from the Fifth-Dynasty tomb of Ty at Saqqara, Egypt 746
51.1 Sites of the Kerma period between the First and the Fifth Cataracts of
the Nile 752
51.2 Kerma’s main religious monument 753
51.3 A typical burial of the Kerma Moyen at site P37 in the Northern
Dongola Reach, Sudan 755
51.4 The kingdom of Kush in the aftermath of its expulsion from Egypt in
the 7th century bc 757
51.5 Aerial view of the northern part of the ‘Royal City’ at Meroe, Sudan 759
 list of figures xvii

52.1 Numidian mausoleum at Medracen, Algeria 767

52.2 Garama, southern Libya, c. 1st century bc 768
52.3 View across remains at Kerkouane, Tunisia, c. 4th century bc 770
52.4 Temple of Zeus at Cyrene, Libya, c. 5th century bc 772
53.1 North Africa, showing sites mentioned in Chapter 53 779
53.2 Trade routes of the Garamantes 782
53.3 The so-called Garamantian ‘mausoleum’ at Watwat near Garama, Libya 782
54.1 The Middle Nile Valley, showing the location of major sites and regions 790
54.2 A mud-brick palatial structure at Soba, Sudan 792
54.3 A late medieval tower-house in the Third Cataract region of the Nile, Sudan 795
54.4 Post-medieval qubba tombs at Debba al-Fuqara, Sudan 796
55.1 Locations of first-millennium bc and Aksumite sites mentioned in Chapter 55 800
55.2 The central altar of the Almaqah Temple at Mekaber Ga‘ewa near
Wukro, Tigray, Ethiopia 802
55.3 The upper section of Aksum Stela 3, Aksum, Ethiopia 805
55.4 Plan and proposed reconstruction of the Dungur elite structure,
Aksum, Ethiopia 806
55.5 Plan of the ‘Tigray cross-in-square’ church of Abraha-wa-Atsbaha,
Tigray, Ethiopia 810
55.6 Styles of stelae in southern Ethiopia 813
56.1 Digitized version of the map of the Maghreb by Ibn Hawqal (ad 988) 818
56.2 Map of the Sijilmasa landscape, Morocco 821
56.3 Map of northwest Africa during the Almoravid period 824
57.1 Locations of sites mentioned in Chapter 57 830
57.2 Hachettes and a stone ring fragment from the Windé Koroji complex, Mali 831
57.3 Plan of Dakhlet el Atrouss I, Mauritania 833
57.4 Excavations at Dia Shoma, Mali, 1998 836
57.5 A portion of the settlement mounds of Toladie, Méma region, Mali 839
58.1 Central Sahel, showing the sites mentioned in Chapter 58 846
58.2 Sites of the Kanem-Borno Empire (13th–early 20th centuries) 847
58.3 Sites in Hausaland (15th–19th centuries) 851
58.4 Takusheyi, Katsina State, Nigeria, burial 7 852
59.1 Map of West Africa showing sites mentioned in Chapter 59 860
59.2 Layout of the Esan-Edo wall complex, Nigeria 862
59.3 Layout of the Ile-Ife wall complex, Nigeria 864
59.4 A copper alloy bust of a king of Ife and a terracotta head of a
prominent palace official, Lajuwa, Nigeria 865
59.5 Greater Begho, Ghana, showing the adjoining quarters 866
xviii list of figures

60.1 Map of the Congo Basin showing major polities, archaeological sites,
and areas mentioned in Chapter 60 876
60.2 A selection of 8th–13th-century ad Kisalian artefacts 879
61.1 States and sites of the Great Lakes region 888
61.2 The ceramic succession in the Great Lakes region 890
61.3 The Luzira figures, Uganda 891
61.4 Cattle mortality profiles from select sites around Ntusi, Uganda 893
61.5 The Muzibu-Azaala-Mpanga, the main tomb building, at Kasubi,
Uganda, before its destruction in 2010 896
62.1 Major archaeological sites on the Swahili coast 904
62.2 Tana Tradition/Triangular Incised Ware rims from 7th–10th-century
contexts, Tumbe, Pemba Island, Tanzania 905
62.3 Spindle whorls made on sherds of imported ceramics, Chwaka,
Pemba Island, Tanzania 907
62.4 Kilwa-type copper coins from Songo Mnara, Tanzania 908
62.5 Pillar tombs and a mosque, Ras Mkumbuu, Pemba Island, Tanzania 909
63.1 Some of the archaeological sites, chiefdoms, and state societies
discussed in Chapter 63 916
63.2 An extensive Zhizo settlement in the valley west of Mmamgwa
Hill, eastern Botswana 917
63.3 Mapungubwe hilltop, South Africa, showing the palace area 919
63.4 A view of Great Zimbabwe 920
63.5 Some of the fortified settlements on Mt Fura, northern Zimbabwe 923
64.1 Location of the archaeological sites discussed in Chapter 64 930
64.2 Phase I (A), Phase II (B) and Phase III(C) Moloko ceramics 931
64.3 Moor Park ceramics 932
64.4 An aerial photograph of one of the Bokoni towns, South Africa 936
64.5 An illustration of the ‘king’s district’ (kgosing) of a Tswana town 937
65.1 Main archaeological sites in Madagascar 944
65.2 Mahilaka on the northwestern coast of Madagascar: remains of
standing walls 947
65.3 Open-air chlorite schist quarry in northern Madagascar 947
65.4 Structure said to be a Vazimba house in western Madagascar 948
65.5 Rockshelter with paintings under investigation in limestone
massif in southern Madagascar 949
66.1 Maximum extent of Ottoman territories 958
66.2 Ottoman tombs at Jebel Adda, Egyptian Nubia, c. 1960 962
66.3 Ottoman fortress at Wadi Shati, Libya 963
 list of figures xix

66.4 The Ottoman fortress of Qasr Ibrim, Egypt, about forty years after its
abandonment 964
66.5 Sai Fort, Sudan, viewed from the west 964
66.6 Excavations in progress at the late 16th-century structure known
as the Beit al-Basha, Suakin, 2006 966
67.1 Location of archaeological sites discussed in Chapter 67 972
67.2 Rock art depicting a conflict between troops of the South African
Republic and the Hananwa, a local polity in Limpopo Province,
South Africa 973
67.3 Fort St Sebastian, Ghana 974
67.4 Rhone, Groot Drakenstein, South Africa 977
68.1 Atlantic West Africa showing the towns, regions, and polities
mentioned in Chapter 68 984
68.2 The king of Kayoor negotiating with a European merchant 986
68.3 ‘Prospect of the European factorys at Xavier or Sabi’ (1731) 987
68.4 ‘The Kingdom of Dahomey’s levee’ 988
68.5 Excavated artefacts from Atlantic-period contexts, Gorée Island, Senegal 990
69.1 Reconstructed slave house, Marie-Galante, Guadeloupe 1002
69.2 Low-fired earthenwares from Martinique 1004
 List of Tables

4.1 Numbers of African languages by phylum 51

4.2 African language isolates 52
4.3 Types of classification applied to African language phyla 53
4.4 Sources of Swahili nautical vocabulary 54
4.5 Cognate words for ‘hippopotamus’ in Nilo-Saharan languages 56
4.6 Malagasy mammal names of Sabaki origin 58
4.7 Americanisms of probable African origin 59
20.1 Principal taxa of hominin evolution 273
21.1 The least heuristic models provided to account for early site formation 294
23.1 Middle Pleistocene sub-Saharan African hominin fossils 332
23.2 Late Middle and early Upper Pleistocene African human fossils 334
26.1 Overview of some Middle Stone Age sites in southern Africa 368
27.1 Simplified characterization of Middle Stone Age lithic technological
and typological change in eastern Africa 393
30.1 Iberomaurusian AMS determinations on single charcoals from
Ghar Cahal, Kehf el Hammar and Taforalt Sector 8, Morocco 437
30.2 List of dates associated with early Neolithic Cardial Ware in
northern Morocco 439
35.1 Major indigenous African plant domesticates 511
35.2 Major crop plants introduced to Africa from Asia 517
40.1 Main diagnostic aspects of the different Pastoral Neolithic traditions 590
40.2 Main diagnostic aspects of the different Pastoral Iron Age wares 598
47.1 Characteristic criteria of urbanized sites in the Sudan, Sahel, and
Guinea regions of West Africa 690
50.1 Pharaonic Egypt: chronological chart 740
 List of Contributors

Noemie Arazi Royal Museum of Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium

Ceri Ashley Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Lawrence Barham Professor in Archaeology , University of Liverpool, UK
Barbara E. Barich Associate Professor of the Prehistoric Ethnography of Africa, Università
di Roma ‘Sapienza’, Italy
Nick Barton Professor of Palaeolithic Archaeology, University of Oxford, UK
Sibel Barut Kusimba Associate Professor of Anthropology, Northern Illinois University, USA
Laura Basell Senior Lecturer in Palaeoanthropology, School of Applied Sciences, Bourne-
mouth University, UK
Roger Blench Independent researcher, Kay Williamson Educational Foundation,
Cambridge, UK
Abdeljalil Bouzouggar Maître Assistant at the Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie
et du Patrimoine, Morocco
Colin Breen Senior Lecturer in Maritime Archaeology, University of Ulster, UK
Peter Breunig Head of African Archaeology, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt-
am-Main, Germany
Joanna Casey Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of South Carolina, USA
Shadreck Chirikure Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Graham Connah Professor Emeritus and Visiting Fellow, Australian National
University, Australia
Els Cornelissen Head of Prehistory and Archaeology, Royal Museum of Central Africa,
Tervuren, Belgium
Sarah Croucher Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology, Wesleyan University, USA
Matthew Curtis Associated Anthropologist, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Matthew Davies Research Associate, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology,
University of Cambridge, UK, and Research Fellow, British Institute in Eastern Africa,
Nairobi, Kenya
Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo Professor of Prehistory, Complutense University, Spain
xxii list of contributors

David N. Edwards Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Leicester, UK

Said Ennahid Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Al
Akhawayn University, Morocco
Amanda Esterhuysen Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, University of the Witwatersrand,
South Africa
Jeffrey Fleisher Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Rice University, Houston, USA
Robert A. Foley Leverhulme Professor of Human Evolution, University of Cambridge, UK
Dorian Fuller Professor of Archaeobotany, Institute of Archaeology, University College
London, UK
Elena Garcea Researcher in Prehistory and Protohistory, Università degli Studi di
Cassino, Italy
John Giblin Lecturer in Heritage and Tourism, University of Western Sydney, Australia
Diane Gifford-Gonzalez Professor of Anthropology, University of California Santa
Cruz, USA
Olivier Gosselain Professor in the Department of History, Art and Archaeology and the
Department of Social Science at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, and Honorary
Research Fellow in GAES, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Detlef Gronenborn Curator, Roman-German Museum and Associate Professor of
Archaeology, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany, and Honorary Research
Fellow in GAES, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Gunnar Haaland Professor Emeritus of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen,
Norway
Randi Haaland Professor Emeritus of Archaeology, University of Bergen, Norway
Olivier Hanotte Professor of Genetics and Conservation, University of Nottingham, UK
Elisabeth Hildebrand Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Stony Brook University, New
York, USA
Timothy Insoll Professor of Archaeology at the University of Manchester, UK
Kenneth G. Kelly Professor of Anthropology, University of South Carolina, USA
Carla Klehm Centre for Advanced Spatial Technologies, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Chapurukha Kusimba Curator of Anthropology, Field Museum, Chicago, USA
Marta Mirazon Lahr Lecturer in Biological Anthropology, University of Cambridge, UK
Paul Lane Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of York, and Honorary Research
Fellow in GAES, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Adria LaViolette Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Virginia, USA
Anna Leone Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Durham, UK
 list of contributors xxiii

Savino di Lernia Director of the Italian-Libyan Archaeological Mission in the Acacus and
Messak, Università di Roma ‘Sapienza’, Italy, and Honorary Research Fellow in GAES,
University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Alexandre Livingstone Smith Archaeologist, Royal Museum of Central Africa,
Tervuren, Belgium
Marlize Lombard Associate Professor in Anthropology, University of Johannesburg,
South Africa
Diane Lyons Associate Professor of Archaeology, University of Calgary, Canada
Kevin MacDonald Professor of African Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, University
College, London, UK
Scott MacEachern Professor of Anthropology, Bowdoin College, Maine, USA
Pierre de Maret Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology, Université Libre de Bruxelles,
Belgium
Bertram B. B. Mapunda Professor of Archaeology and Principal, College of Arts and Social
Sciences, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Peter Mitchell Professor of African Archaeology at the University of Oxford, UK and
Honorary Research Fellow in GAES, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
J. Cameron Monroe Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa
Cruz, USA
Farès K. Moussa Department of Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, UK
Akinwumi Ogundiran Professor of Africana Studies, Anthropology and History, University
of North Carolina, USA
David W. Phillipson Professor Emeritus, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology,
University of Cambridge, UK
Innocent Pikirayi Professor of Archaeology, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Chantal Radimilahy Director, Institut des Civilisations/Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie de
l’Université d’Antananarivo, Madagascar
Andrew Reid Senior Lecturer in Eastern African Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology,
University College London, UK
François Richard Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Chicago, USA
Michael Rogers Professor of Anthropology, Southern Connecticut State University, USA
Karim Sadr Head of the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies,
University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Mohamed Sahnouni Professor and Coordinator of the Prehistoric Technology Research
Program, Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana, Burgos, Spain
Peter Schmidt Professor of Anthropology, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA
xxiv list of contributors

Alex Schoeman Lecturer in Archaeology, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

