An Overview of the Benefit of Archaeology to the Study of African History

Abstract

Every place around the world has a past. Effort has been made to improve the method of historical studies and research in an effort to better understand the past events, culture, people, places, traditions, values etc. The quest to acquire all these knowledge berried in the distant past is critical to academic excellence not just history as a discipline. Archaeology involves surveying, excavation, and eventually analysis of data collected, to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Africa has the longest record of human habitation in the world. The first humans emerged 6-7 million years ago, and among the earliest anatomically modern human skulls found so far were discovered at Omo Kibish, Jebel Irhoud, and Florisbad. However, Africa has the larger part of its past unwritten because of lack of writing knowledge, hence, the critical role of archaeology to supplement oral traditions which modern African historians relied heavily on. This research aim to explicitly detail the benefit of archaeology to the study and understanding of African history, it reveals how archaeology could further aid in debunking Eurocentric views of Africa lacking history and also emphasized the role archaeology could play in helping history students understand the past.