Prof. Dr. Anne Haour
Jennerstraße 8
50823 Köln
E-Mail: ahaour
uni-koeln.de
ORCID: 0000-0002-0844-4867
Consultation hours
By appointment
Research Interests
medieval archaeology of Africa and the Indian Ocean, ceramics
cowrie shells
climate resilience
materiality of exchanges
construction of value
coastlines
trade/trader
medieval empires
Current Projects
Where the sea meets the land
Where the sea meets the land: Coastal heritage, community resilience and inclusion in a changing landscape (CoHeRe). (PI), Research Project, CLARE programme, UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) (2025-2026)
This project examines how heritage can play a meaningful role in building resilience to climate change, given its capacity to cohere communities through social responsibility. The West African coastal zone, the interface between ocean, lagoons and rivers, has a rich cultural and natural heritage, a result of complex interactions over centuries. It is home to fragile ecosystems, protected environments, endangered species, heritage sites and hidden archaeology of local and international significance. Our objective is to improve resilience to evolving climate and environmental hazards through increased engagement with, and management of, heritage. Heritage conservation teaches us that losses and damages cannot be entirely prevented, and that decisions about what to keep and what to let go are fundamental to maintaining values for future generations – even when what is valued is gone.
The project builds on 15 years of ongoing collaboration with colleagues in Bénin, first through an ERC research project, Crossroads of empires (running 2011-2016), where I led a network of 17 scholars (archaeologists, historians, ethnographers, art historians). This involved yearly archaeological and ethnographic field seasons in Bénin, West Africa, with 15-40 workmen as well as students and researchers; management of a budget of over 890,000 euros; training and capacity building (18 students); line managing of postdoctoral researcher; post-excavation work with labs in the USA, Germany, and the UK; organisation of an exhibition in the UK, restitution of research findings to local community groups in Bénin through open participation sessions, and production of published research outputs.
My work on the loss of coastal heritage in southern Bénin was also funded by the University of East Anglia Global Challenges Research fund (2018). Tourism provides income-generating opportunities to limit overexploitation of the environment and sustainable, innovative tourism is central to the Bénin government’s efforts to improve national livelihoods and economic outlook. As well as conducting archaeological work in collaboration with a leading NGO is ecotourism and sustainable development, we met with the major parties involved in the government tourism programme and those involved in preserving fragile coastal ecosystems. The work feeds into SDG Goal 12 - Responsible consumption and production.
Links:
Capacity-building actions in the Maldives
The Maldives are an Indian Ocean archipelago best known to outsiders for outstanding beaches and diving. My team’s pioneering archaeological research (2013-present) demonstrated they were a thriving node of past Indian Ocean communications, findings with an impact of clear reach and significance for the key national sector of tourism. Moreover, we highlighted the deep interest in, and attachment to, heritage of communities living near past sites. Our work altered perceptions of heritage in the Maldives. We confirmed the inextricable link between heritage, environmental hazards and tourism development, and began to ask how cultural values, knowledge and heritage can act as an important and inclusive boundary object to reduce future risk: places, and attachment to places, are of great importance in this equation. Heritage links in closely with environmental concerns in this very dispersed state.
The work had its roots in Cowrie shells: an early global commodity (PI), a Research Project funded by Leverhulme Trust Research Grant (2015-2018) which explored the links between Africa and the Indian Ocean through cowrie shells. The project involved yearly archaeological and ethnographic field seasons in the Republic of Maldives and Tanzania and reassessment of museological and archaeological collections across Europe and Africa. It also entailed training and capacity building and line managing of postdoctoral researchers and oversight of the research dissemination and outputs. Several grants followed (2019-2025), from various University of East Anglia internal awards to help research projects deliver societal benefit and impact.
The current focus is capacity-building activities are equipping promising heritage experts of the future with skills to deal with tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Mentees have led or participated in excavations at two sites, Kinolhas and Kaashidhoo. They have been exploring community understandings of heritage, with the overall aim will be to guide future heritage-related activities by understanding how, and when, people take ownership of their heritage. Paired with this, the team has been conducting networking and publicity events to raise awareness of archaeology and to discuss the importance and value of the Maldives’ plural tangible heritage. One example is an interview I did with V News’s flagship programme In Depth. In the capital Male’, sessions have been organised with Maldives National University undergraduate and graduate students and with Scout groups. In one workshop, participants assembled a museum display, selecting objects and identifying what stories they tell about the past. This display was later inaugurated at the National Museum of the Maldives and highlighted as part of international Museum Week in 2022. A further exhibition was held in 2025 at the National Museum and awareness-raising videos created for the National Centre for Cultural Heritage platform
Links:
CV
Degrees
DPhil (Doctorate) St Cross College, University of Oxford, 2002
Master of Arts in Research Methods for the Humanities, University College London, 1997
Bachelor of Arts (Hons), Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Oxford, 1st class, 1992
Current position
Since 09/2025 Director of the Africa Research Centre, Institute of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology, University of Cologne
Previous academic positions
August 2016-Aug 2025 Professor in the Arts and Archaeology of Africa, University of East Anglia
Sept 2007-July 2016 Lecturer, then Reader, in the Arts and Archaeology of Africa, University of East Anglia
Jan 2006-Sept 2007 Lecturer in Archaeology, Newcastle University, United Kingdom
Oct 2002–Sept 2005 British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow; Tutor for Archaeology & Anthropology, Hertford College, University of Oxford, UK
Monographs
2013
Outsiders and strangers: an archaeology of liminality in West Africa. Oxford: OUP. xii + 206 pp.