Sileshi Semaw Professor and Co-ordinator of the Prehistoric Technology Research Program,
Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana, Burgos, Spain
Ian Shaw Senior Lecturer in Egyptian Archaeology, University of Liverpool, UK
Paul Sinclair Professor of African Archaeology, Uppsala University, Sweden
Benjamin W. Smith Professor of World Rock Art, University of Western Australia, Australia
Daryl Stump Honorary Research Fellow, Archaeology Department, University of York
Natalie Swanepoel Lecturer in Archaeology, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South
Africa
Ibrahima Thiaw Director of the Archaeology Laboratory of the Institut Fondamental
d’Afrique Noire, Dakar, Senegal
Christian Tryon Assistant Professor of Anthropology, New York University, USA
Lyn Wadley Professor Emeritus of Archaeology, University of the Witwatersrand, South
Africa
Derek Welsby Assistant Keeper, Department of Egypt and The Sudan, The British Museum,
London, UK
Stephanie Wynne-Jones Lecturer in Archaeology, University of York, UK
Intisar Soghayroun el-Zein Associate Professor of Archaeology, University of Khartoum, Sudan
 pa rt i

I N TRODUC T ION
This page intentionally left blank
 i n troduci ng a fr ica n
a rch a eol ogy
p eter m itchell and paul l ane

Introduction

One hundred and forty years ago Charles Darwin (1871) identified Africa as the continent
on which the human evolutionary story had begun. Several generations of archaeological
and palaeoanthropological research have confirmed that his intuition was correct and
have demonstrated that he was right on at least three counts: Africa (and specifically sub-
Saharan Africa) was not only where the hominin lineage diverged from those leading to
chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas, but also where both the genus Homo and—much
more recently– our own species, Homo sapiens, evolved. In that triple, evolutionary sense,
everyone everywhere is of African descent, and the long-term history of human popula-
tions on the African continent that archaeology and its cognate disciplines uncover is—or
should be—of concern and interest to us all.
Traditionally, however, that is also where most general textbooks—and most university
archaeology courses, at least outside Africa—have tended to stop, reflecting a belief, however
understated, that once Homo sapiens successfully exited Africa the ‘real’ human story devel-
oped elsewhere, leaving Africa a cultural backwater, lit only by the material wealth of
Pharaonic Egypt and the occasional reference to sites such as Great Zimbabwe or precolo-
nial kingdoms like those of Benin and Ife in Nigeria. Despite its significant improvements in
this regard, even Scarre’s (2009) general overview The Human Past continues to give the
more recent African past far less attention than other parts of the world (and notwithstand-
ing an excellent survey by Graham Connah, one of African archaeology’s leading practition-
ers and synthesizers). At a general level such imbalances ignore, or at least downplay, the
incredible diversity and richness of Africa’s experiments in food production, social com-
plexity, urbanism, art, state formation, and international trade over the past 10,000 years.
Moreover, they make it difficult for us to situate those experiments alongside those of human
societies in the Americas, Eurasia, Australasia, and the Pacific, and to consider the reasons
for the many similarities, and differences, between them. And for the inhabitants of Africa
4 peter mitchell and paul lane

itself—and others whose ancestors only recently left, or were removed from, it—they form
part of that more general nexus of neglect in which the rest of the world still too often views
the continent.
In planning and editing the Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology we have been con-
scious of this background, just as we have been aware of—and indebted to—those colleagues
who have attempted to synthesize the complexity of the African past before us. It is now sev-
eral decades since a rival university press commissioned the Cambridge History of Africa,
which included several continent- or region-wide syntheses of archaeological knowledge in
its first two volumes (Fage 1978; Clark 1982), even if archaeology was increasingly lost sight
of thereafter. The scale, indeed the ambition, of some of those contributions remains impres-
sive, but much of what was written then, of necessity, has to be amended or re-evaluated in
the light of new research and, indeed, of research techniques and strategies undreamt of in
the 1960s and 1970s. The same holds true of the archaeological contributions to the UNESCO
History of Africa (e.g. Ki-Zerbo 1981; Mokhtar 1981). More recent syntheses that have
retained a commitment to comprehensiveness include those by Connah (2004), Phillipson
(2005), and Barich (2010; in Italian), as well as Vogel’s (1997) rather older Encyclopedia of
Precolonial Africa. In partial contrast, the volume edited by Stahl (2005) provides a series of
thorough, often provocative overviews on a selection of key topics and regions extending
across the continent and from the Oldowan to the Kalahari debate and including some con-
tributions of an avowedly theoretical character. In addition, the last decade or so has seen
the publication of a number of more regionally, chronologically or thematically specific
syntheses (e.g. Vernet 2000; Connah 2001; Mitchell 2002, 2005; Insoll 2003; Kusimba and
Kusimba 2003; McIntosh 2005; Schmidt 2006; Huffman 2007; Willoughby 2007; Barham
and Mitchell 2008), as well as single- and multi-author overviews for particular countries
(e.g. Millogo et al. 2000; Vernet et al. 2000; Gado et al. 2001; Konaté and Vernet 2001;
Bocoum et al. 2002; Edwards 2004; Finneran 2007; Insoll 2008; Schmidt et al. 2008;
Gutierrez 2008; Gutron 2010).
The proliferation of these works is one of several signs attesting to the current vitality of
African archaeology as a whole. Others include regular international, regional, and national
conferences, the existence of three peer-reviewed journals dedicated to the subject at the
pan-African scale, as well as others at more regional level, and the increasingly high profile
of African archaeology in journals of broader, global remit. At the same time, it underlines
the continued importance of attempting an overview of the subject that is spatially and
temporally comprehensive, encompasses the theory and practice governing how African
archaeology is undertaken, provides ready access to—and evaluation of—existing research,
and indicates where future fieldwork, analysis, and thinking might profitably be directed.
Whether the current Handbook succeeds, even in small measure, in attaining these goals is
for its readers and reviewers to judge, but we have believed it to be worth the attempt. Our
intention, then, has been to commission a series of chapters by colleagues working across the
continent for incorporation within a volume that sets African archaeology within its theo-
retical, methodological, and historical context and simultaneously spans the entire history
of human culture on the African continent, from the very earliest stone tools and cut-marked
bones some 2.6 million years ago to the archaeologies of colonial intrusion and indigenous
resistance and transformation of the 19th and 20th centuries. To do this, we have drawn upon
the good will and generosity of 74 other individual authors, representing a broad cross-
section of Africanist archaeologists within Africa and beyond. Together, they come from
 introducing african archaeology 5

16 countries (including six in Africa itself), reflect both more established and younger, newly
emerging members of the academic community, and include 20 who are either based in
Africa or, being of African descent, currently live and work in Europe and North America.
We have organised the Handbook into seven parts. Following this Introduction, 18 chapters
in Part II (Doing African Archaeology: Theory, Method, Practice) examine how African
archaeology is done: how did it emerge as a recognizable element within the broader disci-
pline? What do cognate subjects, among them oral history, linguistics, and genetics, have to
offer it, and archaeology them? How do archaeologists approach the study of particular topics
(migration, religion, landscape, for instance) or the analysis of particular classes of material
culture (metalworking, stone tools, ceramics, rock art)? And how is Africa’s archaeological
heritage managed, presented, and taught, and within what political context is this done? Our
decision to put these chapters first reflects our conviction that to do otherwise would be to
suggest that a straightforward narrative account of what happened when in Africa’s past is
unproblematic. It is not, and it would be wholly wrong to offer such a narrative without some
sense of how it has been, and is being, constructed.
The rest of the volume then proceeds in broadly chronological sequence, beginning with
Part III (Becoming Human), which addresses the archaeological, fossil, and genetic evi-
dence for early human origins from the beginning of the hominin line and the earliest
archaeological evidence to the evolution of the one surviving hominin species, Homo sapi-
ens, some 200,000 years ago. Following this, Part IV (Hunters, Gatherers, and Intensifiers:
The Diversity of African Foragers) considers the variation evident across time and space in
the ways in which people structured their material and cognitive worlds while securing
food and many necessary raw materials by exploiting a wide range of extraordinarily well-
known plants and animals, all free of that close human control implied by the term ‘domes-
tication’. Nine chapters cover these issues.
With Part V (Food for Thought: The Archaeology of African Pastoralist and Farming
Communities) the focus shifts to societies that took—or for the most part inherited and
developed—a radically different approach to their subsistence needs, obtaining food from
many different (and by no means always indigenously African) domesticated animals and
plants combined together in a diversity of ways. After two initial chapters considering how
such species were brought under effective human management and how the processes
involved in this may be discerned by archaeologists, 11 further chapters trace the emergence
and expansion of food production across North Africa and along the Nile, through the Sahel,
the forest zone of West Africa, and the highlands of East Africa and, finally, across almost all
of that enormous expanse of the continent that lies south of the Equator. Necessarily involved
in the latter part of this story, too, are ongoing debates about the emergence of metallurgy
south of the Sahara, the expansion of the Bantu languages, and a variety of experiments in
agricultural intensification.
As elsewhere in the world, for many parts of Africa food production formed the social
and economic basis on which more complex social formations were founded—formations
that included both states and urban centres, though the enduring persistence of clan- and
lineage-based societies in many parts of the continent emphasizes how far from universal
the creation and expansion of states was before the 20th century. After introductory chapters
considering the archaeology of precisely those communities, as well as the archaeologies of
African urbanism and state formation, the remaining 15 chapters of Part VI (Power, Prestige,
and Consumption: African Towns and States and their Neighbours) address the relations
6 peter mitchell and paul lane

between town and state, elites and non-elites, states and states, and—an increasing theme—
Africa and other parts of the world. That last topic is developed and extended in the final part
of the Handbook, Part VII (African Societies and the Modern World System), which exam-
ines how African communities participated in the creation of the globalized world in which
they now live. Along with the more ‘obvious’ contributions that consider European explora-
tion of and settlement in parts of Africa and the impact of the Atlantic era trading systems
(slaves, but not only slaves), the five chapters brought together here also address the place of
Africa within the Ottoman ‘world system’, yet other colonial encounters (such as those
between the Swahili and the Sultanate of Oman), and the archaeology of the African diaspora
in the Americas.
The mandate given to the individual contributors was to produce essay-length overviews
of their respective topics that would, as comprehensively as possible, indicate the current
state of play within their research fields, as well as the directions along which future work
might flow. With Lane taking primary responsibility for Parts II and VI and Mitchell that for
Parts III, IV, V, and VII, for each chapter we initially sought an abstract and, after this had
been agreed, invited authors to develop this into a full-length article. Once each chapter was
submitted in draft form both of us read through it, identifying areas that might have been
overlooked or that warranted development, and editing it for length and conformity to the
Handbook’s overall style. Final versions of each chapter, revised in the light of these sugges-
tions and of new work that had appeared in the interim, were then again edited by both of us
before submission to the Press. During our editing we strove to insert cross-references
between chapters wherever this seemed likely to be helpful to readers, for example by tying
regional or period overviews to theoretical and methodological topics covered in Part II or
by highlighting historical connections between different regions of the continent. We have
also endeavoured to make sure that all the references cited are readily available for checking
by those wishing to do so. For that reason, only in exceptional circumstances have we admit-
ted references to doctoral theses or web-based sources, and we have completely excluded the
citation of unpublished conference papers and abstracts or the ‘grey’ literature of contract
archaeology.
While discussing the Handbook’s structure and our approach to its compilation, it may
also be helpful to address briefly issues of chronology and geographical nomenclature. In all
cases we have adhered to the standard English versions of place names, including those of
Africa’s modern nation-states (thus, Ivory Coast rather than Côte d’Ivoire, for example). To
distinguish between the two Central African countries known as Congo we have employed
their respective capitals as suffixes, thus Congo-Brazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa. Where
appropriate, we have also discriminated between Somaliland and the remainder of the
former Somalia.
Encompassing several million years, the story covered by this Handbook is one that
archaeologists have dated using a great diversity of techniques with widely varying levels of
resolution (see discussion in Barham and Mitchell 2008: 48–58). While encouraging indi-
vidual contributors to note the specific dating methods involved at relevant points, we
have sought to standardize the frameworks within which dates are expressed, as well as the
abbreviations used for them. Thus, for the Pliocene and much of the Pleistocene authors
frequently make use of ‘mya’ (for millions of years ago) and ‘kya’ (for thousands of years
ago), but may also place events within the global framework of Marine Isotope Stages
(MIS; Wright 2000). For periods postdating the Last Glacial Maximum and, in some cases,
 introducing african archaeology 7

extending into the middle part of the Holocene, the preference is for BP, i.e. uncalibrated
radiocarbon years counted back from the baseline of the radiocarbon method in ad 1950.
All other dates are expressed in calendar years bc and ad, whether they reflect the calibra-
tion of radiocarbon determinations, actual calendrical dates, or estimates obtained by other
means, such as oral histories or the presence in archaeological stratigraphies of datable
imported goods.
Notwithstanding our best efforts and those of our colleagues, we are conscious that
some omissions remain. The most obvious is undoubtedly the lack of any overview of
Africa’s palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental history, although individual authors
frequently make reference to aspects of this when contextualizing archaeological or pal-
aeoanthropological data. Readily acknowledging the absence of any detailed discussion
of these topics, we can only plead that to do justice to the diversity and complexity of that
history, and of the scientific techniques employed to recover it, would require a Handbook
of its own. Other gaps are more methodological or theoretical in nature: stable isotope
analysis, in which one African university (Cape Town) is a world leader, features in many
chapters but is not discussed on its own; the teaching of African archaeology at university
level, both within Africa and beyond, undoubtedly merits much fuller examination than
it could be given here; so too, the operation of contract archaeology and the frameworks
governing cultural resource management, growing aspects of the discipline in many parts
of the continent (cf. Arazi 2009). Turning to omissions in chronological or regional cov-
erage, we are conscious that while Egypt’s Pharaonic past rightly receives a chapter of its
own, there is next to nothing here about its archaeology under Macedonian or Roman
rule (for which, however, see Bowman 1996; Manning 2009), even less about its medieval
Islamic architecture or archaeology (cf. Williams 2008). Other gaps reflect what are often
genuine lacunae in (at least recent) fieldwork: Sierra Leone; Guinea Bissau; South Sudan;
Somalia; the Darfur region of Sudan; much of the Congo Basin (but see Lanfranchi and
Clist 1991 for an overview and, for recent work, in Gabon Oslisly 2001, Assoko Ndong
2002, and Clist 2006; in Equatorial Guinea Mercader and Marti 2003 and Gonzalez-
Ruibal et al. 2011; and in Congo-Kinshasa Mercader 2003); Angola (but see Gutierrez
2008); and the continent’s various islands and offshore archipelagos, such Sao Tomé and
Principe, Cape Verde, and the Comoros (but see Mitchell 2004; Sørensen and Evans 2011).
The coverage for Malawi, Zambia, and Mozambique, although rather better, is still less
than that accorded to some of their neighbours. Sadly, the reason for many of the current
gaps is all too often due to continuing or long-term political instability and military strife.
Where this is not the case, or where such difficulties ease, just as much as where they do
not exist at all, we hope that the review papers collated here may serve as a spur to future
archaeological research.
We trust, too, that the Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology will prove to be of service
to students of archaeology wishing to gain an initial acquaintance with the complexity of
the African past and how it is being approached, as well as to colleagues—many of them
perhaps non-Africanists—who, for purposes of teaching or research, require access to read-
able, thorough summaries of current archaeological knowledge about Africa and its his-
tory. As the reviews brought together here demonstrate, that history is of general interest
way beyond the evolution of the hominin line or of Homo sapiens as a species. Current evi-
dence strongly suggests that as well as being where modern humans evolved biologically,
Africa is also where that nexus of complex cognitive skills and practices summarized by the
8 peter mitchell and paul lane

