Peter Lewis Shinnie 1915–2007
After schooling at
Westminster, Peter read Egyptology, then a text-based discipline, at Oxford
but, exceptionally, also sought field training in dirt archaeology on European
sites. Swept up into World War II,
he returned from service – first as a bomber pilot and later as
the intelligence officer who told the RAF what not to bomb in Italy – to accompany Leonard Woolley
on a dig in Turkey where he learned little new about the practice of
archaeology but much Arabic. Shortly thereafter he accepted the post of
Commissioner for Archaeology in the then Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, where he began
his long and distinguished career as a field director, applying for the first
time the best European standards of excavation and recording to Nile valley
sites. In this work, in which his first wife Margaret played a vital
collaborative role, he urged the integration of archaeology, social
anthropology, ethnography and linguistics in a research effort to throw light
on Sudans history. Here too began a continuing fascination with Nubia past
and present and to the editing of a grammar and lexicon of Nubian – and
we may still see the dictionary on which he was working with Ali Osman.
This
degree of engagement with people and with both past and present cultures is
characteristic and helps to explain the richness of his descriptive writing and
success as a lecturer. In 1953 he founded the journal Kush, the first in a series of editorial services to
archaeology that include the founding, editing and publication – in
collaboration with Ama – of Nyame Akuma, the Newsletter (later Bulletin) of the Society of
Africanist Archaeologists, and a series of Occasional Papers from the
University of Calgary that make available the works of African archaeologists
who would otherwise have gone unpublished. His insistence that copies of Nyame
Akuma be sent free to colleagues in
the Third World who lacked access to hard currency kept scholarly lines of
communication open for those who would otherwise have been cut off. Peter also
deserves special recognition as a communicator to a wider, and especially
African, audience. While in Khartoum, he produced pamphlets on Sudanese
archaeology and history that appeared in both English and Arabic. He also set
up a departmental museum of antiquities, the nucleus from which the Sudan
National Museum was to develop. In later years, his and Amas monograph Early
Asante is also primarily directed to
an African audience.
In
1957, following the Sudanization of Peters position, he became briefly the
Director of Antiquities in Uganda. The realization he gained there of the
potential of oral traditions to be used in conjunction with archaeology has
been influential to the point of becoming a commonplace in the study of the later archaeology of Africa. A year
later, he moved to become head of the department of archaeology at the
University of Ghana, a unit that in short order he had built into a viable
university department active in both teaching and research, the first such in
Black Africa. Besides a major project related to the history of states on the
southern fringes of African Islam, he persuaded President Kwame Nkrumah,
apostle of pan-Africanism, to seize the opportunity of the building of the High
Dam at Aswan to send the only Black African team to the UNESCO salvage
campaign, where Peter and his Ghanaian crew dug a mediaeval Nubian town,
Dibeira West. His excavations here, and later for many seasons at Mero, the
site and the civilization that he played such an important role in bringing to
the attention of the world, and with which his name will always be associated,
introduced many Africans to careers in history or archaeology. In 1966, the
offer of the Chair of Archaeology at the University of Khartoum gave him the
opportunity to continue this work on a firmer footing.
Curiously
the book for which Peter is best known,
Mero: A Civilization of the Sudan, was written before his excavations at the capital. The massive final
monograph appeared in 2004. Peter left no unpublished digs behind him! The
excavations – typically mainly in town mounds rather than temples –
are characterized by fine contextualization and excellent documentation. We
learn about the lives of the citizens, their houses and their crafts, and in
particular the making of iron. These finds gave impetus to Peters interest in
and publications on iron working as an important, if not prime, mover in later
African culture history.
While
at Khartoum, Peter decolonized the graduate diploma syllabus, increasing its
archaeological and Sudanese content, and involved the students in fieldwork.
