`When the Hand that Holds the Trowel is Black...'

Abstract

This article uses images from the archive of John Goodwin, one of the first professional archaeologists in sub-Saharan Africa, to open up a set of questions around relations of work in archaeology - in particular, practices involving the use of `native' labour. It seeks to tell the story of those men who dug, sieved, sorted, located sites and finds, fetched and carried, pitched camp, cooked and served food, negotiated with local chiefs and suppliers, and assisted in the interpretation of artefacts and events, yet who remain unacknowledged in official accounts of the discipline. Restoring to such men the dignity of a name and the lineaments of a biography is a first step in a process of redress involving archaeology in colonial and former-colonial contexts. Used in this way, photographs provide an opportunity to imagine a process of editing or reframing, so that the figure on the margins of the scene steps into the foreground, or steps behind the camera to become the framing consciousness.