Review: Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa , edited by Kathleen Bickford Berzock

Abstract

“Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time” illustrates for the public the power of centering the story of the past in Africa—specifically in the medieval empires that gave rise to modern Mali, Morocco, and Nigeria. The partnership among West African museums, archaeologists, and historians and scholars of Saharan Africa produces an illuminating array of objects to demonstrate the importance of seeing the world from within the Sahara’s medieval world. Kathleen Bickford Berzock, Associate Director at the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, curated the exhibit in cooperation with colleagues from Mali, Morocco, and Nigeria, and envisioned a dialogue growing from the fragments in which visitors begin a journey to a time and place not well represented in narratives of the medieval world. Berzock explains in the exhibit catalogue that “Caravans of Gold” seeks to center the story around African voices and authorities, both ancient or modern, to reveal an interconnected medieval world that is far more diverse and global than that often associated with the Middle Ages.1 The exhibit is not about the “discovery” of this history, as if it needed European archaeologists or scholars to be interlocuters of Africa’s past, but rather about the medieval travelers, objects, and landscapes that helped shape the communities living and benefitting from the desire for gold and salt, followed by enslaved people. “Caravans of Gold” is not just about Africa’s past, but about its present as it reveals the heritage of the past through communities of makers, the exploitation of cultural heritage, and the ways the Sahara still organizes people, materials, and landscapes, such as the Niger River and the Forest kingdoms. Gold and salt still shape the economy and now the caravan roads help move migrating people between countries. All of these complex threads come together in “Caravans of Gold,” where fragments of history, people, and things are presented in conversation with each other.