Editorial

There can be little doubt that 2020 is a year that most of us would prefer to forget, however important it will be to remember its lessons. The pandemic that, from its beginnings in China, started to engulf the rest of the world a little over twelve months ago continues to ravage populations across the planet even though the effectiveness of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 now holds out hope of both immunising people against the virus and curtailing its transmission. As vaccine roll-out programmes gather pace in the Global North we hope that vaccine nationalism and lack of access to funding will not prevent similarly extensive take-up in Africa and the rest of the developing world. Surely, if the events of the past year have taught us anything then it is that none of us can be safe until all of us are safe. That conclusion was reinforced in a different way by global reaction to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020 and the protests that followed, particularly in North America and Europe, demanding not only equal treatment for all in all circumstances, regardless of skin colour, but also ongoing reassessment of the institutional legacies of European colonialism. The coincidence of what Franklin et al. (2020) have labelled ‘the twin pandemics’ has thrown global and national disparities in access to education, health care and justice into sharp relief.

Among archaeologists there has, as one might expect, been much reaction to both sets of events, even as their long-term consequences remain difficult to discern. Research projects in Africa have, over the last several years, increasingly come to emphasise the topic of societal resilience in the face of environmental change, as well as the agency of African communities and the importance of working with — and learning from — the knowledge that those communities possess. Akin Ogundiran (2020) and other colleagues rightly drew attention to these strengths of Africanist archaeology in a recent issue of our sister journal African Archaeological Review. While these crucial themes may not directly address how to deal with the medical emergency that COVID-19 presents, they certainly reinforce some of the key themes that archaeological fieldwork in Africa must continue to stress.

Undoubtedly, the shock of the pandemic has required the innovation of new ways of researching and teaching, some of them positive and likely to remain. By encouraging work on existing materials, given the difficulties of recovering yet more samples from the field, it may also have provided a healthy dose of rebalancing toward more cost-effective research overall and the publication of outstanding results. Certainly we have seen a substantial inflow of new submissions at Azania over the past year, indicating the productive use of time gained to complete past research, and in this we are reminded of Savino di Lernia’s (2015) discussion of how best to address the curtailment of fieldwork in the Sahara following the 2011 Arab Spring. Our own view is that desirable as these developments are, COVID-19 will not — and should not — alter the imperative of also undertaking new explorations of Africa’s archaeological record both on and in the ground. Too little is known of too much of the continent’s past. This is true not only of issues like long-term sustainable land-use practices, ecological management and biodiversity conservation, but also of questions relating to the deep-time histories of those social, political and economic relations within and beyond Africa that continue to shape its present and will — if left unchallenged — continue to affect its future. Accelerating economic development and population growth render the imperative of new field-based studies all the more crucial as threats to the survival and integrity of the archaeological record continue to mount. That so many colleagues within Africa have continued to undertake fieldwork notwithstanding the difficulties of the past year is thus deeply encouraging.

One key aspect of ongoing co-operative research at a distance during current pandemic and security circumstances is remote sensing. A new initiative in this regard has recently been announced, generously funded by Arcadia (a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin): Mapping Africa’s Endangered Archaeological Sites and Monuments (MAEASaM). This programme is currently a partnership between eight institutions, with the University of Cambridge serving as project lead. Collaborating partners include the University of the Witwatersrand, L’Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noir (IFAN) in Senegal, the British Institute in Eastern Africa, Uppsala University, the University of York, the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter and the UCL Institute of Archaeology. The project aims to combine the systematic analysis of satellite and aerial images with existing site survey data and future ground verification to provide a crucial heritage inventory for the continent. The hope is that this resource will help mitigate current and future threats to heritage sites in Saharan and Sub-Saharan Africa.

One means of debating these and other concerns that has gathered pace enormously over the past year is the use of Internet-based webinars. There seems little doubt that they are here to stay and equally little doubt that they offer a significant means of extending access to individual presentations and group discussions in ways that may be particularly relevant to many in the Global South, in particular. Additionally, they directly address the wish to reduce ‘carbon footprints’ when they offer an alternative to flying long-distance to deliver lectures and seminars. That said, it seems to us unlikely that virtual meetings via Zoom, Teams and other platforms can act as a viable substitute for the impromptu networking and future project planning that arise in conventional conference settings and academic visits. Nor, for that matter, do online symposia provide opportunities to gain first-hand experience and knowledge of important archaeological sites and museums, whether in Africa or elsewhere in the world. Such occasions are, we believe, particularly significant for students and early career researchers and, while we remain sanguine about the possibilities of them being revived in 2021, we look forward to this happening in due course. In the meantime, we trust that our readers will remain safe and well and that they will enjoy what Azania brings them this year.

We conclude this editorial by announcing two important changes to the journal. As you will already have seen, the first concerns the manner in which Azania has reached you as we have now introduced so-called ‘naked mailing’, removing the traditional (and non-recyclable) plastic covering in which it was previously dispatched in order to reduce the journal’s environmental impact.

Our second change concerns our editorial board. Twelve years on from launching the reformatted Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa and at the start of a new decade, we say goodbye to several faces and welcome many new ones. Thanks for their many years of service and assistance to Detlef Gronenborn, Julia Lee Thorp, Fiona Marshall, Cameron Monroe, Akin Ogundiran, David Phillipson, Judith Sealy, Andrew Reid, Mohamed Sahnouni, Ben Smith and Dietrich Stout. In their stead we are delighted to bring into our editorial advisory group Ceri Ashley, Babatunde Babalola, Alemseged Beldados, Tim Forssman, Daouda Keita, Rachel King, Marlize Lombard, Diane Lyons, Solange Macamo, Sonja Magnavita, Mary Prendergast and Christian Tryon. We are equally pleased to retain the presence of Els Cornelissen, Savino di Lernia, David Edwards, Chap Kusimba, Paul Lane, Bertram Mapunda, Innocent Pikirayi, Chantal Radimilahy, Ibrahima Thiaw and Stephanie Wynne-Jones. Together, this new team leaves Azania’s editorial board equally balanced between African and non-African scholars and almost evenly split between men and women. Along with the recruitment of younger colleagues, we look forward to this more representative company helping us to develop Azania’s profile in the years to come.