AWS2010: African Civilizations: Websites

This collection features digital copies of 113 antique maps of Africa and accompanying text dating from the mid-16th Century to the early 20th Century. All scanned maps are authentic and originally collected by the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies. Some of the highlights of the digital collection are: a series of Ptolemic maps of North Africa by Ruscelli, ca. 1565; Forlani: Africa , 1562; Mercator: Africa, 1595; Blaeu: Æthiopia ca. 1650 (a Prester John map); Carey: Africa, 1795 (first map of Africa published in the United States), Arrowsmith: Africa, 1802 (notable for its large dimensions, 124 x 145 cm.), a series of Algerian maps published by the French government in the mid-1800's, and maps by other notable cartographers, such as Hondius, Jansson, de Jode, de L'Isle, Ortelius, Sanson, and de Wit.

AODL provides free universal access to cultural heritage materials from and about African countries and communities. It brings together tens of thousands of digitized photographs, videos, archival documents, maps, interviews and oral histories in numerous African languages, many of which are contained in curated thematic galleries and teaching resources.

In 2013, the British Museum and the Trust of African Rock Art (TARA) launched The African Rock Art Image Project. A collaborative effort, the Project has collected and catalogued about 25,000 digital photographs of African rock art. These spectacular images include a variety of petroglyphs (rock engravings and carvings) and pictographs (rock paintings), including the oldest known piece of art work: tablets from Namibia that archeologists have dated as 26,000-28,000 years old. On this website, visitors can browse this collection by country, learn more about the history of rock art itself, and explore the origins of archeological investigations. Readers will find detailed explanations about how rock art was produced, how archeologists date rock art, and how rock art varies across regions. Visitors can also check out three-dimensional diagrams and short film clips where project specialists provide insights into a variety of art pieces.

Founded 900 years ago, the city of Timbuktu (located in what is now the country of Mali) was a center of major commercial importance and a place where many Islamic scholars received their education. This exhibit, developed by the Library of Congress, explores some of the many important literary traditions and scholarship developed during this period of scholarly effervescence. You can browse over 30 primary documents, including texts designed to train scholars in the field of astronomy and the nature of Islamic mysticism. The exhibit is rounded out by several maps, such as a map from 1743 that shows the region in and around Timbuktu.

The website of the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University offers visitors to its site a digital feast of images of East Africa from 1860-1960. The photographs currently available on the website are divided into album views and individual sample images from the collection. The sample images are a mixture of landscapes and portraits, both formal and informal. By clicking on a photograph, a visitor can see a larger image of the photograph, as well as a caption that includes a date, location, and description, if known. The album view, with its black background and white text, extremely high quality image scans, and excellent organization makes it easy to navigate and enjoy.

A link directory to source texts and other resources in African history.