term ‘behavioural modernity’ first crystallized, and at a date arguably before the effective
dispersal of H. sapiens beyond the continent. If so, then Africa retains the longest archaeo-
logical record left by behaviourally modern humans on any continent, and one that—
without imputing unnecessary stasis—encourages comparison between Pleistocene
contexts and what is known, archaeologically and ethnographically, of much more recent
hunter-gatherers.
Fast forwarding into the Holocene and we can identify several further themes of universal
concern, several of them including instances where what happened in Africa may differ quite
profoundly—and thus very informatively—from what happened elsewhere in the world.
Examples include: the processes whereby many hunter-gatherers opted to change their sub-
sistence base and shift to producing food (with multiple instances of an initial preference for
pastoralism completely independently of cultivation, what Marshall and Hildebrand 2002
neatly term ‘cattle before crops’); hitherto unsuspected complexity in the pathways by which
cultivation was adopted, including several instances whereby initially chosen staples were
eventually replaced by others; the possibility that, south of the Sahara, ferrous metallurgy
arose independently of other parts of the world and without long, prior experience of metal-
working in copper and bronze; the emergence of urbanism and of social complexity in the
absence of hierarchically organised, coercive state apparatuses (cf. McIntosh 1999); and a
growing appreciation of the significant role played by African societies in long-distance net-
works of trade and communication and of the role of such systems in the transformation of
African societies themselves, including a previously unsuspected antiquity for connections
across the Indian Ocean (Fuller et al. 2011) and an increasingly well-understood contribution
to the formation of the Atlantic world and the post-Columbian Americas (Ogundiran and
Falola 2007), including the latter’s botanical landscape (Carney and Rosomoff 2009). Igor
Kopytoff ’s (1987) conceptualization of African ‘internal frontiers’ also has much to contrib-
ute in a comparative sense to the study of other regions, and is one to which archaeologists
have much to contribute in turn (e.g. Monroe and Ogundiran 2012). Other themes and emer-
gent perspectives that are simultaneously beginning to shape the direction of archaeological
research on the continent and contribute to wider debates within the discipline include such
topics as landscape historical ecology (e.g. Lane 2010; Stump 2010), indigenous and postcolo-
nial archaeologies (e.g. Schmidt 2009), the politics of heritage (e.g. Meskell 2012), and the
intersections between history and archaeology (e.g. Stahl 2001; Swanepoel et al. 2008). At the
same time, the richness of Africa’s ethnographic record permits us to explore the meanings
that people have given to material objects and the landscapes in which those objects and peo-
ple existed—and often continue to exist—in particularly nuanced and subtle ways which go
beyond simple mining for suitable analogies for use in the interpretation of the archaeologi-
cal record of other regions of the world. While archaeological research in Africa must always
have as its primary focus a responsibility for communicating its results to the populations
among whom it is carried out and whose ancestors—in many cases—it studies, in all the
areas that we have just identified African archaeology has much to say to the practice and
theory of archaeology elsewhere in the world. Indeed, it is our contention that an African
perspective is now essential to most debates of significance in world archaeology as a whole.
We trust that this Handbook is a contribution to that realisation.

Finally, we should both like to express our deep gratitude to all those who have made this
Handbook possible: our colleagues for their willingness to participate in writing it; the staff
 introducing african archaeology 9

of Oxford University Press, who made its realisation possible, especially Hilary O’Shea,
Taryn Das-Neves, Kizzy Richelieu-Taylor and Françoise Vrabel; our students, past and
present, for stimulating us to think widely about the African past; our respective institutions;
and, most importantly, our families for their forbearance and support during its gestation.
Thank you.

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 pa rt i i

DOI NG A FR ICA N
A RCH A EOLOGY
Theory, Method, Practice
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 chapter 2

a rch a eol ogica l

pr actice i n a fr ica
A Historical Perspective

g raham c onnah

Introduction

The origins of archaeology were in Europe, so that its development in the African continent
was initially shaped by European perceptions, subsequently modified by American influ-
ences. Only during the last half-century have indigenous Africans had a voice in the archae-
ologies of their own countries, which have nevertheless often retained approaches adopted
from overseas. The practice of archaeology in Africa thus needs to be examined in terms of
the underpinning concepts and operative models that have influenced the way that it has
been carried out. The history of African archaeology should be understood as something
more than a catalogue of discoveries and discoverers. Important though they have been, as
demonstrated by the contributors to the leading synthesis on the subject (Robertshaw
1990a), they have merely been performances and actors. It has been the patterns of thought
behind them that have decided who did what and where and how. Bruce Trigger demon-
strated this when he called his general history of archaeology A History of Archaeological
Thought (Trigger 1989). Given the diversity of influences that have impacted on African
archaeological practice, it is the way that practitioners have thought that requires primary
attention.
Two matters need to be considered at this point. First, in the discussion that follows,
‘archaeological practice’ is interpreted as meaning both the way that archaeological research
is conducted in the field and laboratory and the way that it is written about in the publica-
tions that result. The subject thus has a presentational as well as an investigative aspect and,
indeed, is inevitably judged by the published outcomes that constitute the only lasting record
of its activities. Consequently, there exists a huge body of literature spread over at least two
centuries and in a variety of languages. In the case of African archaeology, although accumu-
lated over a shorter period, the volume of published material is also both large and linguisti-
cally varied. Selection is therefore essential, and inevitably the choice of what is considered
16 graham connah

relevant will be influenced by the way that writers think about the subject, which in turn will
be influenced by their cultural background, education, professional experience, and socio-
political views. The second matter that needs to be considered is affected by similar influ-
ences; this is the problem of how to interpret the geographical term ‘Africa’. It has been argued
that the concept is ‘a European invention’ (Mitchell 2005: 2), and Kwame Appiah (1992: 3–27)
has discussed ‘the invention of Africa’ at some length. There has even been the practice of
beheading the continent to produce ‘sub-Saharan Africa’, as if this constitutes the only ‘true’
Africa (cf. MacEachern 2007). In the present discussion, the whole of the continent is con-
sidered, even if some parts of it can be given only scant attention.

Archaeological beginnings

The earliest substantial archaeological investigations in Africa were along the lower Nile
during the 19th century. These grew out of a long-standing European fascination with
‘Ancient Egypt’, that is to say the period of the Pharaonic dynasties (Baines and Malek 2000:
22–9). Research was dominated by the impressive architecture and the organic evidence pre-
served by the country’s dry environment, including mummified human remains and exten-
sive documentary records. Consequently, Egyptological scholarship inevitably required
skills in philology, epigraphy, and art history, as well as archaeology (O’Connor 1990). In
these circumstances, the quality of excavation and other field investigations lagged behind
those in Europe, and research strategies concentrated on tombs and temples, giving less
attention to settlements. It was only in the latter part of the 20th century that archaeology in
Egypt began to adopt best international practice. Prior to that, Egyptology was characterized
by esoteric, introverted scholarship. In the process, Ancient Egypt became regarded as part
of the Mediterranean ancient world, divorced from the rest of Africa: the Pharaonic state
had influenced parts of the Nile Valley to its south but received little of significance in return.
Considering that it owed its very existence to an African river and that during its later his-
tory several of its pharaohs were Nubians, this was a remarkable case of intellectual myopia.
In addition, in spite of the work of Flinders Petrie (Drower 1999) and Gertrude Caton-
Thompson (Caton-Thompson and Gardner 1934), for a long time insufficient attention was
given to the pre-literate origins of the Egyptian state and its hunter-gatherer and food-
producing predecessors.
In the rest of Africa, however, it was stone-using hunter-gatherers who were the focus of
early archaeological investigations. Nineteenth-century archaeologists regarded them as
survivors from the past whose investigation could throw light on the earliest inhabitants of
Europe. Furthermore, the application in Europe of the ‘Three Age System’ and the discovery
of stone artefacts in South Africa at much the same time as their formal recognition in
Europe in the 1850s (Deacon 1990: 40), inevitably led to the adoption in Africa of the
European epochal model. Study of the African ‘Stone Age’ came to dominate African archae-
ology as it developed both in southern Africa and in other parts of the continent; not only
was it relevant to European interests (albeit regarded as peripheral) but later periods in
Africa were thought to be short and not worth archaeological investigation. Along with the
use of the Three Age concept in Africa went the European idea of ‘prehistory’, which had
 archaeological practice in africa 17

emerged in the middle of the 19th century. In Africa, prehistory was thought to consist of the
Stone Age and nothing else (Fig. 2.1). This remained a characteristic of African archaeol-
ogy until the middle of the 20th century. H. Alimen’s Prehistory of Africa (Alimen 1957)
devoted only 10 out of 428 pages of text to later archaeology, and they were concerned with
‘African megaliths’ that were undatable, while even Desmond Clark’s later Prehistory of
Africa (Clark 1970) had only 35 pages on the subject of ‘Farmers and present-day people’
out of a total of 223.
Investigators of the African Stone Age were initially concerned to link it, so far as possible,
with the European sequence. For example, the term ‘Acheulean’ was widely adopted in
Africa, and the French Aurignacian was thought by some to have originated in the Maghreb
(Sheppard 1990). Research became dominated by the classification of assemblages of stone
artefacts, which were often collected from eroding surfaces rather than excavated from strat-
ified deposits. Archaeology developed more quickly in South Africa than in most other parts
of the continent. It was there during the 1920s that John Goodwin introduced a local typol-
ogy and nomenclature for the Stone Age that was influential for a long time (Shepherd 2003),
even in some other parts of the continent. Goodwin had been trained in Cambridge, how-
ever, and his classificatory model remained conceptually European. Significantly, two of
Europe’s leading prehistoric archaeologists of the early 20th century, the Abbé Breuil and
Miles Burkitt, both visited South Africa and saw parallels with Europe in the African Stone
Age (Burkitt 1928; Davis 1990). Breuil, in particular, believed that the rock art of southern
Africa had ultimately ‘descended from European cave-painting’ (Davis 1990: 282), and his
book The White Lady of the Brandberg included diffusionist views considered extreme even
at the time (Breuil 1955).
The problem with both stone artefact assemblages and rock art in Africa was the same:
there were no effective methods of dating. Nevertheless, strenuous efforts were made during
the first half of the 20th century to provide a chronological framework for stone artefacts.
Van Riet Lowe’s work on the Vaal River terraces was one such, the Casablanca coastal
sequence another (Fig. 2.2), but the most important was the East African system of ‘pluvials’
and ‘interpluvials’ that were long thought to correlate with glacial and interglacial periods in
Europe. It was only at the end of the 1950s that the increasing availability of radiometric and
other absolute methods began to provide an independent means of dating the African Stone
Age that rendered previous attempts obsolete (Clark 1990: 190–91). However, there remained
the problem of what it was that was being dated; did the stone artefact assemblages represent
‘cultures’, in the archaeological sense promoted by Gordon Childe in Europe, or were they
better explained in terms of function or variations in raw material? Again, the European
influence prevailed, so that Goodwin and van Riet Lowe (1929) entitled their book The Stone
Age Cultures of South Africa, just as Louis Leakey (1931) called one of his books The Stone Age
Cultures of Kenya Colony. As for rock art, whether in South Africa, the Sahara, or elsewhere,
it provided important ‘documents’ of the past but, as they could neither be dated nor ‘read’
with any certainty, much of their investigation was limited to descriptive recording, relative
sequencing and subjective interpretation. Once more the European influence was apparent.
There was, however, one aspect of the study of Africa’s past that influenced European schol-
arship rather than being influenced by it. This was the first recognition of palaeontological and
archaeological evidence for early hominins in Africa, evidence that eventually proved to be of
world significance. The discovery of the australopithecines in South Africa during the 1920s
and 1930s, although not generally accepted until the late 1940s, was of major importance.
18 graham connah

1947 papers
45
40
% of total papers 35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
1 2 3 4 5 6
subject of papers
2005 papers
18
16
14
% of total papers

12
10
8
6
4
2
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
subject of papers

fig. 2.1 Growth and changes in African archaeology 1947–2005: above, subjects of 53 papers
at the 1947 Pan-African Congress on Prehistory (Nairobi); below, subjects of 256 papers at
the 2005 Congress of the Pan-African Archaeological Association for Prehistory and
Related Studies (Gaborone). Numbers for 1947 indicate: 1. Geology, general palaeontology,
and climatology; 2. Human palaeontology; 3. Prehistoric archaeology (Stone Age); 4. Rock
art; 5. Later archaeology; 6. Unassigned. Numbers for 2005 indicate: 1. Palaeoecology,
taphonomy, and geochronology; 2. Fossil hominins; 3. Palaeolithic archaeology, hunter-
gatherer communities, and Stone Age technology; 4. Later hunter-gatherer themes and
transition to food production; 5. Early food production, including use of iron;
6. Development of sociopolitical complexity, also trade and contact; 7. Ethnoarchaeology;
8. Historical archaeology; 9. Archaeology and information technology; 10. Rock art and
symbolic behaviour; 11. Sociopolitics of archaeology and heritage; 12. Heritage manage-
ment, tourism, and development. Sources: for 1947, Leakey (1952); for 2005, Pan-African
Archaeological Association for Prehistory and Related Studies (2005). Some regrouping of
papers was necessary, particularly for 2005.
 archaeological practice in africa 19

1 2

3
4
5
9 6
10 7 8
11
12 14
13
15 22
17
18
16 19 23
20 21
24
25 26
28
27 29
30 31 32

33
34
35

36
37

38
39
40

fig. 2.2 Map of Africa showing sites, locations and areas mentioned in Chapter 2. Aksum:
22; Aswan Dam: 4; Benin City: 20; Brandberg: 35; Cape Town: 39; Casablanca: 1; Dakar: 12;
Dhar Tichitt: 9; Dufuna: 14; Gajiganna: 15; Great Zimbabwe: 34; Gwisho Hot Springs: 33;
Hadar: 23; Ife: 19; Igbo-Ukwu: 21; Interlacustrine Region: 25; Jebel Sahaba: 6; Jenné-jeno:
13; Kadero: 8; Kainji: 17; Kalambo Falls: 31; Kerma: 7; Kilwa: 32; Klasies River Mouth: 40;
Koumbi Saleh: 11; Lake Turkana: 24; Lower Nile: 3; Maghreb: 2; Makapansgat: 36; Manda:
29; Melkhoutboom: 38; Nabta Playa: 5; Olduvai: 27; Olorgesailie: 26; Shanga: 28; Taruga: 18;
Tegdaoust: 10; Upemba Depression: 30; Vaal River: 37; Volta Basin: 16.

