Archaeopolitics and postage stamps in Africa.

A genuine advocate of Africa, Merrick Posnansky continues to find new ways to promote and explore the continent's past and present. His article (2004a) and those of Agbenyega Adedze (2004a, b) in African Arts' special section on African stamps demonstrate the historical insight that can result from studying postage stamps. My intention here is to extrapolate on the subjects of propaganda, heritage, and stamp imagery in Africa raised by Posnansky using a "micro approach" that considers the symbolism of a few extraordinary stamps bearing archaeological themes.

The potential for gaining historical insight extends to the examination of the entire repertoire of postal materials: the proofs, covers, metering, cancellations, aerograms, promotional pamphlets, and so forth. One such pamphlet, recently issued by Tanzania Posts Corporation, proclaims, "Collect beautiful stamps of Tanzania for your heritage and record for future generations." Although collecting may meet a variety of laudable goals (Posnansky 2004b), stamps do more than simply "record"; they communicate messages by serving as sites of state (and creator) expression and public consumption (Reid 1984). in doing so, stamps reflect and induce social entanglement while "embedding ... behavioral and ideological norms" (Dobson 2002:23). Indeed, stamps can be likened to miniature monuments that travel.

A critical archaeology of stamps reveals the archaeopolitics inherent to postal images of African cultural heritage. Using instruments of hegemony; European powers in Africa promoted or silenced pasts in order to justify and secure their political ambitions. Stamps were one these instruments. Benito Mussolini, who fashioned himself as a contemporary Roman emperor, used stamps as fascist propaganda in his colonization of the northern Sahara. A stamp issue from 1932 (Fig. 1; Italy Scott 299) (1) depicts a Roman road being excavated in Libya--a clear message of the antiquity of Italy's presence in that area and, undoubtedly, a claim to ownership (Foss 1999:70). Similar, if more indirect, images of colonizers' claims to "vacant" territory appear on South African stamps dating to the apartheid era (e.g. South Africa Scott 112, 758). Also apparent is an active denial of African "vernacular modernities," as is the case with many of Southern Rhodesia's stamps. One of these, issued in 1953 at the Rhodes Centenary, contrasts African wattle-and-daub houses with a superimposed glowing city (Southern Rhodesia Scott 76). A contemporaneous postal cancellation sanctioned by the government at Salisbury portrays Great Zimbabwe and reads "The Riddle of Zimbabwe" (Proud 1997:212), implying a foreign foundation for this African monument.

Many postcolonial African stamps address issues of historical representation, both retrospect and prospect. Among other tendencies, these stamps celebrate presents through pasts or meditate the traumas of past experiences. Ethiopia does both in a 1998 postal set by heralding "The Return of the Axum Obelisk from Italy" in three images: the obelisk's original removal from Ethiopia and relocation to Piazza di Porta Capena in Rome and its return to northern Ethiopia (Fig. 2; Ethiopia Scott 1490-1492). The repatriation of a monument stolen by Italy in 1937 was much anticipated; the obelisk finally arrived in 2005 (de Luca 2003:47). Zimbabwe and Nigeria employ soapstone birds and Ife and Benin bronzes, respectively, as symbols of national identity; thus their display in postal contexts (e.g. Fig. 3, Zimbabwe Scott 493-514; Nigeria Scott 133). Relatively recently; Egypt began employing images of antiquities to promote "modern" issues, such as information technology (e.g. Egypt Scott 1841), in order to glorify its past while demarcating itself as progressive. In one case the state issued stamps endorsing a UNESCO project to "Save the Monuments of Nubia" endangered by the erection of the Aswan High Dam (Egypt Scott 493) within a month of stamps promoting the dam's electrical generation capacities and, therefore, development capabilities (Egypt Scott 495). Contrary to Egypt, Eritrea's intense desire to "modernize" inhibits its depiction of antiquities on stamps (Cassanelli 2004). As Eritrea continues to struggle politically, it may begin to produce stamp images tied to its monumental past in order to legitimize its independent existence from Ethiopia to increasingly disgruntled citizens.

