Professor Thurstan Shaw CBE, FBA, FSA: a personal appreciation and remembrance

The passing of Thurstan Shaw on 8 March 2013 at the age of 98 marks the end of an era in archaeological history. He was the last of the great founder figures of African Archaeology, including renowned personalities such as Desmond Clark and Peter Shinnie. He laid the foundations of Ghanaian and Nigerian archaeology, founded the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at Ibadan, and was for the Igbo an honorary leader, his title Onuna-Ekwulu Ora: the voice that speaks on behalf of Igbo-Ukwu. He will be particularly remembered for his finds of remarkable lost-wax brass castings at Igbo-Ukwu: an early blow against assertions of African backwardness (Shaw 1970, 1977). But more than this, Thurstan Shaw was greatly beloved, not only as an archaeologist, but as a keen humanitarian of broad passions and interests.

This short article does not pretend to be a complete obituary. Many have already been written by now. One of the best, and to be recommended, is that by Norman Hammond published in The Times (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article3711782.ece). Rather, this contribution is a more personal reflection on the man and his significance to our field.

Thurstan Shaw's contributions to West African archaeology

Despite Thurstan Shaw's long life, his opportunities to undertake fieldwork in West Africa were remarkably few. His initial posting to Achimota College and its Anthropology Museum in Accra, Ghana (then the Gold Coast; 1937–1945), were followed by a long period when he was obliged to find work outside archaeology at the Cambridge Institute of Education. Shaw did not return to Africa until 1959 when he was invited to undertake excavations at Igbo-Ukwu by the Nigerian Antiquities Department. By 1960 he had returned to Africa full-time with the University of Ibadan where he was to become its first Professor of Archaeology and remain until his retirement in 1974. Thus, Shaw had only just over 20 years in full-time employment as an Africanist archaeologist. He made them count.

In his inaugural lecture as Professor of African Archaeology at Ibadan, Shaw remarked:

The … disability of archaeology is that there is a large amount of chance … The luck is of two kinds: the first consists of what particular material remains have happened to survive … The second concerns the chances of the material being turned out of the ground in the first place (Shaw 1964: 11).

Figure 1. Thurstan Shaw at the Pan-African Congress in Tenerife, 1963. From left to right: unknown, Glynn Isaac, Desmond Clark, Thurstan Shaw, Garth Sampson (Thurstan Shaw Collection, UCL).

Napoleon once said ‘Above all, I would prefer to have lucky generals.’ Thurstan Shaw was undoubtedly one of the luckiest archaeologists of his age but, as another saying goes, hard work breeds luck. Over a varied career Shaw made few excavations that did not produce important data. I should like briefly to consider his work at four key sites: Dawu and Bosumpra in Ghana, and Igbo-Ukwu and Iwo Eleru in Nigeria.

Shaw's first major excavation, in 1942, was at Dawu — a small (65 m diameter) steep (6 m high) anthropogenic mound in southeastern Ghana. Although perhaps the least significant of Shaw's projects, the site was ultimately published as a handsome, hardbound monograph in 1961 (Shaw 1961). Essentially a large midden in use for about 400 years from AD 1450, the site provided one of West Africa's first local tobacco pipe sequences and also evidence of an important brass casting industry (in the form of crucibles and moulds). More generally, the report broke new ground in establishing the value of African historical archaeology at the dawn of the post-colonial era.

Shaw's next project saw a profound temporal shift from historical contexts. In 1943 he excavated the cave of Bosumpra in south-central Ghana and it was this that became his first major publication, appearing in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society in 1944. Bosumpra — a long sequence Late Stone Age (LSA) site — has retained a central importance in understanding the Holocene occupation of the West African savanna forest. The site's sequence spans pre-ceramic microlithic industries, the beginning of ground stone axe industries, ceramics and, ultimately, iron working. Of course, Shaw's early work did not have the benefit of radiocarbon dating and Andrew Smith (1975) subsequently returned to re-excavate the site and produce two radiocarbon dates. The oldest of these, notionally dating the early ceramic layer, produced a result (5370±100 BP [N-1805]) that was for some time the earliest date for ceramics in West Africa. However, Derek Watson (2008), revisiting the site once more, has cast some doubt on the association of this date with the early ceramics, suggesting a possible tie-in of Bosumpra's ceramics to the Kintampo Tradition. In awaiting the publication of Watson's extensive re-excavation of the site, one anticipates information on Bosumpra's lengthy pre-ceramic LSA and ceramic sequences as well as the results of archaeobotanical analyses. Undoubtedly, Shaw showed us the way to what now appears to be one of the region's key deep time environmental and technological sequences.

