The first Dutch ethnographic collections from West Central Africa were formed in the late nineteenth century. Between 1876 – 1889, thanks to the ‘on the spot' presence of the Afrikaansche Handelsvereeniging (the African Trading Association) and its successor, the Nieuwe Afrikaansche Handelsvennootschap (the New African Trading Company), several thousands of ethnographic items were acquired by various Dutch museums. After the establishment of the Congo Free State in 1885, however, it became more difficult to collect directly objects from this part of Africa.

This study is the first extensive enquiry into the collecting of Africana by late nineteenth century Dutch museums. These collecting campaigns took place during the last days of the great African explorations, notably by Livingstone and Burton from Great Britain , Du Chaillu and Stanley from the USA , and Bastian from Germany . These travellers had outspoken ideas about African morals and customs and about the meaning and significance of material objects. The author of this study argues that the acquisition history of Africana in Dutch museums corresponds directly with the beliefs of the great explorers and with the dominant evolutionary theories that were then current in the Western world. These stipulated that people could be placed in a hierarchy of races and sub-races. Within this context, the author compares the late nineteenth century Dutch collections in the museums in Leiden , Amsterdam and Rotterdam to similar collections in the Museum für Völkerkunde , Berlin; the Musée de Trocadéro, Paris; the British Museum, London, and the Sociedade de Geographía in Lisbon.

Robert Joost Willink, a historian by training, started this study while a Senior Advisor at the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (Instituut Collectie Nederland) in Amsterdam. Cultural historical research into the origins of museum collections has formed the core of his professional work for more than a quarter of a century.

(In English, 390 pp. ill.)

L’ensemble du Delta intérieur du Niger occupe une place centrale dans l’histoire des grands royaumes 'médiévaux' de l’Afrique de l’Ouest: le Ghana/Wagadu, le Mali et le Songhay. Des milliers de sites archéologiques de cette région constituent les seuls témoins de cet essor. Ces sites sont menacés par un pillage systématique qui est en train de détruire l'histoire d'une dizaine de peuples, un vrai génocide culturel.

Le projet international de fouilles archéologiques de 1998 à 2003 à Dia, un site menacé situé dans le Delta intérieur du Niger, fait l'objet de cette publication. Conduit par le Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde de Leyde, il a associé des partenaires maliens de la Mission Culturelle de Djenné, du Musée National du Mali, de l’Institut des Sciences Humaines et de l’Université de Bamako et des partenaires des universités de Bruxelles (ULB), Leyde, Londres (UCL) et Paris (I et VI) et le CNRS (Paris).

Les fouilles de Dia, le programme relaté de sensibilisation de la population locale et l’application des lois en vigueur ont ralenti sérieusement le pillage systématique des sites archéologiques. Ce projet a approfondi nos connaissances sur l’histoire de la région.
Il a prouvé aussi que des actions internationales, concrètes, cohérentes, conduites de manière transparente et harmonieuse avec les autorités maliennes de la Recherche, de la Culture et de la Politique peuvent contribuer à faire envisager un beau futur pour une partie du passé fascinant du Mali.

(In French, 544 pp.incl. figs., bibl. & append. Richly ill.)

This book is a pioneering study of Maale, a so far undescribed Omotic language spoken in southern Ethiopia. The study presents an analysis of the phonology, morphology and syntax of the language. Focus, ideophones, interjections and greeting and leave-taking expressions are also examined.
The author describes a number of interesting morpho-syntactic phenomena including the expression of modality, clause-chaining and switch-reference. One of the theoretical problems raised concerns the marking of case on dependent verbs in Maale, which is at variance with the accepted way of categorising inflectional affixes into verbal and nominal classes. New empirical material is also provided in the area of sentence-type marking. Maale uses morphological means to distinguish the declarative, which is generally regarded as an unmarked sentence type. The declarative in this language further distinguishes simple assertions from assertions involving the speakers’ state of knowledge (the mirative), his/her commitment to the utterance (the veridical), his/her evaluation of the state of knowledge of the hearer (the informative), and the potential. In addition to this, assertions about states, e.g. quality or identity of a referent, are distinct from assertions about events.
The analytical and theoretical problems addressed in different sections of the book make it interesting to specialists in Omotic studies as well as to those concerned with linguistics in general.
(In English, 318 pp.)

'This is an excellent study of an otherwise little-known language, that hopefully will form the model for future descriptions of languages of the region, and is to be all the more welcomed as being the work of one of an emerging generation of young Ethiopian linguists.'

David L. Appleyard in: School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 67/1 (Febr. 2004)

Changana forms part of the Tsonga group of Bantu languages, together with Tshwa and Ronga and is spoken in Mozambique. This book presents a systematic description and classification of verbs of motion in Changana, and also includes a long list of these verbs.

(In English, 244 pp. incl. bibl.)