Perhaps most revealing are postcolonial responses to the traumas of slaving and enslavement evident in stamps. African states index slavery in a wide variety of ways in this medium. For example, Sierra Leone rarely references slavery in its stamps and Mauritius does not associate the material past, including ubiquitous maroon sites, with memorialization when celebrating the end of slavery and indentured labor (e.g. Mauritius Scott 597, 930). However, Senegal and Ghana regularly depict archaeological sites associated with slaving, such as Goree and Cape Coast Castle (e.g. Senegal Scott 1138, 1314; Ghana Scott 1357D). A fascinating case from the western Indian Ocean derives from a series titled "Old Buildings and Architecture of Tanzania" (Tanzania Scott 2165 2171, 2166A-2170A). A single stamp in the series portrays Tongoni Ruins, a Swahili urban settlement dating to the second millenium A.D. (Fig. 4; Tanzania Scott 2170A). Wording overlying the image reads "Built by Arabs who hated Slave Trade [sic]." Through such statements, the endorsing state--Tanzania--seeks to subvert a troubling past, perhaps to unify members of a diverse citizenry and contentious geography. Each of these trends is bound to the specific histories in the making of individual states as well as states' capacities and willingness to confront pasts in contemporary climes through national imagery.

Stamps serve as ideological battlegrounds. Historical and other representations often lie at the core of their imagery. African consumers mediate these visual expressions of pasts, presents, and futures. Through mimesis, even removed observers may find relevance in stamp imagery from their own life experiences (Landau 2002:16). Thus, stamps--contextualized and critically evaluated--provide a venue to engage publics through state materialities. (2) In sum, studying postal materials and mediations offers the potential to investigate histories, memories, and uses of pasts as well as to connect with diverse publics.

(1.) For all stamp issues I use catalogue numbers from the Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, published annually by the Scott Publishing Company of Sidney, Ohio.

(2.) While conducting fieldwork in 2001, 1 wrote a letter to the Stamp Bureau in Dar es Salaam suggesting that they issue series highlighting Tanzania's archaeological heritage. They later produced stamps that I used, in concert with other materials, to introduce school children living in my research area to the pasts of East Africa.

References cited

Adedze, Agbenyega. 2004a. "Re-presenting Africa: Commemorative Postage Stamps of the Colonial Exposition of Paris (1931)." African Arts 37 (1):584-61.

--. 2004b. "Commemorating the Chief: The Politics of Postage Stamps in West Africa." African Arts 37 (1):68-73.

Cassanelli, Lee. 2004. "The Uses of the Past in Eritrea and Somaliland." Paper presented at the Forty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association. New Orleans.

de Luca, Vincent. 2003. "Discovering the Obelisks of Rome." Scott Stamp Monthly 21 (10):13-14,16, 37.

Dobson, Hugo. 2002. "Japanese Postage Stamps: Propaganda and Decision Making." Japan Forum 14 (1):21-39.

Foss, Clive. 1999. "Postal Propaganda: Promoting the Present with the Past." Archaeology 52 (2):70-71.

Landau, Paul S. 2002. "An Amazing Distance: Pictures and People in Africa." In Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa, eds. Paul S. Landau and Deborah D. Kaspin, pp. 1-40. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Posnansky, Merrick. 2004a. "Propaganda for Millions: Images from Africa." African Arts 37 (1):53-57.

--. 2004b. "Projecting Images of Africa's Past: Postage Stamps as Propaganda and Educational Tools." Paper presented at the Seventeenth Biennial Meeting of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists. Bergen.

Proud, Edward B. 1997. The Postal History of Southern Rhodesia. Heathfield: Proud-Bailey.

Reid, Donald M. 1984. "The Symbolism of Postage Stamps: A Source for the Historian." Journal of Contemporary History 19:223-249.

(1.) This essay is an initial expansion of my original Guggenheim Fellowship proposal, written in October 2003. I want to thank my teachers, friends, colleagues, and students for providing insights into the role of the senses in understandings of art. The writings of some colleagues (this list is very preliminary) are cited in the references, but beyond this, many contributed ideas and leads: Rowland Abiodun, Sunny and Meeta Bindaas, Herbert Cole, Kenneth George, Joanne Eicher, Sarah K. Khan, John Mason, Mary E. Regan, Helen H. Tanner, Robert Farris Thompson, and students in my Spring 2005 seminar on "Masking and the Senses in Africa and the African Diaspora," Meghan Doherty, Michelle Craig, Abayomi Ola, and Lindsey Wadleigh.

(2.) This Ewe concept may be cognate to the Yoruba aesthetic concept of balance/symmetry in sculpture (didogba).

(3.) See also Lakoff and Johnson 1980.