Igbo-Ukwu, which marked Shaw's return to Africa in 1959/1960 and his first experience of Nigeria, was to be his masterpiece of the excavator's art (Figure 2). Shaw only excavated three large exposures at Igbo-Ukwu, but each produced remarkable ranges of finds (Shaw 1970, 1977). The unit ‘Igbo Isaiah’ revealed a storehouse of ceremonial regalia (including 52 groups of small finds, ranging from a bronze altar stand to various bronze bowls and ornaments and 63,458 beads). Excavations at ‘Igbo Richard’ uncovered a ‘royal’ burial chamber: an individual enthroned inhumation within a wooden burial chamber (attired in rich regalia, including copper pectoral plate, copper and bead anklets, a crown and a staff, along with offerings of ivory tusks). Shaw (1977) subsequently interpreted this as the burial place of a (proto) Igbo priest king (or Eze Nri), part of a long tradition of earned title-taking, rather than of hereditary, spiritual leadership roles. Finally in 1964, Shaw returned to the site to excavate ‘Igbo Jonah’, which contained a disposal pit holding heavily ornamented intact ceramic vessels, ceremonial swords and more bronze items. In all over 165,000 trade beads (mostly in glass) were recovered from these three excavations. The question was, how old were all of these rich, artistic remains? Over the years, ten radiocarbon dates and varied contextual evidence came together to bracket an occupation of between the ninth and eleventh centuries AD (Shaw 1977, 1995). As one might expect given the social complexity suggested by the finds alongside an indigenous tradition of sophisticated lost-wax bronze casting, there were those who cast doubt upon such early dates (e.g. Lawal 1973). However, with time the ‘reality’ of Igbo-Ukwu has taken hold, especially given the significant level of bead matches between Igbo-Ukwu and Insoll's excavations of eleventh-century deposits Gao in Mali, suggesting an upriver trade in ivory (Insoll and Shaw 1997). Indeed, the true depth of Igbo-Ukwu's importance remains to be plumbed. It hardly seems credible that these three excavations will have encompassed the site's whole narrative and, despite Shaw's detailed publication and the careful reasoning of his interpretations, what we know about Igbo-Ukwu surely represents the tip of an iceberg.

Figure 2. Thurstan Shaw at Igbo-Ukwu during the first season of excavations 1959–1960 (Thurstan Shaw Collection, UCL).

Finally we arrive at Shaw's last major excavation, that of Iwo Eleru, a southern Nigerian rock-shelter that he dug with a large team in 1965 (Figure 3). Iwo Eleru was a difficult site to excavate, having a stratigraphy that was less than 2 m deep, but an occupation sequence, as indicated by radiocarbon dates, spanning the Holocene and beyond (Shaw and Daniels 1984). The untangling of a sequence that was as much horizontal as vertical was attempted by a statistical analysis of the stone artefacts, a not entirely satisfactory solution, but one that provided the rudiments of a sequence. In addition to being Nigeria's longest single LSA sequence, the site also provided the earliest hominin cranium yet known from Sub-Saharan West Africa, a find from the site's earliest layer that is now dated by recent uranium series dates to between 11.7 and 16.3 kya (Allsworth-Jones et al. 2010; Havarti et al. 2011). The remarkable aspect of this skull is that its morphological affinities lie with more archaic early anatomically modern Homo sapiens, strongly indicating the survival of archaic population isolates in the West African forest until at least the early Holocene. Shaw's archaeological discoveries, it seems, just keep on giving.

Figure 3. Thurstan Shaw with his excavation team at Iwo Eleru in 1965 (Thurstan Shaw Collection, UCL).

Thurstan Shaw's contributions to West African archaeology go beyond his fieldwork. His syntheses set important points of repair for the current generation and established certain key notions within the Anglophone school — such as the rejection of the term ‘Neolithic’ for Sub-Saharan Africa in favour of Late Stone or Ceramic Late Stone Age (Shaw 1978, 1985). He will also be remembered for his courageous stand against Apartheid and his collaboration with Peter Ucko in establishing the first World Archaeological Congress (as memorialised in his co-edited volume on the African session at WAC-1, Shaw et al. 1993).

Meeting Thurstan

When I first came to Cambridge in 1989 meeting Thurstan Shaw was at the top of my list of priorities. For an aspiring West African archaeologist he represented the pinnacle of achievement in the field. He had been an inspiration to my undergraduate advisors Roderick and Susan McIntosh and his elegantly written works were amongst my favourites. Supplied with his telephone number I dutifully rang him up and we met at Clare Hall where he was a Life Member and Special Associate, having been a visiting fellow there in 1973 just prior to his return to Britain from Ibadan. He was full of interest for my planned fieldwork and unstinting in his time: there was not a trace of the unapproachable or the hierarchical about him and he was a font of good will. The next year I began my PhD at Cambridge and this led to monthly lunches which continued, when our schedules allowed, over the next four years. A regular venue was the Queen's Head in Harston to which he would drive us for their famed roast beef sandwiches. Over this time I heard many wonderful anecdotes of a career spent in West Africa since 1937, but all was not archaeology. His interests ranged over theology, nuclear disarmament, politics, hiking and family history. The son of an Anglican vicar, he was a ‘Quaker by convincement’ (by the 1960s) and did his best to make one out of me, taking me along to meetings at Hartington Grove in Cambridge, where it was clear that he was a distinguished elder in the community: a community largely unaware that he was a legendary archaeologist. Indeed, this is something that became increasingly apparent to me over the years: Thurstan was at the centre of many communities, Quakers, peace activists, preservationists, few of which knew of his deep contributions to the others. Thurstan lived many different lives, he merely devoted most of his time and research effort to our own.