Nevertheless, the major actors were again ‘outsiders’: Raymond Dart from Australia and Robert
Broom from Scotland. Both were somewhat maverick researchers, Dart particularly so
(Derricourt 2011). A hyper-diffusionist given to poorly substantiated conclusions, his most
celebrated excess was during the 1950s concerning the ‘Osteodontokeratic Culture’ (Dart
1957). Faunal remains from Makapansgat Cave, South Africa, were claimed on ambiguous
evidence to have been used as tools and weapons by early hominins. It is remarkable that it
was such a man who in 1925 made the first identification of an australopthithecine. Robin
Derricourt (2009a: 282) is probably justified in arguing that ‘the “discovery” of Australopithecus
was not methodologically a scientific discovery but a fortunate stumbling on the truth’.
Whatever the case, the finding of early hominins in South Africa was of fundamental impor-
tance, because they suggested an enormous but unknown time-depth for the African past.
20 graham connah

It was in East Africa during the 1960s, however, that the great antiquity of such evidence
was eventually established. This was the achievement of Kenyan-born but Cambridge-
trained Louis Leakey and his second wife, Mary Leakey, who was English. At Olduvai Gorge
in Tanzania they were able to establish a stratified palaeontological and archaeological
sequence some 2 million years long, containing volcanic ash that could be dated by potassium-
argon. Furthermore, by excavating surfaces, the Leakeys successfully investigated the hori-
zontal distribution of evidence relating to early hominins. This technique, pioneered by
Mary Leakey at Olorgesailie in Kenya during the 1940s (Clark 1990: 198), was subsequently
adopted on many early hominin sites. It led to the uncovering of what appeared to be ancient
campsites and butchery sites, although some were subsequently questioned as the science of
taphonomy developed. In addition, the Leakeys’ son Richard, along with the South African
Glynn Isaac and others, worked at various early hominin sites around Lake Turkana, in
Kenya, from the 1960s onwards. Sites were also investigated in Ethiopia, of which one of the
most important was Hadar, where American researcher Donald Johanson recovered the
partly complete skeleton of a female Australopithecus afarensis, known colloquially as ‘Lucy’
(Johanson and Edey 1981).
The investigation of early African hominins after 1960 involved researchers from an
increasingly international background, mostly external to Africa, who were usually funded
from outside the continent. The quality of fieldwork, excavation, and analysis was generally
high, and incorporated geological, palaeoenvironmental, chronological, and faunal evi-
dence, as well as giving increasing attention to site-formation processes and taphonomy.
Overall, their research produced a remarkable quantity of hominin fossils belonging to
Homo, Australopithecus and other genera (Klein 2009). Typically, new discoveries were
claimed to be of major importance, prominently announced in the media, and assigned to
new species or even new genera. By 2005 about 7 genera and 26 species names (including
subspecies) were in use. As Robin Derricourt (2009b: 193, 197) has remarked, this does ‘not
just reflect preferences between “lumpers” and “splitters” but nationalisms, egos and the
maintenance of the image of the scientist-hero’. Subsequently, many fossils were reassigned
or renamed as analyses progressed, followed by yet more claims of uniqueness for further
discoveries. One of the more remarkable examples was Tchadanthropus uxoris (Coppens
1966), which later turned out to be a heavily eroded modern skull. It nevertheless drew atten-
tion to the possibility of early hominin discoveries outside of East and southern Africa.
Significantly, since Coppens’ discovery, Chad has produced two unambiguously early hom-
inin fossils of importance (Brunet et al. 1995; Wood 2002).
Primatological research during this period also contributed to the study of early hom-
inins. There was a long history of scientific interest in African primates (Groves 2008), but
long-term detailed observations of primates in the wild were a new development. Notable
examples included the work of Jane Goodall (1986) on chimpanzees, which challenged the
traditional idea that humans were distinguished by the making of tools, and of Dian Fossey
(1983) on gorillas, which threw light on primate social relationships. Investigations of this
sort, supported by numerous laboratory studies of primate behaviour, provided a broader
context for interpreting the fossil evidence of hominin evolution.
Although both palaeoanthropologists and archaeologists participated in the investigation
of many early hominin sites, field practices differed to some extent from those on other Stone
Age sites. In the years just before and after the Second World War a number of new research-
ers entered this latter field. Several made particularly significant contributions, including
 archaeological practice in africa 21

Frenchman Jacques Tixier (1963) in the Maghreb, Belgian Jean de Heinzelin de Braucourt
(1957) in the Belgian Congo (now Congo-Kinshasa), Englishmen Thurstan Shaw (1944) in
the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and Charles McBurney (1967) in Libya, and Desmond Clark
(1969, 1974, 2001), who was also English and worked in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia)
and elsewhere. The last three were Cambridge-trained, part of a trend that was to continue in
African archaeology. Like others working on the African Stone Age during this period, they
focused on the typology of stone artefacts and the construction of cultural stratigraphic
sequences. Most remarkable were Desmond Clark’s excavations at Kalambo Falls, on the
border between Zambia and Tanzania, that produced a sequence commencing 300,000–
400,000 years ago and continuing till the first or early second millennium ad (Phillipson
2005: 69). Excavations started in 1953, continuing for some years, and publication took from
1969 till 2001, so that this research occupied almost half a century.

Influence of the ‘New Archaeology’

By the 1960s the ‘New Archaeology’ promoted in the United States and Britain had begun to
affect the ideas of researchers in Africa. To some extent the Burg-Wartenstein symposium of
1965 (Bishop and Clark 1967) was a defensive reaction by those still fixated on the classifica-
tion and nomenclature of stone artefact assemblages (Robertshaw 1990b: 86–7). This gather-
ing lasted for three weeks and involved geologists and palaeontologists as well as
archaeologists; these were mainly established researchers rather than those with new ideas.
The symposium’s terminological recommendations were influential for a while, but interest
gradually faded and a nomenclature newsletter that was circulated after the symposium
eventually died. As John Parkington (1993: 96) has argued, archaeologists working on the
African Stone Age became less interested in ‘cultural labelling’ and, as dating methods
improved, ‘Attention could now be directed at the use of artefacts to answer behavioural
questions.’
Indeed, since the 1960s there has been an increasing emphasis on the study of human
behaviour and its environmental context during the African Stone Age, fuelled by a broad-
ening both of the evidence and of the means to retrieve and investigate it. Deep-sea cores
have provided information on changing climates (e.g. Weldeab et al. 2007) and established a
global Marine Isotope Stage sequence that can replace the old Three Age System (Barham
and Mitchell 2008). Faunal studies have become important, such as at the Klasies River
Mouth excavations in South Africa (Singer and Wymer 1982) or at Nabta Playa in the
Egyptian desert (Wendorf et al. 2001). Botanical evidence has received increasing attention,
as at Melkhoutboom Cave, South Africa (Deacon 1976) or Dhar Tichitt, Mauritania
(Neumann 2003). Similarly, pollens have been studied in order to throw light on the envi-
ronments in which Stone Age people lived (e.g. Lézine and Vergnaud-Grazzini 1993).
Organic evidence also includes wooden artefacts, a reminder that stone artefacts must have
been used to shape many such objects that have not usually survived in archaeological con-
texts. At Kalambo Falls, wooden objects that had probably been worked were found in the
Acheulean levels (Phillipson 2005: 71), but at Gwisho hot springs in Zambia a number of
definite wooden artefacts were recovered from a Later Stone Age context (Fagan and Van
22 graham connah

Noten 1966). Most impressive was an 8.5 m dugout canoe from Dufuna, in northeast Nigeria,
found in alluvium at a depth of 5 m and dated to about 6000 cal. bc (Fig. 2.3). The oldest
known boat in Africa and one of the oldest in the world, it indicates successful exploitation
of aquatic resources at that time (Breunig 1996).
Other subsistence strategies of Stone Age people have also received attention, such as sea-
sonal movements in South Africa (Parkington 2001) or molluscan exploitation in North
Africa (Lubell et al. 1976). In addition, evidence of interpersonal violence has been identified,
as at Jebel Sahaba in Sudan (Wendorf 1968). Furthermore, the 1966 ‘Man the hunter’ confer-
ence and its subsequent publication (Lee and DeVore 1968) helped to focus attention on
aspects of Africa’s past hunter-gatherers other than stone artefacts. Subsequently, the deter-
ministic approach of the New Archaeology’s processualism began to lose favour, as many
archaeologists accepted that people in the past had not been mere puppets of their environ-
ment but had repeatedly exercised choice in coping with the world around them. There was
an increasing concern to understand how people had made their choices, and to seek their
thoughts, symbolism, and beliefs. This cognitive emphasis formed part of archaeological
approaches loosely known as post-processualism. Perhaps their most important impact was
in the field of rock art studies, which had previously tended to stall. Work in southern Africa
by Patricia Vinnicombe (1976) and David Lewis-Williams (1983) demonstrated that meaning
could be extracted from such art by drawing on relevant ethnography. Combined with an
improving chronology, these developments were to affect rock art studies worldwide.

fig. 2.3 Many hands make light work! Recovering the dugout canoe from Dufuna, in
northeastern Nigeria, found in alluvium at a depth of 5 m and dated to about 6000 bc. The
oldest known boat in Africa and one of the oldest in the world, it is amongst the most sig-
nificant hunter-gatherer artefacts from the continent (photograph courtesy of Peter Breunig,
Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Frankfurt-am-Main).
 archaeological practice in africa 23

As archaeologists in Africa turned towards a broader analysis of hunter-gatherers, so the

problem arose of how, why, and when they became, or were replaced by, food producers.
From the 1960s onwards this was an increasingly important focus of research. Inevitably,
explaining the onset of food production involved questions of indigenous development,
diffusion, or even migration. The growing interest in what was often referred to as the ori-
gins of farming occurred at about the same time as a realization that the later African past
did have a substantial time-depth and was worth studying. To distinguish it from the Stone
Age, the unfortunate name ‘Iron Age’ was adopted and has continued to be used by many
archaeologists, a sad relic of 19th-century thinking. Although it appeared that food produc-
tion in Africa was first practised by stone-using peoples in the more northerly parts of the
continent, early farming in the south seemed to be later in date and to some extent associ-
ated with the adoption of iron technology. Consequently, research concerning the earliest
domesticated plants and animals in Africa concentrated on the Sahara, the Nile Valley, and
adjacent areas, whereas research on early farming communities further south became asso-
ciated with the expansion of Bantu-speaking peoples suggested by linguists and historians
(e.g. Oliver 1966).
These developments began during the 1960s, by the end of which many European colonies
in Africa had achieved independence. Political changes had an impact on archaeology—
both on the identity of researchers and on the objectives of their research. In an influential
paper, Bruce Trigger (1984) defined three types of world archaeology: Nationalist, Colonialist,
and Imperialist. Nick Shepherd (2002) has discussed these in an African context, although
he has reservations about them. Indeed, Trigger’s categories are simplifications, as even he
seems to have realized. Nevertheless, the history of archaeological practice in Africa is to
some extent explicable in these terms. The early concentration on Stone Age studies by
European scholars, who were often part of the colonial establishment in the regions that they
investigated, was clearly Colonialist archaeology. Research was often more concerned with
matters of relevance to analogous European evidence than with questions of importance
within Africa. Furthermore, later periods were perceived as not worth investigation because
colonial thinking insisted that their time-depth was limited. Nevertheless, in spite of the
Colonialist label, it would be a mistake to regard such archaeologists as necessarily support-
ive of the regimes in which they worked; in some cases their results implicitly contributed to
the demise of colonial convictions.

