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Collections in Brief:African Cultural Heritage Sites & Landscapes

Comprising materials from partner archives, museums, and library collections from three continents (Eu-rope, North America, and Africa), the African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes digital library con-tains in-depth visual, spatial, and research documentation of cultural heritage sites and landscapes in Africa, a number of which have been designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. These materials include thousands of digital photographs; hundreds of rare slides from early documentation projects and excava-tions; aerial, panorama, and satellite photographs of landscapes; dozens of virtual and three-dimensional models of sites and structures; unique GIS data sets for each site; rare and unpublished excavation reports,

manuscripts, 18th- and 19th-century travelogues; antiquarian maps; digital site plans; and scholarly research, as well as a preliminary visual archive of African rock art. Aluka’s digital library contains more than 335,000 objects, over 17,000 of which are located in the African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes content area.

Sites available in the resource include:Kilwa Kisiwani, a medieval city on an off-shore island in Tanzania; the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela in Ethiopia; the Asante Temples at Besease and Patakro as well as Elmina Fort in Ghana; celebrated mosques in the Sudanic style in Djenné and Timbuktu, Mali; and a growing library of rock art images from across Africa.

The materials have been selected to provide value to students, scholars, and researchers in a number of disciplines, including African studies, anthropology, archaeology, art history, Diaspora studies, folklore, lit-erature, geography, history, architecture, geomatics, advanced visual and spatial technologies, historic pres-ervation, and urban planning.

In the future, additional sites will be added to the African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes con-tent area, such as the Swahili island town of Lamu on Kenya’s northern coast; the stone ruins of Great Zimbabwe; the stelae of Axum in Ethiopia; and five rock shelters and caves in South Africa’s Cederberg Mountains.

Selected Collections from Aluka’s African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes Content Area

The British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA)A collection of slides, maps, fieldnotes, aerial photographs, and images of artefacts from excavations along the Swahili coast at Kilwa Kisiwani (Tanzania) undertaken by the late Dr. Neville Chittick between the late 1950s to the 1970s. Chittick’s field notebooks have been digitised as well, allowing viewers to follow his inter-pretative reasoning.Object types: field notes, articles, aerial photographs, imagesSource: British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA)

The Heinz Rüther CollectionThe collection includes a range of data for each of a variety of African cultural heritage sites and landscapes, ranging from photo-grammetric images, panoramas, and videos to GIS data, stereoscopic photographs, aerial photographs, 3-D models, and millimetre-accu-rate site plans.Object types: 3D models, GIS data, aerial photography, high quality imagesSource: Professor Heinz Rüther, Geomatics, University of Cape Town

Smithsonian Heritage CollectionThis collection contains a diverse array of print documents (some rare), ranging from traveller accounts from the early-16th to 20th centuries to more recent academic journal articles and other scholarly and historical literature. Some of the travelogues are ac-companied by unique maps, beautiful colour plates, and some of the earliest photographs of African peoples and their material cultures.Object types: Full length books, scholarly articlesSource: Warren M. Robbins Library, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian

The Lloyd and Bleek CollectionThis collection is comprised of more than 13 000 notebook pages of narrative as well as genealogies, maps, and illustrations of |xam and !kun observations of daily life. The |xam language is no longer spoken and the pages and images reproduced in this collection are almost all that remain of the language and ideas of a people who once were the sole inhabitants of much of the central part of Southern Africa.Object types: Drawings, illustrations, manuscripts, watercoloursSource: University of Cape Town, the National Library of South Africa, and Iziko South African Museum

The Afriterra CollectionThis collection is an important contribution to understanding how many Europeans conceptualised Africa geographically in the early days of Europe’s global expansion. These maps, dating from the mid- to late-16th century, show the continuity of African place names that are familiar to us today.Object types: Maps, engravingsSource: The Afriterra Foundation

The Northwestern Heritage CollectionThis collection from Northwestern University includes a linguistically diverse group of travelogues, diaries, and ethnographies written in the late-19th to mid-20th centuries that recount life in famous West and East African kingdoms during their twilight years.Object types: BooksSource: Northwestern University Libraries

The Rock Art CollectionComprised primarily of high-resolution images of rock art dating from prehistoric times through to the 19th century, this collection reveals the diverse artistic traditions of painting and engraving employed throughout Africa on both a small and monumental scale. Object types: Drawings, photographs, tracingsSource: Rock Art Research Institute (RARI), Trust for African Rock Art (TARA)

Image Credits: Besease Shrine, Kumasi, Ghana, Heinz Rüther Collection, 2005; Bet Giorgis in Lalibela, Ethiopia, Heinz Rüther Collection, 2005; Timbuktu Manuscript Page from the SAVAMA Collection, Harlan Wallach, 2007; Gereza’s East Facade, 2004, Kilwa Kisiwani, Tanzania from The Heinz Rüther Collection, University of Cape Town, Geomatics Department; Rock Art Image, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, 2004, by David Coulson at Trust for African Rock Art, Nairobi, Kenya.