The fourth Jennifer Ward Oppenheimer Lecture
will be given by Dr. Khady Niang (Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar)
on "Regional trajectories in the West African Stone Age: perspectives from Sahelian and Forest landscapes." *
Tuesday 5th May, 5pm
The McDonald Institute
To attend in-person, book your ticket here
To attend online, register on Zoom here
Abstract
Evolutionary pathways that shaped our species in varied ecological settings highlight the dynamic interplay between material culture and biogeography throughout human history. Across the African continent, the articulation of these processes has been extensively investigated, except in West Africa, largely due to poor fossil preservation and the region’s limited connection to Eurasian dispersal routes. Over the past decade, however, emerging archaeological and genetic data increasingly suggest that this region may have been a key biological and cultural reservoir for Late Pleistocene humans. Focusing on Sahelian and forest landscapes, this presentation examines regional trajectories in the West African Stone Age and explores patterns of cultural innovation and continuity across environmentally contrasting zones. Archaeological evidence from the Pleistocene through the early Holocene reveals both episodes of innovation and strong technological persistence alongside adaptive flexibility, a pattern sometimes described as cultural “anachronism.” In parallel, limited biological evidence suggests possible introgression from archaic human populations into Homo sapiens during the late Pleistocene, raising important questions about biogeographic structuring of populations, demographic connectivity and the effects of climatic oscillations. The Sahel Forest interface provides a critical framework for understanding how shifting vegetation belts and hydrological networks influenced mobility, interaction, and technological traditions. This talk ultimately situates West Africa as a key region for understanding human plasticity, regional diversity, and the broader evolutionary history of the African continent.
Biography
Dr. Khady Niang is a Associate Professor in archaeology and prehistory at Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar (UCAD). She is also affiliated with the Human Paleosystems Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology (Germany). Her research focuses on human evolution and African prehistory, with particular emphasis on Homo sapiens dispersals and the relationships between environmental change, behavioural adaptation, and demographic dynamics. Through the analysis of stone tool assemblages and the application of quantitative and modelling approaches, she investigates lithic technological systems and long-term patterns of cultural change. Her work primarily concentrates on West Africa, especially the Middle Stone Age and early human occupations, examining questions of technological continuity, and population processes across diverse ecological contexts.
Dr. Niang earned a BA in prehistory (BA) from Cheikh Anta Diop University, and completed her Master’s and PhD in Archaeology at the University of Ferrara (Italy). She carried out extensive fieldwork in Senegal, Guinée , Ghana, Ivory coast, as well as in Italy and Malta.
* Please be aware that the lecture and talks will be recorded. Recordings/photography/film will be published, transmitted or broadcast in official University of Cambridge publications, in the University’s publicity materials, and in others’ websites and social media.
Mapping Africa's Endangered Archaeological Sites and Monuments Annual Lecture
will be given by Dr Siyakha Mguni (University of Cape Town)
on "Unveiling the curtain with ukubuyisa or go lata: complicated roles of museums and nation states in the cultural repatriation discourse and practice in southern Africa" *
Thursday 7th May, 5pm
The McDonald Institute
Register your place here
Abstract
Repatriation, the act of returning cultural objects to their communities or countries of origin, has become a focal point in global heritage discourse. In recent decades, the question of restitution has become one of the most visible contestations of our times confronting museums and nation states in southern Africa. Globally, institutions that once defined themselves as universal repositories of human culture are increasingly pressured to return certain categories of cultural objects acquired during the colonial period or through unethical forms of extraction. With governments leading the diplomatic negotiations of returns, and museums taking stock of their possessions and reassessing their future roles, indigenous communities are increasingly becoming aware of their moral duty and authority to assert their rights to their ancestral heritages. One difficulty with repatriation concerns the opaque provenance, contexts, and histories of many of these contested objects in museum collections. This presentation explores some cases of international repatriation and intra-national restitution to indigenous communities, and the growing importance of digital technologies and databases in preserving cultural materiality. Using a parallel indigenous notion of ukubuyisa (Nguni word) or go lata (Sotho-Tswana word), which is a widespread cultural practice among southern African Bantu-speaking people meaning to ‘bring home the spirit of a deceased person’, it critically examines the oft-unenlightened treatment of the intersection between tangible and intangible assemblages of materiality in restitution practice. This relates especially to complexities of indigenous cosmological beliefs concerning the spiritual dimensions of repatriated materials, challenging the primacy of diplomatic agreements and legal frameworks through which these returns are negotiated and executed, and the elevated agency of museums as surrogate acquirers, interpreters, exhibitors, and even authorised ‘disposers’, of returned objects and collections. Ukubuyisa or go lata signals that the focus and weight of repatriation is not necessarily so much on the physical materiality of the heritage object as it is on its immaterial attributes. In this practice, it is the invisible essences—the soulical character of the object or being that animated its former mediatory role—and not the outward visible form that is at stake. This view has important implications for the increasing usefulness and proliferation of digital materiality in heritage preservation and presentation. Accordingly, the talk ends with the examination of the adequacy of digital surrogating, and asks whether a reconfigured, digitally empowered museum institution—supported by a new heritage covenant between the Global North and Global South centring indigenous knowledge, concepts, and principles—can forge a more just, moral, and inclusive future for heritage collections along with their associated layers of power and information. Can traditional museums reconfigure their transformative influence through big data and digitisation initiatives to drive an indigenous-powered philosophical shift in how restitution, access, and stewardship can be understood and accomplished?
Biography
Dr Siyakha Mguni holds a PhD in Archaeology from the University of Cape Town and is currently Senior Lecturer at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. His research focuses on San rock art, Khoe and San cosmology and the study of hunter-gatherer visual heritage through archives, orality, and ethnography. He has authored two well-received books, Termites of the gods: San cosmology in southern African rock art and Archival theory, chronology and interpretation of rock art in the Western Cape, South Africa and published articles in international journals, among them Antiquity, Current Anthropology, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, Journal of Social Archaeology, South African Archaeological Bulletin, and Azania. In 2006, he won the Ben Cullen Prize from Antiquity. Dr Mguni contributes to research partnerships in southern Africa, Europe, Asia, and the US. Beyond academia, he has curated exhibitions at both national and international levels. Working closely with communities on local heritage initiatives and public archaeology activities, he has featured in global media, such as CNN and the BBC among others. He brings African perspectives and indigenous knowledge systems into contemporary discussions on art, archives, curatorship, and cultural heritage.
* Please be aware that the lecture and talks will be recorded. Recordings/photography/film will be published, transmitted or broadcast in official University of Cambridge publications, in the University’s publicity materials, and in others’ websites and social media.
Recent Distinguished speakers:
- 2025: Dr Vuyiswa Lupuwana (University of Cape Town) - Visual Futures: Mapping Truth and Dissonance in a Digitally Fixated Generation
- 2025: Dr Amanuel Beyin (University of Louisville) - Prehistoric Life on Coastal East Africa: Emerging archaeological finds and unfilled gaps
- 2024: Dr Habiba Chirchir (Mashall University) - What we know and don't know yet about skeletal gracility in modern humans
- 2022: Professor Zeresenay Alemseged (University of Chicago) - The changing face of Australopithecus and human origins in Africa
- 2021: Professor Theresa Singleton (Syracuse University) - The worlds that enslaved created or forced to endure. Balancing archaeological narratives of slavery
- 2019: Dr Joanne Pillsbury (Metropolitan Museum of Art) - The Golden Road. Materials, Value and Exchange in the Ancient Americas