Post-independence

With independence, Colonialist archaeology tended to be replaced by Nationalist archaeology,

but the situation was often more complicated than that. Many established Africanist archae-
ologists of European origin continued to conduct research in newly independent African
countries and, indeed, a number of new expatriate appointments were made from similar
backgrounds. For example, the influence of Cambridge-trained archaeologists has already
been mentioned regarding John Goodwin, Miles Burkitt, Thurstan Shaw, Charles McBurney,
Desmond Clark, and Louis Leakey, to whom should be added Bernard Fagg. During the
1960s, however, a new generation of Cambridge products became involved in African
24 graham connah

archaeology, including Ray Inskeep, John Parkington, and Pat Carter in South Africa, Brian
Fagan, David Phillipson, and Steve Daniels in Zambia, Merrick Posnansky in Uganda, Glynn
Isaac in Kenya, Graham Connah and Robert Soper in Nigeria, and Paul Ozanne, Colin
Flight, and Richard York in Ghana. In some cases these researchers later moved to other
African countries or went to posts in the United States or Britain. Similarly, there were
archaeologists who had been trained at other British universities, such as John Sutton, as
well as archaeologists from European universities, museums, or research organizations, par-
ticularly in France and Belgium. Nevertheless, symptomatic of the end of the Colonialist
period, Britain turned its back on African archaeology for several decades and offered very
little employment for those with African experience. Even the Englishman Desmond Clark,
the doyen of Africanist archaeologists, never held a post there.
Paradoxically, the increase in expatriate archaeologists in Africa during the 1960s was
actually a product of the new Nationalist archaeology. Newly independent African govern-
ments wanted to encourage research into the past of their people, seeing this as a means of
establishing a national identity that they felt had been neglected during the colonial period.
In the short term few African archaeologists were available, hence the continuing involve-
ment of outsiders. There was, however, a marked change in research objectives. In East
Africa, continuing work on human origins could inspire national pride, but elsewhere stone-
using people of the remote past were less relevant to modern African communities than the
farming societies of the last few millennia. As a result, the domestication of plants and ani-
mals and the subsequent proliferation of food-production strategies attracted a lot of
research attention. At the end of the 1960s, The Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and
Animals (Ucko and Dimbleby 1969) contained little African subject matter, yet by 1976 a
whole book could be devoted to Origins of African Plant Domestication (Harlan et al. 1976),
and by 1984 there appeared From Hunters to Farmers: The Causes and Consequences of Food
Production in Africa (Clark and Brandt 1984). Books on this subject have continued to appear
(e.g. van der Veen 1999; Blench and MacDonald 2000; Hassan 2002).
A consequence of the growth of research in this subject has been the increasing participa-
tion of specialists other than archaeologists, such as archaeobotanists, archaeozoologists,
palaeoclimatologists, geneticists, and linguists. Both they and archaeologists have been
drawn from a wide variety of national backgrounds; the Blench and MacDonald book, for
instance, included papers from researchers in twelve countries. There has been an interna-
tionalization of research into this aspect of Africa’s past. For example, in the 1960s the
American Patrick Munson (1976) conducted research at Dhar Tichitt, in Mauretania; during
the 1970s Polish archaeologist Lech Krzyzaniak (1978) excavated at Kadero, Sudan; and dur-
ing the 1990s German researcher Peter Breunig investigated sites around Gajiganna, in
northeastern Nigeria (Breunig and Neumann 2002).
Much the same happened with another research subject that became important during
the decades following independence: the investigation of African iron technology and its
origins. An early excavation of relevance was by Englishman Bernard Fagg, who showed that
iron smelting had been practised at Taruga, in northern Nigeria, during the late first millen-
nium bc (Fagg 1969). Many other projects followed: Belgian archaeologist Francis van
Noten (1979) investigated sites in the East African Interlacustrine Region; French archaeolo-
gist Danilo Grébénart (1988) discussed early evidence in Niger; the American Peter Schmidt
(1997) conducted research in Tanzania; and Norwegian Randi Haaland (2004) carried out
fieldwork in Sudan. Such investigations often included, or consisted of, re-enactments of
 archaeological practice in africa 25

iron smelting, when Africans who remembered former practices were encouraged by
archaeologists to demonstrate how the smelting had been done. Again, participation in
research projects by specialists became essential, in this case archaeometallurgists (e.g.
Miller and Killick 2004). More anthropologically inclined archaeologists investigated the
sociocultural and symbolic aspects of iron smelting (Bisson et al. 2000).
However, the outstanding example of internationalization in African archaeology during
the 20th century occurred during rescue work in the 1960s before the construction of the
Aswan High Dam in Egypt (Hassan 2007). Egyptians, Sudanese, Ghanaians, British,
Germans, French, Italians, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Finns, Poles, Americans, and others
all contributed to this massive project that continued for some years and produced literally
thousands of publications. Egyptology had long appealed to scholars of many nations, and
the Nubia Campaign was in some ways an extension of this attraction. Contemporary dam
schemes in other parts of Africa attracted much less attention; for instance, the Volta Basin
Research Project in Ghana resulted in numerous mainly small excavations but relatively lit-
tle publication, and the Kainji Dam Project in Nigeria was a virtual failure (Kense 1990: 148).
With the end of the Nubia Campaign, something of the international character of African
archaeological research persisted, but gradually it was Imperialist archaeology that became
dominant. This was because so many researchers and their funding came from the United
States, although Britain, France, Germany, Canada, and some other countries played a simi-
lar role. African archaeology became a data source from which doctoral students, postdoc-
toral fellows, and more senior researchers from such countries could quarry material for
theses and publications. Such projects usually involved only brief periods in the field, and
contributed little in return to the country and its nationals that provided the subject of the
research. Even the main scholarly organization of relevance, the Society of Africanist
Archaeologists, was centred in North America. There were, however, notable exceptions to
this general trend, the long-continued work of American researchers Susan and Roderick
McIntosh in Mali and Senegal being a particularly important example (e.g. McIntosh 1998).
A third research subject that became important following African independence was the
investigation of ‘complex’ societies, including topics such as the growth of urbanization, the
formation of states, and the role of long-distance trade. Excavations at Great Zimbabwe had
already demonstrated the potential of such research (Garlake 1973), but attention now turned
to sites in other parts of the continent. Neville Chittick’s (1974, 1984) excavations at Kilwa and
Manda made major contributions to understanding the Swahili towns of the Tanzanian and
Kenyan coast, as did Mark Horton’s (1996) later excavations at Shanga, in Kenya. Also impor-
tant was the work of Charles Bonnet (1990) at Kerma, Sudan, and of David Phillipson (2000)
at Aksum, Ethiopia. On the other side of the continent, Thurstan Shaw (1970) at Igbo-Ukwu,
Frank Willett (1967) in Ife, and Graham Connah (1975) in Benin City, all in Nigeria, also con-
tributed to the investigation of social complexity, although the first two projects focused on
art. To the north, in francophone West Africa, much of the relevant archaeological research
was organized by the Institut Français d’Afrique Noire, in Dakar (after independence the
Institut Fondamental Afrique Noire). Perhaps the most important archaeologist was
Raymond Mauny (1967, 1970), whose contributions as a synthesist provided a foundation for
work by others, including extensive excavations at Tegdaoust (Robert 1970) and Koumbi
Saleh (Berthier 1997), both in Mauritania, and at Jenné-jeno (McIntosh 1995), in Mali.
Archaeology at such urban sites often had a descriptive culture-historical emphasis, but this
changed when Susan and Roderick McIntosh and others introduced a processual approach
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
Memoirs, properly so-called; his biographical facts and incidents are
scattered throughout the above-named volumes.
The following translation of the “Book of the Ladies” does not pretend
to imitate Brantôme’s style. To do so would seem an affectation in English,
and attract attention to itself which it is always desirable to avoid in
translating. Wherever a few of Brantôme’s quaint turns of phrase are given,
it is only as they fall naturally into English.
THE BOOK OF THE LADIES.
 DISCOURSE I.

ANNE DE BRETAGNE, QUEEN OF FRANCE.