2007
Rulers, warriors, traders and clerics: the Central Sahel and the North Sea, AD 800-1500. Oxford University Press, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellows Monographs. 196 pp.
2003
Ethnoarchaeology in the Zinder region, Republic of Niger: the site of Kufan Kanawa. Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 56. Archaeopress, Oxford. 165pp, Includes 58 figures, maps, plans, drawings, photographs (including 5 in colour), 13 tables.
Edited Volumes
2022
Haour, A. and Christie, A. eds. 2022. Archaeological investigations of the Maldives in the medieval Islamic period: Ibn Battuta’s island. Routledge/Taylor & Francis. 182 Pages, 28 Color & 50 B/W Illustrations.
2019
Haour, A. ed. Two Thousand Years in Dendi, northern Benin: archaeology, history and memory. Leiden: Brill/Journal of African Archaeology Monograph Series. xviii + 802 pp.
2010
Haour, A., Manning, K., Arazi, N., Gosselain, O., Guèye, S., Keita, D., Livingstone Smith, A., MacDonald, K., Mayor, A. McIntosh, S., & Vernet, R. eds. African pottery roulettes past and present: techniques, identification, and distribution. Oxford: Oxbow. 208 pp.
2010
Haour, A. & Rossi, B. eds. Being and becoming Hausa: interdisciplinary perspectives. Leiden: Brill. 310 pp.
2003
Haour A. & Mitchell, P., Hobart, J. (eds.). Researching Africa's Past: new perspectives from British archaeologists. School of Archaeology, Oxford. Pp. viii+152.
Articles and Contributions
Select publications – see https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0844-4867 for full list
2025
Haour, A. Ceramics, cowries, bangles and shared material culture in the western Indian Ocean. In King, A. ed. With Respect to Africa and Beyond. Reflections on Culture, Art and Heritage in Honour of John Mack. UEA/SRU, 72-81.
Clarke, J., Haour, A., Morel, H., Forster, J., Orlove, B., Holtorf, C., Hutcheson, A., Aryee Adinorkuor, V., Brunnschweiler, C., Brooks, N., Wade, S., Wellington, N.-A., Appeaning Addo, K., Simpson, N. 2025. Curating transformation can strengthen adaptation and minimise losses and damages. npj Climate Action 4.4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s44168-025-00210-z
2023
Haour, A. & Moffett, A. J., 2023. Global connections and connected communities in the African past: Stories from cowrie shells. African Archaeological Review special issue, Archaeology for Education: Archaeology in Support of School Learning, 40(3): 545 – 553.
2022
Haour, A., Coulson, I., N’Dah, D. and Labiyi, N. 2022. A coastal occupation in Bénin, West Africa: Earthenwares and salt at the time of Atlantic entanglement. The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15564894.2022.2084654
Haour, A. and Jaufar, S. 2022. The earthenware pottery. In Haour, A. and Christie, A. eds. Archaeological investigations of the Maldives in the medieval Islamic period: Ibn Battuta’s island. Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 54-91.
Haour, A. 2022. Towards an archaeology of the medieval Maldives. In Haour, A. and Christie, A. eds. Archaeological investigations of the Maldives in the medieval Islamic period: Ibn Battuta’s island. Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 155-158.
2021
Haour, A., 2021. A key commodity: The role of cowries in West Africa. In Moreno García, J. C. ed. Markets and Transactions: their economic logics in pre-modern societies: Multidisciplinary approaches to ancient societies (MatAS) - Interpreting Ancient Egypt vol. 1. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 19-34.
2020
Djidohokpin, G., Sossoukpè, E., Adandé, R., Voudounnou, J. V., Fiogbé, E. D. & Haour, A. 2020. Ethnoichthyology of fishing communities in the Lower Valley of Ouémé in Benin, West Africa. Ethnobiology Letters 11(1): 137–151.
2019
Haour, A., N'Dah, D., Magnavita, C., Nixon, S. & Livingstone Smith, A. 2019. Excavation strategies and methods: approaching an archaeological terra incognita. In Haour, A. ed. Two thousand Years in Dendi, northern Benin: archaeology, history and memory. Leiden:Brill/JAAMS, 85-91.
