Remembering Merrick Posnansky

I was searching for a meaningful future when I left Stanford for UCLA in the Winter of 1965. I had majored in history at Stanford, finishing with an honors thesis on the history of the caucus system and its failures in the 19th century. I was not happy with American History as a career choice, as Africa continued to stream constantly through my thoughts. Being a graduate of Operations Crossroads Africa in 1962, I tried to find a way to African studies at Stanford, but was frustrated by the absence of Africanists, save Joseph Greenberg. Then, during an extra quarter of study, I took a reading course on Negritude that reawakened a long-dormant dream—to study African history.

So, upon my arrival at UCLA, I announced my change from American History to African History and was promptly enrolled in three African History courses, two of them taught by a visiting Professor, Merrick Posnansky. I was twenty-three and Merrick was just eleven years my senior, a young man by contemporary standards. He was at UCLA, visiting for one semester and on leave from his position of Director of African Studies at Makerere University, the Harvard of Africa as it was called then. His approach to history was completely different from anything I’d seen—he was passionately engaged in using linguistic histories and oral traditions with archeology to construct new views of the African past.

Immediately, I was entranced. His seminar, an intimate group that included Ed Steinhart, was a constant buzz of excitement, with Merrick freely sharing his ideas about how he saw the future of African history as an enterprise that drew on all possible, germane sources—archaeology, ethnography, linguistics—what Ian Hodder later codified as the Post-Processual approach but what Posnansky had been teaching and practicing two decades before that misnamed “theoretical” approach grained currency. Merrick was, however, like a duck swimming in a pond of oil at UCLA. The culture of LA and UCLA were vastly different from Uganda or England where he was raised as a Jewish child in a ghetto (Walz 2010). 

As we grew closer, I sensed his loneliness. Jane, my wife of five months, and I invited him and his family (then Eunice, Tessa, and Sheba) over to our small apartment in West LA for dinner (a Mexican meal as I remember). He and Eunice had trouble putting Tessa and Sheba to sleep, so Merrick took them out to the car and drove them around the block several times to put them to sleep. This became a routine during the several times his lovely family visited us. This was the beginning of an enduring friendship with a man who was like a father to me, certainly an intellectual father.

Our relationship bloomed to the point where he encouraged us to interrupt our studies and work and come to Uganda to study and teach. Jane was as enthusiastic as I was and we quickly agreed, provided we could fine the means. How we got to Uganda is a long story (see Kusimba and Pikirayi 2020), but it finally ended with our safe arrival in Entebbe shortly after Idi Amin, under orders from Prime Minister Obote, attacked the Lubiri (palace of the Kabaka of Buganda Kingdom) and chased King Freddie from his throne. It was tense time, with military police everywhere. Lacking housing, Merrick generously welcomed us into his home for a week until housing on campus could be arranged.

Jane soon secured a position teaching at the relocated Lubiri High School while I enrolled in courses and began work as a TA for Merrick. He taught an introductory course on East African History, which included a large component about the archaeology of the region. I supplemented a very modest TA income with part time work in the Uganda Museum analyzing ceramics from Merrick’s excavations at Bigo, the huge earthworks site in west-central Uganda. Merrick also taught a two-term graduate course in African Prehistory. 

The program was rigorous—a weekly research paper for each of my three courses. Meanwhile, Merrick expected us to take advantage of visiting scholars like Lucy Mair and Mary Douglas, not to mention field trips with visitors. In short, it was an exciting and vital experience that stretched me thin. Merrick’s expectations would sometimes exceed my capacities—one memory is vivid. Roland Oliver, with whom Merrick had a deferential relationship, popped in for a weekend visit to Bigo. Merrick wanted me to accompany them, but I had three papers due early the next week and a wife who was beginning to wonder if I lived only in the library and museum. I met Merrick and the scowling Oliver at the Land Rover to make my genuine excuses and was greeted with a cold response. The next week, Merrick called me into his office and shared his disappointment. My failure to make the ad hoc trip with the eminent Prof. had been an embarrassment; I had let him down.

After that experience, I was much more careful to heed Merrick’s advice when it came to field trips and our relationship once against became warm and intimate. The second term of study was life-changing, with field trips to many destinations that we had already studied—the Sirikwa holes of western Kenya, studied by Merrick’s first student, John Sutton; the palace of the Kingdom of Bunyoro, including an audience with the Mukama (King); the Nsongezi Stone Age site (Glenn Cole, Field Museum) and Kansyore Island where Suzannah Chapman had excavated; the Kingdom of Karagwe and its royal iron regalia; and, Buhaya where we visited rock art sites studied by another student, James Chapman. The last locale, with its beautiful rolling hills overlooking Lake Victoria captured my imagination. It was the place where, three years later, I would reside for two years as I conducted oral tradition and archaeological research for my PhD. I am forever grateful to Merrick for leading me there, where the Haya people guided and instructed me in the ways that they viewed and constructed history and where I subsequently conducted research until 1984, and then again from 2008 to 2019.

Jane and I left Makerere in late 1966, electing to return to UCLA to complete my MA and she to resume her teaching career. We left with deep reluctance and tears, embracing Merrick with an affection that would last our lifetimes. As I moved on to PhD studies in African history and archaeology at Northwestern, it was always with Merrick’s inspiration. Before I embarked for field work in Buhaya, I followed Merrick’s advice to acquire African-based field experience and took up his invitation in September of 1968 to join Colin Flight, who was excavating at Kitampo rock shelter site in north-central Ghana; there I helped Colin and conducted the first flotation in Africa, documenting late 2nd millennium BCE palm nuts. I spent three exciting months there and in Legon interacting with Merrick before beginning my field work in Tanzania, early 1969. When I took my first teaching position at Brown University, Merrick’s voice always resonated in my own teaching and research. When I assumed the position of Director of African Studies at the University of Florida, our paths once again intersected in the early 1990s when Merrick was Director of African Studies at UCLA, a program that had once nurtured me. We met regularly for several years at the African Studies Association meetings, sharing stories about families and research. During the ensuing years, we regularly touched base by long phone calls and by sharing publications. His mentorship was always present in his excitement over new ideas. 

One of the fondest memories of Merrick was his visit as a Distinguished Lecturer in African Archaeology in our annual series at the University of Florida in 1996 (picture above). His schedule was organized by excited students; he turned on his extraordinary charm and had senior graduate students doting on his every word. It was a smashing success, the best of the best in a long line of eminent Africanist scholars. During the following years, I have been, appropriately I believe, unstinting in my praise of his intellectual leadership in African archaeology. (see Kusimba and Pikirayi 2020 193-197, 205). He stands tall, an inspiration to all who had the privilege of studying with him, talking with him, having a cup of tea with him, meeting him for only a brief moment. He endures in all of us.

Peter Schmidt

Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of Florida
Extraordinary Professor of Archaeology, University of Pretoria, RSA.

References

Kusimba, C., and Pikirayi, I. 2020. A Conversation with Peter Ridgway Schmidt, the Ṣango of African Archaeology. African Archaeological Review, 37, 185-223.

Walz, J. 2010. An interview with Merrick Posnansky [Africanist and historical archaeologist]. African Archaeological Review, 27(3), 177-210.