INASMUCH as I must speak of ladies, I do not choose to speak of former
dames, of whom the histories are full; that would be blotting paper in vain,
for enough has been written about them, and even the great Boccaccio has
made a fine book solely on that subject [De claris mulieribus].
I shall begin therefore with our queen, Anne de Bretagne, the most
worthy and honourable queen that has ever been since Queen Blanche,
mother of the King Saint-Louis, and very sage and virtuous.
This Queen Anne was the rich heiress of the duchy of Bretagne, which
was held to be one of the finest of Christendom, and for that reason she was
sought in marriage by the greatest persons. M. le Duc d’Orléans, afterwards
King Louis XII., in his young days courted her, and did for her sake his fine
feats of arms in Bretagne, and even at the battle of Saint Aubin, where he
was taken prisoner fighting on foot at the head of his infantry. I have heard
say that this capture was the reason why he did not espouse her then; for
thereon intervened Maximilian, Duke of Austria, since emperor, who
married her by the proxy of his uncle the Prince of Orange in the great
church at Nantes. But King Charles VIII., having advised with his council
that it was not good to have so powerful a seigneur encroach and get a
footing in his kingdom, broke off a marriage that had been settled between
himself and Marguerite of Flanders, took the said Anne from Maximilian,
her affianced, and wedded her himself; so that every one conjectured
thereon that a marriage thus made would be luckless in issue.
Now if Anne was desired for her property, she was as much so for her
virtues and merits; for she was beautiful and agreeable; as I have heard say
by elderly persons who knew her, and according to her portrait, which I
have seen from life; resembling in face the beautiful Demoiselle de
Châteauneuf, who has been so renowned at the Court for her beauty; and
that is sufficient to tell the beauty of Queen Anne as I have heard it
portrayed to the queen-mother [Catherine de’ Medici].
 Her figure was fine and of medium height. It is true that one foot was
shorter than the other the least in the world; but this was little perceived,
and hardly to be noticed, so that her beauty was not at all spoilt by it; for I
myself have seen very handsome women with that defect who yet were
extreme in beauty, like Mme. la Princesse de Condé, of the house of
Longueville.
So much for the beauty of the body of this queen. That of her mind was
no less, because she was very virtuous, wise, honourable, pleasant of
speech, and very charming and subtile in wit. She had been taught and
trained by Mme. de Laval, an able and accomplished lady, appointed her
governess by her father, Duc François. For the rest, she was very kind, very
merciful, and very charitable, as I have heard my own folks say. True it is,
however, that she was quick in vengeance and seldom pardoned whoever
offended her maliciously; as she showed to the Maréchal de Gié for the
affront he put upon her when the king, her lord and husband, lay ill at Blois
and was held to be dying. She, wishing to provide for her wants in case she
became a widow, caused three or four boats to be laden on the River Loire
with all her precious articles, furniture, jewels, rings and money,—and sent
them to her city and château of Nantes. The said marshal, meeting these
boats between Saumur and Nantes, ordered them stopped and seized, being
much too wishful to play the good officer and servant of the Crown. But
fortune willed that the king, through the prayers of his people, to whom he
was indeed a true father, escaped with his life.
The queen, in spite of this luck, did not abstain from her vengeance, and
having well brewed it, she caused the said marshal to be driven from Court.
It was then that having finished a fine house at La Verger, he retired there,
saying that the rain had come just in time to let him get under shelter in the
beautiful house so recently built. But this banishment from Court was not
all; through great researches which she caused to be made wherever he had
been in command, it was discovered he had committed great wrongs,
extortions and pillages, to which all governors are given; so that the
marshal, having appealed to the courts of parliament, was summoned before
that of Toulouse, which had long been very just and equitable, and not
corrupt. There, his suit being viewed, he was convicted. But the queen did
not wish his death, because, she said, death is a cure for all pains and woes,
and being dead he would be too happy; she wished him to live as degraded
and low as he had been great; so that he might, from the grandeur and
height where he had been, live miserably in troubles, pains, and sadness,
which would do him a hundred-fold more harm than death, for death lasted
only a day, and mayhap only an hour, whereas his languishing would make
him die daily.
Such was the vengeance of this brave queen. One day she was so angry
against M. d’Orléans that she could not for a long time be appeased. It was
in this wise: the death of her son, M. le dauphin, having happened, King
Charles, her husband, and she were in such despair that the doctors, fearing
the debility and feeble constitution of the king, were alarmed lest such grief
should do injury to his health; so they counselled the king to amuse himself,
and the princes of the Court to invent new pastimes, games, dances, and
mummeries in order to give pleasure to the king and queen; the which M.
d’Orléans having undertaken, he gave at the Château d’Amboise a
masquerade and dance, at which he did such follies and danced so gayly, as
was told and read, that the queen, believing he felt this glee because, the
dauphin being dead, he knew himself nearer to be King of France, was
extremely angered, and showed him such displeasure that he was forced to
escape from Amboise, where the Court then was, and go to his château of
Blois. Nothing can be blamed in this queen except the sin of vengeance,—if
vengeance is a sin,—because otherwise she was beautiful and gentle, and
had many very laudable sides.
When the king, her husband, went to the kingdom of Naples [1494], and
so long as he was there, she knew very well how to govern the kingdom of
France with those whom the king had given to assist her; but she always
kept her rank, her grandeur, and supremacy, and insisted, young as she was,
on being trusted; and she made herself trusted, so that nothing was ever
found to say against her.
She felt great regret for the death of King Charles [in 1498], as much for
the friendship she bore him as for seeing herself henceforth but half a
queen, having no children. And when her most intimate ladies, as I have
been told on good authority, pitied her for being the widow of so great a
king, and unable to return to her high estate,—for King Louis [the Duc
d’Orléans, her first lover] was then married to Jeanne de France,—she
replied she would “rather be the widow of a king all her life than debase
herself to a less than he; but still, she was not so despairing of happiness
that she did not think of again being Queen of France, as she had been, if
she chose.” Her old love made her say so; she meant to relight it in the
bosom of him in whom it was yet warm. And so it happened; for King
Louis [XII.], having repudiated Jeanne, his wife, and never having lost his
early love, took her in marriage, as we have seen and read. So here was her
prophecy accomplished; she having founded it on the nature of King Louis,
who could not keep himself from loving her, all married as she was, but
looked with a tender eye upon her, being still Duc d’Orléans; for it is
difficult to quench a great fire when once it has seized the soul.
He was a handsome prince and very amiable, and she did not hate him
for that. Having taken her, he honoured her much, leaving her to enjoy her
property and her duchy without touching it himself or taking a single louis;
but she employed it well, for she was very liberal. And because the king
made immense gifts, to meet which he must have levied on his people,
which he shunned like the plague, she supplied his deficiencies; and there
were no great captains of the kingdom to whom she did not give pensions,
or make extraordinary presents of money or of thick gold chains when they
went upon a journey; and she even made little presents according to quality;
everybody ran to her, and few came away discontented. Above all, she had
the reputation of loving her domestic servants, and to them she did great
good.
She was the first queen to hold a great Court of ladies, such as we have
seen from her time to the present day. Her suite was very large of ladies and
young girls, for she refused none; she even inquired of the noblemen of her
Court whether they had daughters, and what they were, and asked to have
them brought to her. I had an aunt de Bourdeille who had the honour of
being brought up by her [Louise de Bourdeille, maid of honour to Queen
Anne in 1494]; but she died at Court, aged fifteen years, and was buried
behind the great altar of the church of the Franciscans in Paris. I saw the
tomb and its inscription before that church was burned [in 1580.]
Queen Anne’s Court was a noble school for ladies; she had them taught
and brought up wisely; and all, taking pattern by her, made themselves wise
and virtuous. Because her heart was great and lofty she wanted guards, and
so formed a second band of a hundred gentlemen,—for hitherto there was
only one; and the greater part of the said new guard were Bretons, who
never failed, when she left her room to go to mass or to promenade, to await
her on that little terrace at Blois, still called the Breton perch, “La Perche
aux Bretons,” she herself having named it so by saying when she saw them:
“Here are my Bretons on their perch, awaiting me.”
 You may be sure that she did not lay by her money, but employed it well
on all high things.
She it was, who built, out of great superbness, that fine vessel and mass
of wood, called “La Cordelière,” which attacked so furiously in mid-ocean
the “Regent of England;” grappling to her so closely that both were burned
and nothing escaped,—not the people, nor anything else that was in them,
so that no news was ever heard of them on land; which troubled the queen
very much.[2]
The king honoured her so much that one day, it being reported to him
that the law clerks at the Palais [de Justice] and the students also were
playing games in which there was talk of the king, his Court, and all the
great people, he took no other notice than to say they needed a pastime, and
he would let them talk of him and his Court, though not licentiously; but as
for the queen, his wife, they should not speak of her in any way whatsoever;
if they did he would have them hanged. Such was the honour he bore her.
Moreover, there never came to his Court a foreign prince or an
ambassador that, after having seen and listened to them, he did not send
them to pay their reverence to the queen; wishing the same respect to be
shown to her as to him; and also, because he recognized in her a great
faculty for entertaining and pleasing great personages, as, indeed, she knew
well how to do; taking much pleasure in it herself; for she had very good
and fine grace and majesty in greeting them, and beautiful eloquence in
talking with them. Sometimes, amid her French speech, she would, to make
herself more admired, mingle a few foreign words, which she had learned
from M. de Grignaux, her chevalier of honour, who was a very gallant man
who had seen the world, and was accomplished and knew foreign
languages, being thereby very pleasant good company, and agreeable to
meet. Thus it was that one day, Queen Anne having asked him to teach her a
few words of Spanish to say to the Spanish ambassador, he taught her in
joke a little indecency, which she quickly learned. The next day, while
awaiting the ambassador, M. de Grignaux told the story to the king, who
thought it good, understanding his gay and lively humour. Nevertheless he
went to the queen, and told her all, warning her to be careful not to use
those words. She was in such great anger, though the king only laughed,
that she wanted to dismiss M. de Grignaux, and showed him her displeasure
for several days. But M. de Grignaux made her such humble excuses,
telling her that he only did it to make the king laugh and pass his time
merrily, and that he was not so ill-advised as to fail to warn the king in time
that he might, as he really did, warn her before the arrival of the
ambassador; so that on these excuses and the entreaties of the king she was
pacified.
Now, if the king loved and honoured her living, we may believe that, she
being dead, he did the same. And to manifest the mourning that he felt, the
superb and honourable funeral and obsequies that he ordered for her are
proof; the which I have read of in an old “History of France” that I found
lying about in a closet in our house, nobody caring for it; and having
gathered it up, I looked at it. Now as this is a matter that should be noted, I
shall put it here, word for word as the book says, without changing
anything; for though it is old, the language is not very bad; and as for the
truth of the book, it has been confirmed to me by my grandmother, Mme. la
Seneschale de Poitou, of the family du Lude, who was then at the Court.
The book relates it thus:—
“This queen was an honourable and virtuous queen, and very wise, the
true mother of the poor, the support of gentlemen, the haven of ladies,
damoiselles, and honest girls, and the refuge of learned men; so that all the
people of France cannot surfeit themselves enough in deploring and
regretting her.
“She died at the castle of Blois on the twenty-first of January, in the year
1513, after the accomplishment of a thing she had most desired, namely: the
union of the king, her lord, with the pope and the Roman Church, abhorring
as she did schism and divisions. For that reason she had never ceased urging
the king to this step, for which she was as much loved and greatly revered
by the Catholic princes and prelates as the king had been hated.
“I have seen at Saint-Denis a grand church cope, all covered with pearls
embroidered, which she had ordered to be made expressly to send as a
present to the pope, but death prevented. After her decease her body
remained for three days in her room, the face uncovered, and nowise
changed by hideous death, but as beautiful and agreeable as when living.
“Friday, the twenty-seventh of the month of January, her body was taken
from the castle, very honourably accompanied by all the priests and monks
of the town, borne by persons wearing mourning, with hoods over their
heads, accompanied by twenty-four torches larger than the other torches
borne by twenty-four officers of the household of the said lady, on each of
which were two rich armorial escutcheons bearing the arms emblazoned of
the said lady. After these torches came the reverend seigneurs and prelates,
bishops, abbés, and M. le Cardinal de Luxembourg to read the office; and
thus was removed the body of the said lady from the Château de Blois....
“Septuagesima Sunday, twelfth of February, they arrived at the church of
Notre-Dame des Champs in the suburbs of Paris, and there the body was
guarded two nights with great quantities of lights; and on the following
Tuesday, the devout services having been read, there marched before the
body processions with the crosses of all the churches and all the
monasteries of Paris, the whole University in a body, the presidents and
counsellors of the sovereign court of Parliament, and generally of all other
courts and jurisdictions, officers and advocates, merchants and citizens, and
other lesser officers of the town. All these accompanied the said body
reverentially, with the very noble seigneurs and ladies aforenamed, just as
they started from Blois, all keeping fine order among themselves according
to their several ranks.... And thus was borne through Paris, in the order and
manner above, the body of the queen to be sepulchred in the pious church
of Saint-Denis of France; preceded by these processions to a cross which is
not far beyond the place where the fair of Landit is held.
“And to the spot where stands the cross the reverend father in God, the
abbé, and the venerable monks, with the priests of the churches and
parishes of Saint-Denis, vestured in their great copes, with their crosses,
came in procession, together with the peasants and the inhabitants of the
said town, to receive the body of the late queen, which was then borne to
the door of the church of Saint-Denis, still accompanied honourably by all
the above-named very noble princes and princesses, seigneurs, dames, and
damoiselles, and their train as already stated....
“And all being duly accomplished, the body of the said lady, Madame
Anne, in her lifetime very noble Queen of France, Duchesse of Bretagne,
and Comtesse d’Étampes, was honourably interred and sepulchred in the
tomb for her prepared.
“After this, the herald-at-arms for Bretagne summoned all the princes
and officers of the said lady, to wit: the chevalier of honour, the grand-
master of the household, and others, each and all, to fulfil their duty
towards the said body, which they did most piteously, shedding tears from
their eyes. And, this done, the aforenamed king-at-arms cried three times
aloud in a most piteous voice: ‘The very Christian Queen of France,
Duchesse de Bretagne, our Sovereign Lady, is dead!’ And then all departed.
The body remained entombed.

