Thurstan Shaw

Thurstand Shaw in Senegal in 1967

Charles Thurstan Shaw (born June 27, 1914 in Plymouth , † March 8, 2013 in Cambridge ) was a British African archaeologist who worked in the West African colonial areas of Great Britain. His focus was on the cultures of the states of Ghana and Nigeria .

life and work

Bronze work excavated by Thurstan Shaw in Igbo-Ukwu, Nigeria

Thurstan Shaw was born the second son of Anglican clergyman John Herbert Shaw and his wife Grace Irene Woollatt. He go to Blundell's School in Tiverton and studied Classics at Sidney Sussex College of the University of Cambridge . He then studied archeology and anthropology there. He received his Bachelor (1st class) in 1936 and his Master in 1941.

Encouraged by Louis Leakey , he went to the Gold Coast, later Ghana. Here he arrived on September 15, 1937 and worked as a tutor and curator of the Anthropological Museum of Achimota College in Accra . In 1939 he married Ione Magor († 1992), with whom he had two sons and three daughters. He carried out his first excavation in 1942 in Dawu near Accra, it was a small hill 6 m deep and 65 m in diameter in the southeast of Ghana. The clam mound was in use from around 1450 to 1850 and provided one of the first tobacco pipe sequences in Africa. Bosumpra followed in 1943 in the south-east of the country. In 1945 he left Ghana and worked for the Cambridge Education Committee , from 1951 to 1959 as a tutor at the Cambridge Institute of Education .

He supported the establishment of the National Museum of Ghana and the archaeological department of the University of Ghana in the 1950s . In 1959 Shaw was invited by the Nigerian Antiquities Department to conduct a dig in Igbo-Ukwu , where ancient bronze artifacts had been discovered by a villager. The following excavation revealed that the Igbo culture of the 9th century had developed a highly developed metallurgy . In 1964 Shaw returned to the excavation site, where he was able to prove trade contacts as far as Egypt based on pearls that were intended for trade.

A 9th century bronze vessel excavated by Shaw in Igbo-Ukwu

From 1960 Shaw taught at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ibadan , where he founded an Archeology department and in 1963 became Research Professor of Archeology . After his retirement in 1974, he returned to England in 1976, where he worked at Magdalene College in Cambridge from 1976 to 1979 as Director of Studies in Archeology and Anthropology .

In 1968 he received his PhD from Cambridge University. Shaw was a pacifist and became a Quaker in the 1960s . In 1986 he participated in a boycott against South Africa's apartheid policy. In 2004 he married Pamela Smith, an archeology historian.

He founded the West African Archaeological Newsletter in 1964 (until 1970) and edited the West African Journal of Archeology from 1971 to 1975 . Shaw was a member of the Society of Antiquaries of London , whose gold medal he received in 1990. It was in 1972 Commander of the Order of the British Empire and in 1989 to a traditional chief ( traditional chief appointed) in Nigeria. He received the title of Onuna-Ekwulu Ora in the tribe of the Onuna Ekwulu Nri and the Onyafuonka in Igboland . In 1991 he became a member of the British Academy .

Publications (selection)

• The Study of Africa's Past , International African Institute, London 1946.
• Igbo Ukwu. An Account of Archaeological Discoveries in Eastern Nigeria . 2 volumes, Northwestern University Press, 1970 and 1977.
• Discovering Nigeria's Past , Oxford University Press, 1975.
• Unearthing Igbo-Ukwu. Archaeological Discoveries in Eastern Nigeria . Oxford University Press, Ibadan / Oxford, New York 1977.
• The Archeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns , Routledge, London / New York 1993.

literature

• Professor Thurstan Shaw. In: The Daily Telegraph , March 9, 2013.
• Norman Hammond: Professor Thurstan Shaw . In: The Times ( Digital ).
• Kevin C. MacDonald: Professor Thurstan Shaw CBE, FBA, FSA: a personal appreciation and remembrance , In: Azania. Archaeological Research in Africa 48, 2013, pp. 426-433 ( Digital ).

Remarks

1. ^ Thurstan Shaw: Excavations at Igbo-Ukwu, Eastern Nigeria: An Interim Report . In: Man 60, 1960, pp. 161-164.