JOURNAL:
HUMANITIES AND CULTURAL STUDIES, Volume 5, Number 2, August 2016
ARTICLE TITLE:
DEVELOPING TECHNIQUES FOR USING ORAL TRADITION FOR HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION IN AFRICA FROM 1960 TO THE LATE 1970's
AUTHOR:
Dr. Joseph O. Ajor -
Department of History and International Studies University of Calabar
josephajor@yahoo.co.uk
PAGES: 1-13
ABSTRACT
In the past 50 years, African scholars have successfully challenged the notion held by some scholars that traditional societies without the technology of writing had no history. By developing some technique of interpreting traditional societies, scholars have been able to re-write, re-invent, re-create a true historical image of Africa. Now it is inconceivable for anybody to say that historical development did not take place in Africa from antiquity. This study found that the practice of history on the continent within the past fifty years, relying on inter-disciplinary approach, has achieved a feat unthought-of in the west fifty years ago. Using extant sources and documents, the study highlights some of the means which have been devised by scholars in reconstructing the histories of preliterate societies. The study highlights the use of such devices as ethnographic data, archaeology and “auxiliary science” like linguistics, to aid traditions without writing to reconstruct the histories of some societies in Africa. Furthermore, it raised the challenge of sustaining these effects and passing it to the present and the future. It recommends the need for collaborative effort by historians in writing African history.
KEYWORDS: Africa History, Oral Tradition, Historical Reconstruction
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