Tomb of Louis XII. and Anne de Bretagne

“During her life and after her death she was honoured by the titles I have
before given: true mother of the poor; the comfort of noble gentlemen; the
haven of ladies and damoiselles and honest girls; the refuge of learned men
and those of good lives; so that speaking of her dead is only renewing the
grief and regrets of all such persons, and also that of her domestic servants,
whom she loved singularly. She was very religious and devout. It was she
who made the foundation of the ‘Bons-Hommes’ [monastery of the order of
Saint-François de Paule at Chaillot], otherwise called the Minimes; and she
began to build the church of the said ‘Bons-Hommes’ near Paris, and
afterwards that in Rome which is so beautiful and noble, and where, as I
saw myself, they receive no monks but Frenchmen.”
 There, word for word, are the splendid obsequies of this queen, without
changing a word of the original, for fear of doing worse,—for I could not
do better. They were just like those of our kings that I have heard and read
of, and those of King Charles IX., at which I was present, and which the
queen, his mother, desired to make so fine and magnificent, though the
finances of France were then too short to spend much, because of the
departure of the King of Poland, who with his suite had squandered and
carried off a great deal [1574].
Certainly I find these two interments much alike, save for three things:
one, that the burial of Queen Anne was the most superb; second, that all
went so well in order and so discreetly that there was no contention of
ranks, as occurred at the burial of King Charles; for his body, being about to
start for Notre-Dame, the court of parliament had some pique of precedence
with the nobility and the Church, claiming to stand in the place of the king
and to represent him when absent, he being then out of the kingdom. [Henri
III. was then King of Poland]. On which a great princess, as the world goes,
who was very near to him, whom I know but will not name, went about
arguing and saying: “It was no wonder if, during the lifetime of the king,
seditions and troubles had been in vogue, seeing that, dead as he was, he
was still able to stir up strife.” Alas! he never did it, poor prince! either dead
or living. We know well who were the authors of the seditions and of our
civil wars. That princess who said those words has since found reason to
regret them.
The third thing is that the body of King Charles was quitted, at the
church of Saint-Lazare, by the whole procession, princes, seigneurs, courts
of parliament, the Church, and the citizens, and was followed and
accompanied from there by none but poor M. de Strozzi, de Fumel, and
myself, with two gentlemen of the bedchamber, for we were not willing to
abandon our master as long as he was above ground. There were also a few
archers of the guard, quite pitiable to see, in the fields. So at eight in the
evening in the month of July, we started with the body and its effigy thus
badly accompanied.
Reaching the cross, we found all the monks of Saint-Denis awaiting us,
and the body of the king was honourably escorted, with the ceremonies of
the Church, to Saint-Denis, where the great Cardinal de Lorraine received it
most honourably and devoutly, as he knew well how to do.
 The queen-mother was very angry that the procession did not continue to
the end as she intended—save for Monsieur her son, and the King of
Navarre, whom she held a prisoner. The next day, however, the latter
arrived in a coach, with a very good guard, and captains of the guard with
him, to be present at the solemn high service, attended by the whole
procession and company as at first,—a sight very sad to see.
After dinner the court of parliament sent to tell and to command the
grand almoner Amyot to go and say grace after meat for them as if for the
king. To which he made answer that he should do nothing of the kind, for it
was not before them he was bound to do it. They sent him two consecutive
and threatening commands; which he still refused, and went and hid himself
that he might answer no more. Then they swore they would not leave the
table till he came; but not being able to find him, they were constrained to
say grace themselves and to rise, which they did with great threats, foully
abusing the said almoner, even to calling him scoundrel, and son of a
butcher. I saw the whole affair; and I know what Monsieur commanded me
to go and tell to M. le cardinal, asking him to pacify the matter, because
they had sent commands to Monsieur to send to them, as representatives of
the king, the grand almoner if he could be found. M. le cardinal went to
speak to them, but he gained nothing; they standing firm on their opinion of
their royal majesty and authority. I know what M. le cardinal said to me
about them, telling me not to say it,—that they were perfect fools. The chief
president, de Thou, was then at their head; a great senator certainly, but he
had a temper. So here was another disturbance to make that princess say
again that King Charles, either living or dead, on earth or under it, that body
of his stirred up the world and threw it into sedition. Alas! that he could not
do.
I have told this little incident, possibly more at length than I should, and
I may be blamed; but I reply that I have told and put it here as it came into
my fancy and memory; also that it comes in à propos; and that I cannot
forget it, for it seems to me a thing that is rather remarkable.
Now, to return to our Queen Anne: we see from this fine last duty of her
obsequies how beloved she was of earth and heaven; far otherwise than that
proud, pompous queen, Isabella of Bavaria, wife of the late King Charles
VI., who having died in Paris, her body was so despised it was put out of
her palace into a little boat on the river Seine, without form of ceremony or
pomp, being carried through a little postern so narrow it could hardly go
through, and thus was taken to Saint-Denis to her tomb like a simple
damoiselle, neither more nor less. There was also a difference between her
actions and those of Queen Anne: for she brought the English into France
and Paris, threw the kingdom into flames and divisions, and impoverished
and ruined every one; whereas Queen Anne kept France in peace, enlarged
and enriched it with her beautiful duchy and the fine property she brought
with her. So one need not wonder that the king regretted her and felt such
mourning that he came nigh dying in the forest of Vincennes, and clothed
himself and all his Court so long in black; and those who came otherwise
clothed he had them driven away; neither would he see any ambassador, no
matter who he was, unless he were dressed in black. And, moreover, that
old History which I have quoted, says: “When he gave his daughter to M.
d’Angoulême, afterwards King François, mourning was not left off by him
or his Court; and the day of the espousals in the church of Saint-Germain-
en-Laye, the bridegroom and bride were vestured and clothed”—so this
History says—“in black cloth, honestly cut in mourning shape, for the death
of the said queen, Madame Anne de Bretagne, mother of the bride, in
presence of the king, her father, accompanied by the princes of the blood
and noble seigneurs and prelates, princesses, dames, and damoiselles, all
clothed in black cloth made in mourning shape.” That is what the book
says. It was a strange austerity of mourning which should be noted, that not
even on the day of the wedding was it dispensed with, to be renewed on the
following day.
From this we may know how beloved, and worthy to be beloved this
princess was by the king, her husband, who sometimes in his merry moods
and gayety would call her “his Breton.”
If she had lived longer she would never have consented to that marriage
of her daughter; it was very repugnant to her and she said so to the king, her
husband, for she mortally hated Madame d’Angoulême, afterwards Regent,
their tempers being quite unlike and not agreeing together; besides which,
she had wished to unite her said daughter to Charles of Austria, then young,
the greatest seigneur of Christendom, who was afterwards emperor. And
this she wished in spite of M. d’Angoulême coming very near the Crown;
but she never thought of that, or would not think of it, trusting to have more
children herself, she being only thirty-seven years old when she died. In her
lifetime and reign, reigned also that great and wise queen, Isabella of
Castile, very accordant in manners and morals with our Queen Anne. For
which reason they loved each other much and visited one another often by
embassies, letters, and presents; ‘tis thus that virtue ever seeks out virtue.
King Louis was afterwards pleased to marry for the third time Marie,
sister of the King of England, a very beautiful princess, young, and too
young for him, so that evil came of it. But he married more from policy, to
make peace with the English and to put his own kingdom at rest, than for
any other reason, never being able to forget his Queen Anne. He
commanded at his death that they should both be covered by the same
tomb, just as we now see it in Saint-Denis, all in white marble, as beautiful
and superb as never was.
Now, here I pause in my discourse and go no farther; referring the rest to
books that are written of this queen better than I could write; only to content
my own self have I made this discourse.
I will say one other little thing; that she was the first of our queens or
princesses to form the usage of putting a belt round their arms and
escutcheons, which until then were borne not inclosed, but quite loose; and
the said queen was the first to put the belt.
I say no more, not having been of her time; although I protest having
told only truth, having learned it, as I have said, from a book, and also from
Mme. la Seneschale, my grandmother, and from Mme. de Dampierre, my
aunt, a true Court register, and as clever, wise, and virtuous a lady as ever
entered a Court these hundred years, and who knew well how to discourse
on old things. From eight years of age she was brought up at Court, and
forgot nothing; it was good to hear her talk; and I have seen our kings and
queens take a singular pleasure in listening to her, for she knew all,—her
own time and past times; so that people took word from her as from an
oracle. King Henri III. made her lady of honour to the queen, his wife. I
have here used recollections and lessons that I obtained from her, and I
hope to use many more in the course of these books.
I have read the epitaph of the said queen, thus made:—
“Here lies Anne, who was wife to two great kings,
Great a hundred-fold herself, as queen two times!
Never queen like her enriched all France;
That is what it is to make a grand alliance.”
 Gui Patin, satirist and jovial spirit of his time [he was born in 1601],
attracted to Saint-Denis because a fair was held there, visits the abbey, the
treasury, “where” he says, “there was plenty of silly stuff and rubbish,” and
lastly the tombs of the kings, “where I could not keep myself from weeping
to see so many monuments to the vanity of human life; tears escaped me
also before the tomb of the great and good king, François I., who founded
our College of Professors of the King. I must own my weakness; I kissed it,
and also that of his father-in-law, Louis XII., who was the Father of his
People, and the best king we have ever had in France.” Happy age! still
neighbour to beliefs, when those reputed the greatest satirists had these
touching naïvetés, these wholly patriotic and antique sensibilities.
Mézeray [born ten years later], in his natural, sincere and expressive
diction, his clear and full narration, into which he has the art to bring
speaking circumstances which animate the tale, says in relation to Louis
XII. [in his “History of France”]: “When he rode through the country the
good folk ran from all parts and for many days to see him, strewing the
roads with flowers and foliage, and striving, as though he were a visible
God, to touch his saddle with their handkerchiefs and keep them as precious
relics.”
And two centuries later, Comte Rœderer, in his Memoir on Polite
Society and the Hôtel de Rambouillet, printed in 1835, tells us how in his
youth his mind was already busy with Louis XII., and, returning to the same
interest in after years, he made him his hero of predilection and his king. In
studying the history of France he thought he discovered, he says, that at the
close of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth what has
since been called the “French Revolution” was already consummated; that
liberty rested on a free Constitution; and that Louis XII., the Father of his
People, was he who had accomplished it. Bonhomie and goodness have
never been denied to Louis XII., but Rœderer claims more, he claims ability
and skill. The Italian wars, considered generally to have been mistakes, he
excuses and justifies by showing them in the king’s mind as a means of
useful national policy; he needed to obtain from Pope Alexander VI. the
dissolution of his marriage with Jeanne de France, in order that he might
marry Anne de Bretagne and so unite the duchy with the kingdom. Rœderer
makes King Louis a type of perfection; seeming to have searched in regions
far from those that are historically brilliant, far from spheres of fame and
glory, into “the depths obscure,” as he says himself, “of useful government
for a hero of a new species.”
More than that: he thinks he sees in the cherished wife of Louis XII., in
Anne de Bretagne, the foundress of a school of polite manners and
perfection for her sex. “She was,” Brantôme had said, “the most worthy and
honourable queen that had ever been since Queen Blanche, mother of the
King Saint-Louis.... Her Court was a noble school for ladies; she had them
taught and brought up wisely; and all, taking pattern by her, made
themselves wise and virtuous.” Rœderer takes these words of Brantôme
and, giving them their strict meaning, draws therefrom a series of
consequences: just as François I. had, in many respects, overthrown the
political state of things established by Louis XII., so, he believes, had the
women beloved of François overturned that honourable condition of society
established by Anne de Bretagne. Starting from that epoch he sees, as it
were, a constant struggle between two sorts of rival and incompatible
societies: between the decent and ingenuous society of which Anne de
Bretagne had given the idea, and the licentious society of which the
mistresses of the king, women like the Duchesse d’Étampes and Diane de
Poitiers, procured the triumph. These two societies, to his mind, never
ceased to co-exist during the sixteenth century; on the one hand was an
emulation of virtue and merit on the part of the noble heiresses, alas, too
eclipsed, of Anne de Bretagne, on the other an emulation with high bidding
of gallantry, by the giddy pupils of the school of François I. To Rœderer the
Hôtel de Rambouillet, that perfected salon, founded towards the beginning
of the seventeenth century, is only a tardy return to the traditions of Anne de
Bretagne, the triumph of merit, virtue, and polite manners over the license
to which all the kings, from François I., including Henri IV., had paid
tribute.
Reaching thus the Hôtel de Rambouillet and holding henceforth an
unbroken thread in hand, Rœderer divides and subdivides at pleasure. He
marks the divers periods and the divers shades of transition, the growth and
the decline that he discerns. The first years of Louis XIV.’s youth cause him
some distress; a return is being made to the ways of François I., to the
brilliant mistresses. Rœderer, not concerning himself with the displeasure
he will cause the classicists, lays a little of the blame for this return on the
four great poets, Molière, La Fontaine, Racine, and Boileau himself, all
accomplices, more or less, in the laudation of victor and lover. However,
age comes on; Louis XIV. grows temperate in turn, and a woman, issuing
from the very purest centre of Mme. de Rambouillet’s society, and who was
morally its heiress, a woman accomplished in tone, in cultivation of mind,
in precision of language, and in the sentiment of propriety,—Mme. de
Maintenon,—knows so well how to seize the opportunity that she seats
upon the throne, in a modest half-light, all the styles of mind and merit
which made the perfection of French society in its better days. The triumph
of Mme. de Maintenon is that of polite society itself; Anne de Bretagne has
found her pendant at the other extremity of the chain after the lapse of two
centuries.
Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du Lundi, Vol. VIII.
 DISCOURSE II.

CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI, QUEEN, AND MOTHER OF OUR LAST