But in 1970 Sudanese politics and the need to build a pension led to him to
take up a visiting professorship at SUNY Buffalo, and then the headship of the
department of archaeology at the University of Calgary. From Calgary, he
conducted further seasons of excavations at Mero before turning his attention
back to Ghana, where he undertook excavations at Daboya that answered
historical questions on Gonja settlement and state formation and threw light on
the earliest food production in Ghana. His latest field project, again
combining history, oral traditions – Amas responsibility – and
archaeology, and undertaken with the moral and financial support of the
Asantehene, has been into the origins of Ashanti, investigating the early
history of the Asante state in the northern part of the forest. In the course
of this work, much of it undertaken after his official retirement in 1980,
Peter brought many African students to Canada for MA and PhD degrees, and he
introduced dozens of Canadians to fieldwork in Africa.
Peter
Shinnie consistently sought to build bridges between past and present,
appreciating the relevance, and not just to archaeologists, of one to the
other. Archaeologist by technique, whose early excavations were perhaps the
finest of the time on the African continent, he was at heart a historian,
interested in how sites developed over periods of time, how material culture
changed, in the building of chronologies. He learned from the New Archaeology
while never accepting its claims to scientific generalization. He is at once
central – combining in himself several disciplines and skills, realizing
multidisciplinary investigations before these became fashionable – and
marginal. He has used this disciplinary and geographical marginality to great
advantage and effect, to integrate the diverse historical records, material and
linguistic, oral and written, of Mero, Nubia, and Ghana, and to write accounts
of them that are richer and more rounded than normal archaeological fare.
His scholarship is an
expression of his politics, a humane liberalism that underlies his deep
interest and sympathy for the exploited, the colonized, the Other, and his
respect for others freedom and others cultures. The efforts he has made
throughout his career to put the results of his scholarship at the disposal of
the people, and especially of those whose past he studies, must be seen in the
same light. It is both remarkable and just that, years after his formal retirement,
an African society should fund his research. While never realizing his early dream of
becoming a professional Egyptologist, he has achieved far more as an
Africanist, scholar, administrator and builder of programs, teacher,
facilitator, and publisher. The continent, its peoples, and the discipline
are the beneficiaries of his notable African commitment.
Nicholas
David,
Faculty
Professor of Archaeology
University
of Calgary
Bibliography
of Works by Peter L. Shinnie
Reviews, notes in magazines, and letters to newspapers have
not been included unless of special interest.
Books and monographs
1955. Excavations
at Soba (Occasional Papers No. 3).
Khartoum: Sudan Antiquities Service.
1961. (P.L.S.
and H.N. Chittick) Ghazali. A monastery in the Northern Sudan. Occasional Papers No. 5. Khartoum: Sudan Antiquities Service.
1967.
Meroe. A civilization of the Sudan. London: Thames and Hudson.
1971.
(editor) The African Iron Age. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
1978. (P.L.S.
and M. Shinnie) Debeira West. Warminster:
Aris and Philips Ltd.
1980. (P.L.S.
and R. Bradley) The capital of Kush – Meroe excavations. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
1986. (R.
Haaland and P.L.S., editors) African iron working. Bergen: Norwegian University Press.
1989. (P.L.S.
and F.J. Kense) Archaeology in Gonja: excavations at Daboya. Calgary: University of Calgary Press.
1995 (P.L.S.
and Ama Shinnie) Early Asante. Calgary.
1996. Ancient
Nubia. London.
In press. La Nubie ancienne. Paris: ditions Errance.
In press.
(P.L.S. and R.J. Bradley) Meroe Excavations 1974–1984.
In prep.
(P.L.S. and B. Vivian) Before the Golden Stool: the archaeology of early
Asante.
In prep. The
history and culture of medieval Nubia.
Editorial
Editor, Kush, volumes 1–3, 1953–55.
Armbruster,
C.H. Dongolese Nubian: a grammar. London: Cambridge University Press,
1960.
Armbruster, C.H. Dongolese Nubian: a lexicon.
London: Cambridge University Press, 1965.
Editor, Nyame
Akuma: a newsletter of African
archaeology, nos. 1 to 20, 1972–82.
Editor of
African Occasional Papers series, published by the Department of Archaeology,
University of Calgary:
1. Kense, F. J.
1983. Traditional African iron working.
2. Effah-Gyamfi,
K. 1985. Bono Manso: an archaeological investigation into early Akan
urbanism.
3.
