Preserving the Cultural Heritage of Africa: crisis or renaissance? Edited by Kenji Yoshida and John Mack. 200mm. Pp 214, 92 b&w ills. Woodbridge: James Currey, 2009. ISBN 9781847012067. £45(hbk)

摘要

This collection of papers, based in part upon a symposium held in Japan in 2003, presents a wide-ranging assessment of the current state of Africa’s cultural heritage at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The contributors include a number of African scholars, as well as scholars drawn from across the world, and it is interesting to hear, on an international stage, some important new Japanese input into the area. This is truly an international achievement, yet, as Professor Mack states in his preface (p ix), it is right and important that African scholars and institutions set the agenda without reference to frameworks drawn from elsewhere: African solutions to African problems. This is on the whole an optimistic collection of papers. Fairly or unfairly, issues with African cultural heritage management are often flagged up in student seminars – there is always, it seems, a state of crisis: illicit excavation, trade in antiquities, etc. On the whole, these case studies present a valuable corrective to this popular conception