KINGS.
I HAVE wondered and been astonished a hundred times that, so many
good writers as we have had in our day in France, none of them has been
inquisitive enough to make some fine selection of the life and deeds of the
queen-mother, Catherine de’ Medici, inasmuch as she has furnished ample
matter, and cut out much fine work, if ever a queen did—as said the
Emperor Charles to Paolo Giovio [Italian historian] when, on his return
from his triumphant voyage in the “Goulette” intending to make war upon
King François, he gave him a provision of ink and paper, saying he would
cut him out plenty of work. So it is true that this queen cut out so much that
a good and zealous writer might make an Iliad of it; but they have all been
lazy,—or ungrateful, for she was never niggardly to learned men; I could
name several who have derived good benefits from this queen, from which,
in consequence, I accuse them of ingratitude.
There is one, however, who did concern himself to write of her, and
made a little book which he entitled “The Life of Catherine;”[3] but it is an
imposture and not worthy of belief, as she herself said when she saw it;
such falsities being apparent to every one, and easy to note and reject. He
that wrote it wished her mortal harm, and was an enemy to her name, her
condition, her life, her honour, and nature; and that is why he should be
rejected. As for me, I would I knew how to speak well, or that I had a good
pen, well mended, at my command, that I might exalt and praise her as she
deserves. At any rate, such as my pen is, I shall now employ it at all
hazards.
 Catherine de’ Medici
This queen is extracted, on the father’s side, from the race of the Medici,
one of the noblest and most illustrious families, not only in Italy, but in
Christendom. Whatever may be said, she was a foreigner to these shores
because the alliances of kings cannot commonly be chosen in their
kingdom; for it is not best to do so; foreign marriages being as useful and
more so than near ones. The House of the Medici has always been allied
and confederated with the crown of France, which still bears the fleur-de-lys
that King Louis XI. gave that house in sign of alliance and perpetual
confederation [the fleur de Louis, which then became the Florentine lily].
On the mother’s side she issued originally from one of the noblest
families of France; and so was truly French in race, heart, and affection
through that great house of Boulogne and county of Auvergne; thus it is
hard to tell or judge in which of her two families there was most grandeur
and memorable deeds. Here is what was said of them by the Archbishop of
Bourges, of the house of Beaune, as great a learned man and worthy prelate
as there is in Christendom (though some say a trifle unsteady in belief, and
little good in the scales of M. Saint-Michel, who weighs good Christians for
the day of judgment, or so they say): it is given in the funeral oration which
the archbishop made upon the said queen at Blois:—
“In the days when Brennus, that great captain of the Gauls, led his army
throughout all Italy and Greece, there were with him in his troop two
French nobles, one named Felsinus, the other named Bono, who, seeing the
wicked design of Brennus, after his fine conquests, to invade the temple of
Delphos and soil himself and his army with the sacrilege of that temple,
withdrew, both of them, and passed into Asia with their vessels and men,
advancing so far that they entered the sea of the Medes, which is near to
Lydia and Persia. Thence, having made great conquests and obtained great
victories, they were returning through Italy, hoping to reach France, when
Felsinus stopped at a place where Florence now stands beside the river
Arno, which he saw to be fine and delectable, and situated much as another
which had pleased him much in the country of the Medes. There he built a
city which to-day is Florence; and his companion, Bono, built another and
named it Bononia, now called Bologna, the which are neighbouring cities.
Henceforth, in consequence of the victories and conquests of Felsinus
among the Medes, he was called Medicus among his friends, a name that
remained to the family; just as we read of Paulus surnamed Macedonicus
for having conquered Macedonia from Perseus, and Scipio called Africanus
for doing the same in Africa.”
I do not know where M. de Beaune may have taken this history; but it is
very probable that before the king and such an assembly, there convened for
the funeral of the queen, he would not have alleged the fact without good
authority. This descent is very far from the modern story invented and
attributed without grounds to the family of Medici, according to that lying
book which I have mentioned on the life of the said queen. After this the
said Sieur de Beaune says further, he has read in the chronicles that one
named Everard de’ Medici, Sieur of Florence, went, with many of his
subjects, to the assistance of the voyage and expedition made by
Charlemagne against Desiderius, King of the Lombards; and having very
bravely succoured and assisted him, was confirmed and invested with the
lordship of Florence. Many years after, one Anemond de’ Medici, also Sieur
of Florence, went, accompanied by many of his subjects, to the Holy Land,
with Godefroy de Bouillon, where he died at the siege of Nicæa in Asia.
Such greatness always continued in that family until Florence was reduced
to a republic by the intestine wars in Italy between the emperors and the
peoples, the illustrious members of it manifesting their valour and grandeur
from time to time; as we saw in the latter days Cosmo de’ Medici, who,
with his arms, his navy, and vessels, terrified the Turks in the Mediterranean
Sea and in the distant East; so that none since his time, however great he
may be, has surpassed him in strength and valour and wealth, as Raffaelle
Volaterano has written.
The temples and sacred shrines by him built, the hospitals by him
founded, even in Jerusalem, are ample proof of his piety and magnanimity.
There were also Lorenzo de’ Medici, surnamed the Great for his virtuous
deeds, and two great popes, Leo and Clement, also many cardinals and
grand personages of the name; besides the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosmo
de’ Medici, a wise and wary man, if ever there was one. He succeeded in
maintaining himself in his duchy, which he found invaded and much
disturbed when he came to it.
In short, nothing can rob this house of the Medici of its lustre, very noble
and grand as it is in every way.
As for the house of Boulogne and Auvergne, who will say that it is not
great, having issued originally from that noble Eustache de Boulogne,
whose brother, Godefroy de Bouillon, bore arms and escutcheons with so
vast a number of princes, seigneurs, chevaliers, and Christian soldiers, even
to Jerusalem and the Sepulchre of our Saviour; and would have made
himself, by his sword and the favour of God, king, not only of Jerusalem
but of the greater part of the East, to the confusion of Mahomet, the
Saracens, and the Mahometans, amazing all the rest of the world and
replanting Christianity in Asia, where it had fallen to the lowest?
For the rest, this house has ever been sought in alliance by all the
monarchies of Christendom and the great families; such as France, England,
Scotland, Hungary, and Portugal, which latter kingdom belonged to it of
right, as I have heard Président de Thou say, and as the queen herself did
me the honour to tell me at Bordeaux when she heard of the death of King
Sebastian [in Morocco, 1578], the Medici being received to argue the
justice of their rights at the last Assembly of States before the decease of
King Henry [in 1580]. This was why she armed M. de Strozzi to make an
invasion, the King of Spain having usurped the kingdom; she was arrested
in so fine a course only by reasons which I will explain at another time.
I leave you to suppose, therefore, whether this house of Boulogne was
great; yes, so great that I once heard Pope Pius IV. say, sitting at table at a
dinner he gave after his election to the Cardinals of Ferrara and Guise, his
creations, that the house of Boulogne was so great and noble he knew none
in France, whatever it was, that could surpass it in antiquity, valour, and
grandeur.
All this is much against those malicious detractors who have said that
this queen was a Florentine of low birth. Moreover, she was not so poor but
what she brought to France in marriage estates which are worth to-day
twenty-six thousand livres,—such as the counties of Auvergne and
Lauragais, the seigneuries of Leverons, Donzenac, Boussac, Gorrèges,
Hondecourt and other lands,—all an inheritance from her mother. Besides
which, her dowry was of more than two hundred thousand ducats, which
are worth to-day over four hundred thousand; with great quantities of
furniture, precious stones, jewels, and other riches, such as the finest and
largest pearls ever seen in so great a number, which she afterwards gave to
her daughter-in-law, the Queen of Scotland [Mary Stuart], whom I have
seen wearing them.
Besides all this, many estates, houses, deeds, and claims in Italy.
But more than all else, through her marriage the affairs of France, which
had been so shaken by the imprisonment of the king and his losses at Milan
and Naples, began to get firmer. King François was very willing to say that
the marriage had served his interests. Therefore there was given to this
queen for her device a rainbow, which she bore as long as she was married,
with these words in Greek φὡϛ φἑρι ἡδἑ γαλἡνην. Which is the same as
saying that just as this fire and bow in the sky brings and signifies good
weather after rain, so this queen was a true sign of clearness, serenity, and
the tranquillity of peace. The Greek is thus translated: Lucem fert et
serenitatem—“She brings light and serenity.”
After that, the emperor [Charles V.] dared push no longer his ambitious
motto: “Ever farther.” For, although there was truce between himself and
King François, he was nursing his ambition with the design of gaining
always from France whatever he could; and he was much astonished at this
alliance with the pope [Clement VII.], regarding the latter as able,
courageous, and vindictive for his imprisonment by the imperial forces at
the sack of Rome [1527]. Such a marriage displeased him so much that I
have heard a truthful lady of the Court say that if he had not been married to
the empress, he would have seized an alliance with the pope himself and
espoused his niece [Catherine de’ Medici], as much for the support of so
strong a party as because he feared the pope would assist in making him
lose Naples, Milan, and Genoa; for the pope had promised King François,
in an authentic document, when he delivered to him the money of his
niece’s dowry and her rings and jewels, to make the dowry worthy of such a
marriage by the addition of three pearls of inestimable value, of the
excessive splendour of which all the greatest kings were envious and
covetous; the which were Naples, Milan, and Genoa. And it is not to be
doubted that if the said pope had lived out his natural life he would have
sold the emperor well, and made him pay dear for that imprisonment, in
order to aggrandize his niece and the kingdom to which she was joined. But
Clement VII. died young, and all this profit came to nought.
So now our queen, having lost her mother, Magdelaine de Boulogne, and
Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, her father, in early life, was married
by her good uncle the pope to France, whither she was brought by sea to
Marseille in great triumph; and her wedding was pompously performed, at
the age of fourteen. She made herself so beloved by the king, her father-in-
law, and by King Henri, her husband [not king till the death of François I.],
that on remaining ten years without producing issue, and many persons
endeavouring to persuade the king and the dauphin, her husband, to
repudiate her because there was such need of an heir to France, neither the
one nor the other would consent because they loved her so much. But after
ten years, in accordance with the natural habit of the women of the race of
Medici, who are tardy in conceiving, she began by producing the Little
King François II. After that, was born the Queen of Spain, and then,
consecutively, that fine and illustrious progeny whom we have all seen, and
also others no sooner born than dead, by great misfortune and fatality. All
this caused the king, her husband, to love her more and more, and in such a
way that he, who was of an amorous temperament, and greatly liked to
make love and to change his loves, said often that of all the women in the
world there was none like his wife for that, and he did not know her equal.
He had reason to say so, for she was truly a beautiful and most amiable
princess.
She was of rich and very fine presence; of great majesty, but very gentle
when need was; of noble appearance and good grace, her face handsome
and agreeable, her bosom very beautiful, white and full; her body also very
white, the flesh beautiful, the skin smooth, as I have heard from several of
her ladies; of a fine plumpness also, the leg and thigh very beautiful (as I
have heard, too, from the same ladies); and she took great pleasure in being
well shod and in having her stockings well and tightly drawn up.
Besides all this, the most beautiful hand that was ever seen, as I believe.
Once upon a time the poets praised Aurora for her fine hands and beautiful
fingers; but I think our queen would efface her in that, and she guarded and
maintained that beauty all her life. The king, her son, Henri III., inherited
much of this beauty of the hand.
She always clothed herself well and superbly, often with some pretty and
new invention. In short, she had many charms in herself to make her
beloved. I remember that one day at Lyons she went to see a painter named
Corneille, who had painted in a large room all the great seigneurs, princes,
cavaliers, queens, princesses, ladies of the Court, and damoiselles. Being in
the said room of these portraits we saw there our queen, painted very well
in all her beauty and perfection, apparelled à la Française in a cap and her
great pearls, and a gown with wide sleeves of silver tissue furred with lynx,
—the whole so well represented to the life that only speech was lacking; her
three fine daughters were beside her. She took great pleasure at the sight,
and all the company there present did the same, praising and admiring her
beauty above all. She herself was so ravished by the contemplation that she
could not take her eyes from the picture until M. de Nemours came to her
and said: “Madame, I think you are there so well portrayed that nothing
more can be said; and it seems to me that your daughters do you proper
honour, for they do not go before you or surpass you.” To this she
answered: “My cousin, I think you can remember the time, the age, and the
dress of this picture; so that you can judge better than any of this company,
for you saw me like that, whether I was estimated such as you say, and
whether I ever was as I there appear.” There was not one in the company
that did not praise and estimate that beauty highly, and say that the mother
was worthy of the daughters, and the daughters of the mother. And such
beauty lasted her, married and widowed, almost to her death; not that she
was as fresh as in her more blooming years, but always well preserved, very
desirable and agreeable.
For the rest, she was very good company and of gay humour; loving all
honourable exercises, such as dancing, in which she had great grace and
majesty.
She also loved hunting; about which I heard a lady of the Court tell this
tale: King François, having chosen and made a company which was called
“the little band of the Court ladies,” the handsomest, daintiest, and most
favoured, often escaped from the Court and went to other houses to hunt the
stag and pass his time, sometimes staying thus withdrawn eight days, ten
days, sometimes more and sometimes less, as the humour took him. Our
queen (who was then only Mme. la dauphine) seeing such parties made
without her, and that even Mesdames her sisters-in-law were there while
she stayed at home, made prayer to the king, to take her always with him,
and to do her the honour to permit that she should never budge without him.
 Henri II
It was said that she, being very shrewd and clever, did this as much or
more to see the king’s actions and get his secrets and hear and know all
things, as from liking for the hunt.
King François was pleased with this request, for it showed the good-will
that she had for his company; and he granted it heartily; so that besides
loving her naturally he now loved her more, and delighted in giving her
pleasure in the hunt, at which she never left his side, but followed him at
full speed. She was very good on horseback and bold; sitting with ease, and
being the first to put the leg around a pommel; which was far more graceful
and becoming than sitting with the feet upon a plank. Till she was sixty
years of age and over she liked to ride on horseback, and after her weakness
prevented her she pined for it. It was one of her greatest pleasures to ride far
and fast, though she fell many times with damage to her body, breaking her
leg once, and wounding her head, which had to be trepanned. After she was
widowed and had charge of the king and the kingdom, she took the king
always with her, and her other children; but while her husband, King Henri,
lived, she usually went with him to the meet of the stag and the other hunts.
If he played at pall-mall she watched him play, and played herself. She
was very fond of shooting with a cross-bow à jalet [ball of stone], and she
shot right well; so that always when she went to ride her cross-bow was
taken with her, and if she saw any game, she shot it.
She was ever inventing some new dance or beautiful ballet when the
weather was bad. Also she invented games and passed her time with one
and another intimately; but always appearing very grave and austere when
necessary.
She was fond of seeing comedies and tragedies; but after “Sophonisbe,”
a tragedy composed by M. de Saint-Gélais, was very well represented by
her daughters and other ladies and damoiselles and gentlemen of her Court,
at Blois for the marriages of M. du Cypière and the Marquis d’Elbœuf, she
took an opinion that it was harmful to the affairs of the kingdom, and would
never have tragedies played again. But she listened readily to comedies and
tragi-comedies, and even those of “Zani” and “Pantaloon,” taking great
pleasure in them, and laughing with all her heart like any other; for she
liked laughter, and her natural self was jovial, loving a witty word and ready
with it, knowing well when to cast her speech and her stone, and when to
withhold them.
She passed her time in the afternoons at work on her silk embroideries,
in which she was as perfect as possible. In short, this queen liked and gave
herself up to all honourable exercises; and there was not one that was
worthy of herself and her sex that she did not wish to know and practise.
There is what I can say, speaking briefly and avoiding prolixity, about
the beauty of her body and her occupations.
When she called any one “my friend” it was either that she thought him
a fool, or she was angry with him. This was so well known that she had a
serving gentleman named M. de Bois-Fevrier, who made reply when she
called him “my friend”: “Ha! madame, I would rather you called me your
enemy; for to call me your friend is as good as saying I am a fool, or that
you are in anger against me; for I know your nature this long time.”
As for her mind, it was very great and very admirable, as was shown in
so many fine and signal acts by which her life has been made illustrious
forever. The king, her husband, and his council esteemed her so much that
when the king went his journey to Germany, out of his kingdom, he
established and ordered her as regent and governor throughout his
dominions during his absence, by a declaration solemnly made before a full
parliament in Paris. And in this office she behaved so wisely that there was
no disturbance, change, or alteration in the State by reason of the king’s
absence; but, on the contrary, she looked so carefully to business that she
assisted the king with money, means, and men, and other kinds of succour;
which helped him much for his return, and even for the conquest which he
made of cities in the duchy of Luxembourg, such as Yvoy, Montmedy,
Dampvilliers, Chimay, and others.
I leave you to think how he who wrote that fine life I spoke of detracted
from her in saying that never did the king, her husband, allow her to put her
nose into matters of State. Was not making her regent in his absence giving
her ample occasion to have full knowledge of them? And it was thus she did
during all the journeys that he made yearly in going to his armies.
What did she after the battle of Saint-Laurens, when the State was
shaken and the king had gone to Compiègne to raise a new army? She so
espoused affairs that she roused and excited the gentlemen of Paris to give
prompt succour to their king, which came most apropos, both in money and
in other things very necessary in war.
Also, when the king was wounded, those who were of that time and saw
it cannot be ignorant of the great care she took for his cure: the watches she
made beside him without ever sleeping; the prayers with which, time after
time, she importuned God; the processions and visitation of churches which
she made; and the posts which she sent about everywhere inquiring for
doctors and surgeons. But his hour had come; and when he passed from this
world into the other, she made such lamentations and shed such tears that
never did she stanch them; and in memory of him, whenever he was spoken
of as long as she lived, they gushed from the depths of her eyes; so that she
took a device proper and suitable to her tears and her mourning, namely: a
mound of quicklime, on which the drops of heaven fell abundantly, with
these words writ in Latin: Adorem extincta testantur vivere flamma; the
drops of water, like her tears, showing ardour, though the flame was extinct.
This device takes its allegory from the nature of quicklime, which, being
watered, burns strangely and shows its fire though flame is not there. Thus
did our queen show her ardour and her affection by her tears, though flame,
which was her husband, was now extinct; and this was as much as to say
that, dead as he was, she made it appear by her tears that she could never
forget him, but should love him always.
A like device was borne in former days by Madame Valentine de Milan,
Duchesse d’Orléans, after the death of her husband, killed in Paris, for
which she had such great regret that for all comfort and solace in her
moaning, she took a watering-pot for her device, on the top of which was an
S, in sign, so they say, of seule, souvenir, soucis, soupirer, and around the
said watering-pot were written these words: Rien ne m’est plus; plus ne
m’est rien—“Nought is more to me; more is to me nothing.” This device
can still be seen in her chapel in the church of the Franciscans at Blois.
The good King René of Sicily, having lost his wife Isabel, Duchesse de
Lorraine, suffered such great grief that never did he truly rejoice again; and
when his intimate friends and favourites urged him to consolation he led
them to his cabinet and showed them, painted by his own hand (for he was
an excellent painter), a Turkish bow with its string unstrung, beneath which
was written: Arco per lentare piaga non sana—“The bow although
unstrung heals not the wound.” Then he said to them: “My friends, with this
picture I answer all your reasons: by unstringing a bow or breaking its
string, the harm thus done by the arrow may quickly be mended, but, the
life of my dear spouse being by death extinct and broken, the wound of the
loyal love—the which, her living, filled my heart—cannot be cured.” And
in various places in Angers we see these Turkish bows with broken strings
and beneath them the same words, Arco per lentare piaga non sana; even at
the Franciscan church, in the chapel of Saint-Bernardin which he caused to
be decorated. This device he took after the death of his wife; for in her
lifetime he bore another.
Our queen, around her device which I have told of, placed many
trophies: broken mirrors and fans, crushed plumes, and pearls, jewels
scattered to earth, and chains in pieces; the whole in sign of quitting
worldly pomp, her husband being dead, for whom her mourning never was
remitted. And, without the grace of God and the fortitude with which he had
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