Professor Charles Thurstan Shaw – A Tribute (1914-2013) – By Raheem Oluwafunminiyi

Posted by admin Africa & World Politics, Articles, Columnists, NNP Columnists, Raheem Oluwafunminiyi Sunday, July 7th, 2013

By Raheem Oluwafunminiyi | Ibadan, Nigeria | July 7, 2013 – The name Charles Thurstan Shaw may not strike a resemblance of an important personality to the current generation of Nigerians, but in the world of archaeology, the name is highly venerated. This assertion stems from the fact that Prof. Shaw from the 50s single handed through archaeology, began a process of re-examining and re-evaluating the African past with colleagues in the field of history to assert that the African continent possessed an enviable past as against the arguments by Eurocentric scholars who in their irrational prognosis claimed Africa was only a society of savage peoples who had contributed nothing significant to civilization. What Prof. Shaw did was novel in the sense that he brought to bear his knowledge of archaeology to prove to the world that West Africa, alongside other parts of the continent, was an early centre of civilization. By exposing the Igbo Ukwu to the world through careful excavation of the area was one achievement Prof. Shaw will never be forgotten for.

Prof. Shaw was born in Devon, England on 27 June 1924, and educated at Blundell’s School, Tiverton and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge where he read Classics in his first year and later changed to archaeology and anthropology. At the end of his studies in 1936, he graduated with a First Class degree and a year after, moved to the Gold Coast (now Ghana) to teach at Achimota College in Accra. While in Achimota, he was in charge of the Anthropology Museum and spent virtually all vacations conducting archaeological investigations and organizing and keeping sites and finds register. He conducted his first excavation in Africa in 1937 when he carried out a rescue excavation on the Achimota College farm at a spot where a scatter of iron slag and pieces of furnace wall and tuyeres had been found. In 1940, his excavation at the Bosumpra rockshelter at Abetifi served as a watershed as it marked commencement of the reconstruction of the cultural sequence and chronological framework of West African prehistoric materials. In 1942, he excavated a large mound at Dawu, in north-eastern Akwapem, not far from Achimota, a site with more than eight metres of stratified deposits. For the first time, he demonstrated how locally made smoking pipes could be useful as a dating marker in West Africa.

Having helped to found the Ghana National Museum and the archaeology department at the University of Ghana, he was invited by the Antiquities Department of the University of Ibadan in 1958, to embark on an archaeological excavation at Igbo-Ukwu, a south-eastern town in Onitsha. At Igbo-Ukwu, several local artefacts which consisted of jewellery, ceramics and glass beads, coupled with highly sophisticated and elaborate cast bronze vases, bowls and ornaments made with the lost wax technique which was among the earliest cast bronzes in sub-Saharan Africa, were discovered.

Prof. Shaw’s excavation was a massive discovery because Igbo-Ukwu, from the history of the people, was a 9th-century site which formed part of the Nri kingdom. It served as a medieval state whose leaders exercised little or no military power over their subjects. The Nri kingdom existed as a sphere of religious and political influence and was administered by a priest-king called the Eze Nri. Igbo-Ukwu was a burial place for the Nri elite, who were interred with large quantities of grave goods, hence the rich artefacts discovered by Prof. Shaw.

With this monumental discovery, Prof. Shaw went into work by documenting all he saw. In 1970, he wrote a two-volume monograph on the site and added that with two books published in 1975 and 1977 titled ‘Discovering Nigeria’s Past’ and Unearthing Igbo-Ukwu respectively. These books provided the platform for many in understanding the historical past of the country and people. Prof Shaw wrote extensively about archaeology and continued to do so even after he retired.

Having joined in the early 60s the Institute of African Studies of the University of Ibadan as a Research Professor of Archaeology, he created the Archaeology Research Unit of the Institute which initiated the collections for a teaching museum. He also went on to establish a teaching department of archaeology, becoming the founding Head of Department where, over the next 14 years, he helped to provide the country with the best-trained archaeologists of any of the newly independent African states. Prof. Shaw nurtured the department and was noted to have been pleased with the department’s laboratory, photographic and draughting facilities, teaching collections and well-utilised field equipment which made Ibadan one of the best centres for archaeology in Africa. He was known to have been instrumental to the design of the Archaeology Department building complex which was commissioned on the occasion of his 75th birthday celebration at Ibadan in 1989.

Prof. Shaw did not stop at Igbo Ukwu, as he also in 1965 excavated the Iwo Eleru rock shelter, located at about 24 kilometres from Akure in Ondo State of Nigeria, which produced evidence of human occupation of the forest fringes of West Africa during the Late Stone Age and the skeletal remains which show Negroid characteristics had been dated 11,200 ± 200 BP, the oldest known specimen in the West African region at that time. Between his time as a Professor of Archaeology in 1963 and his retirement in 1974, Prof. Shaw founded the West African Archaeological Newsletter (WAAN) and was also the founding editor of the West African Journal of Archaeology (WAJA) which replaced WAAN in 1971. Having retired from the University of Ibadan in 1974, he went farther North as a visiting professor to the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria between 1975 and 1978.

For his keen love of the African people and unbridled exposure of the Igbo civilization and their world view to the world, he was very much loved by them and in 1972, was awarded the traditional chieftaincy title of Onu n’ekwulu ora (the man through whom the history of the Igbo people speaks). Prof. Shaw was married first in 1939 to Ione Magor, who died in 1992 and in 2004 married again Pamela Smith, a historian of archaeology, who survives him with the two sons and three daughters of his first marriage.
Prof. Shaw’s contribution to archaeology did not only provide a platform for other disciplines in the sciences, arts and humanities to grow and be known widely, but also led to a synthesis and cross-fertilization of ideas in academic scholarship. Those in the field of history, geography, philosophy, anthropology to mention a few, owe a lot to the archaeology discipline and vice-versa. Without his pioneering efforts, it would have been much more difficult to understand and come up with a very tenable exposition of the very distant past of the African people. Therefore, for those Prof. Shaw impacted their lives positively with his ostensible ingenuity, we owe him much by also ensuring that we train today’s students for the future like he did and would have always. His legacies must not be forgotten and it is hoped many will learn from his kind heart and devoted love for the African continent even as he lived a fulfilled and happy life. May his gentle soul rest in peace.

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