Boachie-Ansah, J. 1986. An archaeological contribution to the history of
Wenchi.
4. Crossland,
L.B. 1989. Pottery from the Begho-B2 site, Ghana.
5. Mohi el-Din Abdalla Zarroug. 1991. The
kingdom of Alwa.
Articles, chapters, notes, etc.
1948.
Archaeological Discoveries during Winter 1947–48, Amarah West. Sudan Notes and Records 29:128.
1949. An
Egyptian outpost with a unique snake cult. Illustrated London News, 22nd October: 633–35.
1949. The
ancient history of Sudan, Parts 1–3. Broadcast from Radio Omdurman, 20 October and 4 November
1949. Arabic published, English broadcast only.
1950.
Fragments of stamped pottery from Nubia. Sudan Notes and Records 31:297–99.
1950. Sudan
Government excavation policy. Archaeology
3:185.
1950. Buhen.
Sudan Railways Catering Department for Nile Hotel, Wadi Halfa. (A leaflet)
1951.
Appendix to Ancient villages in the Khor Nubt by G.E.R. Sanders and T.R.H.
Owen. Sudan Notes and Records 32:332.
1951. A
preliminary report on excavations at Amara West 1948–49 and
1949–50. Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 37:5–11.
1951. Mograka
Church. Sudan Notes and Records 32:150.
1951. The
Fung Kingdom of Sennar. Sudan Notes and Records 32:349.
1952. Stamped
pottery. Sudan Notes and Records 33:186.
1952. Sir
Francis Galton and the Sudan. Sudan Notes and Records 33:168–69.
1953. The
Christian town of Soba. Sudan Diocesan Review 6:29–31.
1953. Recent
work on the Neolithic period in the Sudan. Congrs International des Sciences Prhistoriques et Protohistoriques,
Actes de la IIIe Session (1950), pp. 210–11. Zurich.
1953. A New
Kingdom head from Faras. Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 39:109.
1953. Two
statues at Naqa. Kush 1:53.
1953.
Appendix to Excavation of a mound grave at Ushara by A. Adam and K. Marshall.
Kush 1:44–46.
1953. The
Christian town of Soba. Sudan Diocesan Review 6:29–31.
1953.
Editorial notes. Kush 1:1.
1953. Abu
Erteila. Kush 1:87.
1954.
Archaeology in the Sudan. Proceedings of the Sudan Historical Association 1:1–26.
1954.
Excavations at Tanqasi. Kush 2:
66–85.
1954.
Medieval Nubia. Khartoum Museum Pamphlet
2. (English and Arabic versions)
1954. The
Christian period in the Sudan. Sudan Diocesan Review 7:21–24.
1954.
Editorial notes. Kush 2:3–4.
1955. The
mosques of Islang Island. Antiquity
29:115–18.
1955. The
fall of Meroe. Kush 3:82–85.
1955. Air
photographs of Semna and Uronarti. Kush
3:96.
1955. A
Christian Nubian painting. Kush
3:96–97.
1955. Old
Dongola Church. Kush 3:97–98.
1955.
Abdelrahman Adam: an obituary. Kush
3:112.
1955. A note
on Ast-Raset. Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 41:128–29.
1956. Nubian
churches. Archaeology 9:54–59.
1956.
Bilingualism among the Mahass. Man
56:104.
1956. Aswan
High Dam. The Times, 14 April 1956. (A
letter)
1957. Antiquities
of Uganda. Uganda Government pamphlet.
1957. Roddy
Owens grave. Uganda Journal 21:220.
1959. A gold
statuette from Jebel Barkal. Kush
7:91–92.
1959.
Excavations at Bigo. Antiquity 33:
54–57.
1960. (P.L.S.
and I. Wilks) A burial mound near Tamale. Journal of the West African
Science Association 6:47–48.
1960.
Excavations at Bigo, 1957. Uganda Journal
24:16–28.
1960.
Socotra. Antiquity 34:100–110.
1961. Yendi
Dabari. Ghana Notes and Queries
1:10–11.
1961. Yendi
Dabari. Ghana Notes and Queries
3:4–5.
1961. A late
Latin inscription. Kush 9:284–86.