Haour, A., Nixon, S., Livingstone Smith, A., Nikis, N. & Kay, D. 2019. The pottery. In Haour, A. ed. Two thousand Years in Dendi, northern Benin: archaeology, history and memory. Leiden: Brill/JAAMS, 139-173.
Gosselain, O. & Haour, A. 2019. The site within West African political and craft history. In Haour, A. ed. Two thousand Years in Dendi, northern Benin: archaeology, history and memory. Leiden: Brill/JAAMS, 294-304.
Haour, A. & Moffett, A., 2019. The cowrie in East Africa. In Arc Humanities Press (Ed.). The Encyclopedia of the Global Middle Ages. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Retrieved August 8, 2022, from https://www.bloomsburymedievalstudies.com/encyclopedia-chapter?docid=b-9781350990005&tocid=b-9781350990005-113-0011421
Haour, A. and Christie, A. 2019. Cowries in the archaeology of West Africa: the present picture. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa. 54 (3): 287-321.
2018
Forrest, I, and Haour, A. 2018. Trust in long-distance relationships, 1000–1600 CE. Past & Present, Volume 238, Issue suppl_13: 190–213.
2017
What made Islamic trade distinctive - as compared to pre-Islamic trade? In Mattingly, D. J., Leitch, V., Duckworth, C. N., Cuénod, A., Sterry, M. and Cole, F. (eds.) Trade in the Ancient Sahara and Beyond. Trans-Saharan Archaeology Volume I. Series editor D.J. Mattingly. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and The Society for Libyan Studies, 80-100.
2016
Haour, A., Nixon, S., N’Dah, D., Magnavita, C. and Livingstone Smith, A. The settlement mound of Birnin Lafiya, Republic of Benin: new evidence from the eastern arc of the Niger river, ca. 4th to 13th centuries AD. Antiquity 90 (351): 695-710.
2015
Robion-Brunner, C., Haour, A., Coustures, M.-P., Champion, L. and Béziat, D. Iron production in northern Benin: excavations at Kompa Moussékoubou. Journal of African Archaeology 13(1): 39-57.
2014
Sule Sani, A. & Haour, A. 2014. The archaeology of northern Nigeria: trade, people and polities, 1500 BP onwards. Azania 49(4): 1-24.
Robertshaw, P., Wood, M., Haour, A., Karklins, K. and Neff, H. 2014. Chemical analysis, chronology, and context of a European glass bead assemblage from Garumele, Niger. Journal of Archaeological Science 41: 591-604.
2013
Mobilité et archéologie le long de l’arc oriental du Niger: pavements et percuteurs. Afriques – débats, méthodes et terrains d’histoire. http://afriques.revues.org/1134
2012
To the other shore: West African trade centres and the wics. In Gelichi, S. and Hodges, R. eds. From one sea to another: trading places in the European and Mediterranean Early Middle ages. Turnhout: Brepols, 441-456.
2011
The archaeology of Hausaland. In Gronenborn, D. ed. Gold, slaves and ivory – medieval empires in northern Nigeria. Mainz: RGZM, 66-69.
The early medieval slave trade of the central Sahel: archaeological and historical considerations. In Lane, P. and MacDonald, K. eds. Comparative dimensions of slavery in Africa: archaeology and memory. Oxford: OUP/British Academy (Proceedings of the British Academy 168): 61-78.
2010
Haour, A. & Rossi, B. Introduction: Hausa identity: language, history and religion. In Haour, A. & Rossi, B. eds. Being and becoming Hausa: interdisciplinary perspectives. Leiden: Brill, 1-33.
Gosselain, O., Haour, A., MacDonald, K. & Manning, K. Introduction. In Haour et al. eds., African pottery roulettes past and present: techniques, identification, and distribution. Oxford: Oxbow, 1-34.
Linseele, V. & Haour, A. 2010. Faunal remains at Garumele. Journal African Archaeology 8(2):167-84.
2009
Haour, A. & Gado, B. 2009. Garumele, ville médiévale du Kanem-Borno? Une contribution archéologique. Journal of African History 50(3): 355-375
Scientific Memberships
Society of Africanist Archaeologists (life member)
Trustee and Member of Council of the British Academy (UK)
Oversight and Engagement Committee for British Academy overseas research institutes (BIRI).
Other/Marks of Esteem
- Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (elected 2018)
- Fellow of the British Academy (elected 2021, 2023) in Archaeology, Anthropology and Geography
- Fellow of the Archaeological Association of Nigeria (elected 2024).
- Member of Advisory Group for the Maritime Asia Heritage Survey, led by Dr Michael Feener from Kyoto University,
- Member of Advisory Group for Mapping Africa’s Endangered Archaeological Sites and Monuments, led by Professor Paul Lane from Cambridge University