Archaeology, Heritage and Tourism in West Africa

West Africa is a rich storehouse of heritage resources belonging to different time periods. Archaeologists attempt to exhume, analyse, and interpret aspects of human history found in artifacts and their contexts. The longstanding assumption that archaeology is simply a science of the past, with little thought for the present, must be rejected. This book makes a striking argument for a curricular revolution which taps into the strengths of such allied fields as heritage, tourism, and museum management, which come together to constitute Cultural Resource Management (CRM). This account reveals, in an inspiringly clear fashion, that the era of conceptualising archaeology as a near-complete academic exercise is over.

Trans-disciplinary knowledge application, such as that which is found in CRM, has the capacity to create employment opportunities for archaeologists, and other cultural resource management graduates, in West Africa and beyond. It is time to take a first step in constructing the pathways of progress in the competitive world of modern education.