1961.
Obituary of J.W. Crowfoot, 1873–1959. Kush 9:293–94.
1961. Burial
of kings of the Sudan. Kush 9:295.
1962. (P.L.S.
and P.C. Ozanne) Excavations at Yendi Dabari. Transactions of the Historical
Society of Ghana 6:87–118.
1962. (A.D.H.
Bivar and P.L.S.) Old Kanuri capitals. Journal of African History 3:1–10.
1962.
Excavating in Nubia. Universitas
5:3–4.
1963. (P.L.S.
and M. Shinnie) A new pot fabric from Nubia. Antiquity 37:61–63.
1963. The
University of Ghana excavations at Debeira West. Kush 11:257–63.
1964. The
University of Ghana excavations at Debeira West, 1963. Kush 12:208–15.
1964. The
teaching of African Archaeology in Britain. Bulletin of African Studies
Association of the U.K. 2:15–18.
1965. The
University of Ghana excavations at Debeira West, 1964. Kush 13:190–94.
1965. (P.L.S.
and M. Shinnie) New light on Medieval Nubia. Journal of African History 6:263–73.
1965.
Department of Archaeology of the University of Ghana. West African
Archaeological Newsletter 2:10–14.
1967.
Medieval Nubia. In The Middle Age of African history (ed. R. Oliver): 1–6. London: Oxford
University Press.
1967. Meroe
and West Africa. West African Archaeological Newsletter 6:12–16.
1966. The
Medieval Nubian town at Debeira West. Bulletin of University of Birmingham
Archaeological Society 4:17–18.
1967–68.
Excavations at Meroe, 1965. Kush
15:280–82.
1969. Comment
on On radiocarbon chronology of the Iron Age in Sub-Saharan Africa. Current
Anthropology 10:229–30.
1970.
Excavations at Meroe. Meroitic Newsletter
5:17–19.
1970.
Archaeology and African history. In Africa discovers her past (ed. J.G. Fage): pp. 18–25. London: Oxford
University Press.
1971. The
Sudan. In The African Iron Age (ed. P.L.
Shinnie): pp. 89–107. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
1971. The
culture of Medieval Nubia and its impact on Africa. In Sudan in Africa (ed. Yusuf Fadl Hassan): pp. 42–50.
Khartoum: Khartoum University Press.
1971. The
legacy to Africa. In The legacy of Egypt
(ed. J.R. Harris): pp. 434–55. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
1971. Sudan
Neolithic nomenclature. Pan-African Congress of Prehistory Commission on
Nomenclature and Terminology, Bulletin
4:46–47.
1973. Methods
of field investigation and documentation. In Meroitica I. Sudan in Altertum (ed. F. Hintze): pp. 353–79. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. (Summary of
discussion, pp. 391–98.)
1973. Calgary
in the Sudan. Calgary Archaeologist
1:17.
1974. Meroe
in the Sudan. In Archaeological researches in retrospect (ed. G.R. Willey): pp. 237–65. Cambridge,
Mass.: Winthrop Publishers.
1974.
Multilingualism in Medieval Nubia. In Studies in ancient languages of the
Sudan (ed. Abdelgadir Mahmoud Abdulla): pp.
41–47. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press.
1974.
Excavations at Meroe, 1965. Kush
15:280–82.
1974. Faculty
news item. Calgary Archaeologist
2:4–5.
1974. Meroe
1973–74. Calgary Archaeologist
2:17–18.
1974. Bryan
George Haycock, 1937–1973. Meroitic Newsletter 14:2–3.
1974. Asante
regalia. The Times, 27 September 1974 (a
letter).
1975. Excavations at Debeira West. In Nubia:
rcentes recherches (ed. K.
Michalowski): pp. 116–20. Warsaw: National Museum.
1976. The
development of Meroitic studies since 1945. In African studies since 1945. A
tribute to Basil Davidson (ed. C. Fyfe):
pp. 169–78. London: Longman.
1976.
Comment. In Meroitica II. Meroitic
north and south (ed. U. Hintze): pp. 89–94. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
1977. (P.L.S.
and R.J. Bradley) A new Meroitic royal name. Meroitic Newsletter 18:29–31.
