Just Say Shame
Excising the Rot of Cultural Genocide
Roderick J. McIntosh

In. Peter R. Schmidt and Roderick J. McIntosh. Plundering Africa's Past. 1996. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Introduction

Just how should an archaeologist respond to the truly horrific destruction of historical and scientific data? Just how bad must things become before one resorts to personal violence, or the disciple to collective violence? What other, more constructive steps can be taken? The illicit commerce in African art and antiquities is, increasingly, horror in the making. One of the contributors to this volume, Michel Brent, has exposed the particularly nightmarish case of the looted ancient terra-cotta and metal arts of the Middle Niger of Mali (Brent 1993, 1994a, 1994b). This essay will focus on recent events in the commerce in Malian antiquities as illustrative of some the problems--and reasons for cautious hope--that are just now appearing in other domains of African art and antiquities.
Five years ago, there was very little cause for optimism. The looting of sites providing these terra-cottas and the growth of the international market in which these pieces circulated appeared to be on the geometric if not exponential course they had assumed since the late 1960s or early 1970s. However, a series of shaming episodes (and a good deal of steady effort by academics and others resolved to take action) has checked if not reversed this pessimism...

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...Let us hope the implementation legislation is promulgated speedily and that it has real teeth. Let us hope that the judicial powers will prosecute high-visibility cases. The rot that infects the appreciation of the archaeological and aesthetic accomplishments of Africa's past can only thrive in the shadows. When the prime actors in the sad drama of the commerce in Africa's heritage, their base philosophy, greed, and contempt for Africans are exposed to the light of shame, they and their corrupting games will wither away.

Notes

1. The title is taken from Brent 1994a:50.
2. Letter from Michael A. Coronel African Arts 12 (August 1979), 6.
3. Unfortunately, the one major attempt by an art historian to divine the rituals in which the terra-cottas were used, Grunne 1987, has serious flaws. See the critique in McIntosh 1992:147-8.
4. A Dutch team of archaeologists (Projet ToguÚ) mapping sites in a two thousand-square kilometer region north and east of Jenne found that 45 percent of the sites had evidence of pillaging and 2 percent were disfigured over 70 percent or more of their surface area (DembelÚ, Schmidt, and Van der Waals 1993:231).
5. This figure is an amplification of an anatomy of the illicit antiquities network published in McIntosh and McIntosh 1986: fig. 48. See also Coe1993: fig. 1.
6. The author hopes that these and other nationalistic ejaculations are the product of individuals feeling themselves beseiged and under pressure to find any argument to justify participation in the looting network. What better demonstration that possession of art is power and that the movement of stolen art across national frontiers maps the relative power of nations (McIntosh, McIntosh, and Togola 1989:75)?
7. Oral traditions collected by the author, Susan Keech McIntosh, and Hama Bocoum from several sources in Jenne in 1977.
8. Consensus reached at the February 1994 meeting of Les Amis de Jenne, called by Boubarcar Diabe, head of the ISH Mission Culturelle Ã DjennÚ.
9. A statement made during the question period after this paper was read at the Gainesville conference.

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