A genuine advocate of Africa.

A genuine advocate of Africa, Merrick Posnansky continues to find recent ways to promote and explore the continent's past and not away His article (2004a) and those of Agbenyega Adedze (2004a, b) in African Arts' special section forward African stamps demonstrate the historical insight that can arise from studying postage stamps. My intention here is to extrapolate onward the subjects of propaganda, heritage, and stamp imagery in Africa raised by way of Posnansky using a "micro approach" that considers the symbolism of a not many extraordinary stamps bearing archaeological themes.

The potential for gaining historical insight increases to the examination of the entire repertoire of postal materials: the testimonys covers, metering, cancellations, aerograms, promotional pamphlets, and in such a manner forth. One such pamphlet, freshly issued by Tanzania Posts Corporation, proclaims, "Collect beautiful stamps of Tanzania for your heritage and record for to come generations." Although collecting may appropriate a variety of laudable goals (Posnansky 2004b) stamps do more than simply "record"; they communicate messages at serving as sites of state (and creator) expression and public consumption (Reid 1984) in doing to such a degree stamps reflect and induce social entanglement while "embedding behavioral and ideological norms" (Dobson 2002:23) Indeed, stamps can be likened to miniature cenotaphs 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 promot or silenced pasts in order to justify and fixed their political ambitions. Stamps were common 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 demeanor in that area and, undoubtedly, a claim to ownership (Fos 1999:70) Similar, if more indirect, images of colonizers' claims to "vacant" territory appear onward South African stamps dating to the apartheid era (eg southern 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. common of these, issued in 1953 at the Rhode Centenary, contrasts African wattle-and-daub houses with a superimposed glowing city (Southern Rhodesia Scott 76) A contemporaneous postal cancellation sanctioned by the agency of 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, the two retrospect and prospect. Among other tendencies, these stamps celebrate existings through pasts or meditate the traumas of past experiences. Ethiopia does the one and the other in a 1998 postal stake 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 recur to northern Ethiopia (Fig. 2; Ethiopia Scott 1490-1492) The repatriation of a record stolen by Italy in 1937 was frequently anticipated; the obelisk finally arrived in 2005 (de Luca 2003:47) Zimbabwe and Nigeria enlist in one's service soapstone birds and Ife and Benin impudences respectively, as symbols of national identity; thus their display in postal connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughtss (e.g. Fig. 3, Zimbabwe Scott 493-514; Nigeria Scott 133) Relatively recently; Egypt began employing images of antiquities to advance "modern" issues, such as information technology (eg Egypt Scott 1841) in order to glorify its past while demarcating itself as progressive. In the same case the state issued stamps endorsing a UNESCO scheme to "Save the Monuments of Nubia" endangered through the erection of the Aswan High Dam (Egypt Scott 493) within a month of stamps promoting the dam's electrical generation capacities and, therefore, disclosure capabilities (Egypt Scott 495). Contrary to Egypt Eritrea's intense desire to "modernize" inhibits its depiction of antiquities upon stamps (Cassanelli 2004). As Eritrea continues to writhe politically, it may begin to cause stamp images tied to its monumental past in order to legitimize its independent existence from Ethiopia to increasingly disgruntled citizens.

Perhaps chiefly 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 relations slavery in its stamps and Mauritius does not associate the material past, including ubiquitous maroon sites, with memorialization when celebrating the extremity of slavery and indentured labor (eg Mauritius Scott 597 930) However, Senegal and Ghana regularly depict archaeological sites associated with slaving, of that kind as Goree and Cape Coast Castle (eg 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 arrangement dating to the second millenium A.D. (Fig. 4; Tanzania Scott 2170A). Wording overlying the image reads "Built from Arabs who hated Slave Trade [sic]." by the and of such statements, the endorsing state--Tanzania--seeks to pervert a troubling past, perhaps to unify members of a diverse citizenry and contentious geography. Each of these trendings is bound to the specific histories in the making of individual states as well as states' capacities and willingness to stand opposed pasts in contemporary climes by the agency of national imagery.