1977. Meroe. Calgary
Archaeologist 5:24–25.
1978. Trade
in Medieval Nubia. In Bibliothque
dՃtudes nubiennes (ed.
J. Vercoutter): pp. 253–63. Caire: Institut franais dArchologie
orientale.
1978. The Nilotic Sudan and Ethiopia c.
660 B.C. to c. A.D. 600. In The Cambridge History of Africa, vol. 2 (eds. J.D.Fage and R. Oliver): pp.
210–71. New York: Cambridge University Press.
1978.
Christian Nubia. In Cambridge History of Africa, vol. 2 (eds. J.D. Fage and R. Oliver): pp. 556–88. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
1978. The
ancient languages of the Northern Sudan. In Aspects of language in the Sudan (ed. R. Thelwall): pp. 82–96. Occasional
Papers in Linguistics and Language Learning 5. Coleraine: The New University of
Ulster.
1979.
Urbanism in Ancient Sudan. In Glimpses of Ancient Egypt (ed. J. Ruffle with G.A. Gaballah and K.A. Kitchen):
pp. 123–26. Warminster:
Aris and Philips Ltd.
1980. Archaeology in Gonja, Ghana. In Le
sol, la parole et lՎcrit. Mlanges en hommage Raymond Mauny, t. 1, pp. 65–70. Paris: Socit
franaise.
1981. (P.L.S.
and R.J. Bradley) The murals from the Augustus Head Temple, Meroe. In Studies
in ancient Egypt, the Aegean, and the Sudan. Essays in honor of Dows Dunham on
the occasion of his 90th birthday, June 1, 1980 (eds W.K. Simpson and W.B. Davis): pp. 167–72. Boston: Museum of
Fine Arts.
1981.
Obituary of A.J. Arkell. Zeitschrift
fr Agyptische Sprache:
108, v–vii.
1981.
Changing attitudes towards the past. Africa Today 28:25–32.
1981. (P.L.S.
and F.J. Kense) Excavations in Mole National Park. West African Journal of
Archaeology 10/11:115–30 (published
1985).
1982. (P.L.S.
and F.J. Kense) Meroitic iron working. In Meroitica 6 (eds. N.B. Millet and A.L. Kelley): pp. 17–28.
Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
1984.
Excavations at Meroe 1974–1976. Meroitica 7 (ed. F. Hintze): pp. 498–504. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
1984. The
mainlines of socioeconomic development in the Sudan in Post-neolithic Times. In
Origin and early development of food producing cultures in northeastern
Africa (eds. L. Krzyaniak and M.
Kobusiewicz): pp. 109–15. Poznan: Polish Academy of Sciences, Poznan
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1984. Life
and language in Mahas today. In Rivista
degli Studi Orientali
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1985. Meroe
and Axum and North East Africa prior to the Arab Conquest, text and
annotated maps. In Historical atlas of Africa (eds. J.F.A. Ajayi and M. Crowder). London: Longman.
1985. Comment
on E.K. Agorsah Archaeological implications of traditional construction
amongst the Nchumuru of Northern Ghana. Current Anthropology 26:111–12.
1985. Iron
working at Meroe. In African iron working
(eds. R. Haaland and P.L. Shinnie): 28–35. Oslo: Norwegian University
Press.
1987. Archaeology
in Gonja and Asante connections. In The Golden Stool: studies of the Asante
center and periphery (ed. E. Schildkrout):
pp. 23–28. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural
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1987.
Preliminary report on archaeological survey of early Asante sites. Nyame
Akuma 28:18–19.
1987. Meroe
1984–1985. Nyame Akuma
28:48–49. (N.B. title should read 1983–1984.)
1988.
Excavations at Asantemanso. Nyame Akuma
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1988. Did the
Kushites flee to the west? Sudan Studies
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1989. The
culture of Meroe and its influence in the central Sudan. Sahara 2:21–30.
1990.
Christian Nubia and the crusades. Nubica
1/2:603–9.
1990. A
personal memoir. In A history of African archaeology (ed. P. Robertshaw): pp. 221–35. London: James
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