Ironically, for an excavator and researcher of renown, Thurstan had never been able to find a permanent archaeological post in Britain. As he reported in his memoir, upon returning there after seven years in the Gold Coast (c. 1944),

I went to my old teachers at Cambridge to see what prospect there might be for an archaeological job in the UK, but Grahame Clark was not very helpful (It was reported to me later that he said of my tentative approach to him ‘Shaw expected us to find him a job’) Shaw (1990: 214).

In the early 1990s, things still looked fairly grim for African Archaeology in the United Kingdom. There were no dedicated teaching posts, only individuals such as David Phillipson, Pat Carter, Ray Inskeep and Mark Horton who had managed to establish themselves either in museums or more wide-ranging positions. To his credit, Thurstan urged David Harris, then Director of UCL's Institute of Archaeology, to re-open a post in African Archaeology (briefly held by Ann Stahl in the 1980s). As it turns out, this ‘Lectureship in African Archaeology’ was advertised with a group of other post-Thatcher ‘new blood’ posts in 1994, and I was lucky enough to get it. This job, and a position now occupied by Peter Mitchell at Oxford, both came about in the same year, offering African Archaeology its first ever firm-footing in Britain. I will never be sure how this worked into the equation, but my new post came with Thurstan's massive library as a ‘subsidised donation’ (a fee far less than the value of the books was given for them) as well as his offprint and slide collections. This all formed a major prop in getting the teaching of African Archaeology well and truly under way at the Institute, and credit should thus be given to Thurstan for substantially aiding in the education there of hundreds of undergraduates, nearly 40 MA students, and 20 plus PhD students in African Archaeology since 1994.

Here, I should like to pause for a brief and curious anecdote. Shortly after my appointment at the Institute, I was offered by our then librarian to make a choice of ‘duplicate books’ from the Shaw collection (where copies were already held by our library) for my office shelves. I was allowed one trolley — imagine a kid in a candy store. There is one selection, however, that I regret not making. A few months after my visit to the library stores, Thurstan told me a story about how a ship bearing a trunk of new books for him in its general cargo was torpedoed en route to the Gold Coast from Britain in 1943. A year later he received odds and ends of water-damaged books, recovered bobbing at sea having spewed forth from the holds of the lost ship. Among them was Mortimer Wheeler's monograph on his Maiden Castle excavations — excavations that Thurstan had visited as a student. It struck me at once — that impossibly tattered copy of Maiden Castle on the shelves of our library store … I should have chosen it. As trivial as this story may seem, it speaks volumes to the hazards of life as an expatriate archaeologist in that former age.

Shortly after I started in London, Thurstan and I were once more in frequent contact, this time over the Royal Academy's Africa: the Art of a Continent exhibition (Phillips 1995). Remarkably, as cool as you please, the Academy asked Thurstan to supply a write-up for a pot from Igbo-Ukwu, an object known to have been stolen from the reserve collection of the University of Ibadan in 1994. He telephoned me to come by and we began some detective work. In short, we found that the pot had been ‘recovered’ from a Belgian antiquities dealer by the exhibition's organiser, who had kept it in his home and neglected to contact the Nigerian authorities. The rest of the story can be read in Shaw and MacDonald (1995) to which I may now add two postscripts, first that the pot was eventually successfully returned to Nigeria, and second that Thurstan and I were threatened with a lawsuit by the Royal Academy for defamation, a threat which was ultimately withdrawn when we and Antiquity's (then) editor Chris Chippendale stood our ground.

One should not, however, turn Thurstan into a plaster saint. He had, at times, a wicked sense of humour. One instance in particular sticks with me, and at the risk of causing mild offence I would like to preserve it for posterity. Shortly after Sir Grahame Clark's death in 1995 invitations were sent out to all the great and good of Cambridge to attend his memorial service. Noticing an open invitation on Thurstan's side table I asked him if he would be attending. He smiled at me from his armchair with a twinkle in his eye and said ‘I'm not sure, I fear I might be tempted to dance upon his grave!’ (ending the phrase with his signature laugh).

Thurstan and I continued to meet steadily, off and on, over the years and I remarked the joy he took in his second marriage to Pamela Jane Smith in 2004. Their marriage seemed like a ‘who's who’ in British and Africanist archaeology with a strong Nigerian delegation. This marriage also seemed to give him renewed vigour and life. Even in his final years he was ever anxious and inquisitive about further developments in the analysis of materials from his greatest excavations: Igbo-Ukwu and Iwo Eleru.

When I spoke — along with many others — at Thurstan's Quaker funeral at Jesus Lane (Cambridge) on 17 March 2013, I was struck by how many lives he had touched. I stood intending to give a matter of fact account of his importance to my life and to West African Archaeology. As my words drew to a close I remembered the time he made for me as a neophyte researcher, the sparkle behind his eyes, the way he always held my hand in both of his whenever we shook hello or goodbye, and I wept at our loss.