Online Exhibition: Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, & Exchange Across Medieval Saharan Africa

Posted byRoisin AstellPosted inExhibitions, Online ExhibitionsTags:, , ,

Journey to a medieval world with Africa at its center.

Travel along routes crossing the Sahara Desert to a time when West African gold fueled expansive trade and drove the movement of people, culture, and religious beliefs. Caravans of Gold is the first major exhibition addressing the scope of Saharan trade and the shared history of West Africa, the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe from the eighth to sixteenth centuries. Weaving stories about interconnected histories, the exhibition showcases the objects and ideas that connected at the crossroads of the medieval Sahara and celebrates West Africa’s historic and underrecognized global significance.

Journey across the various sections of the online exhibition here.

The exhibition Caravans of Gold has been developed in consultation with an international group of advisors, each experts in a specialized area that contributes to the big picture that the exhibition conveys. It has also emerged in partnership with institutions and individuals in Mali, Morocco, and Nigeria. In the exhibition and the interviews below we hear directly from the individuals whose work and perspective shaped the exhibition – you can watch some of these interviews here.

Published by Roisin Astell

Roisin Astell received a First Class Honours in History of Art at the University of York (2014), under the supervision of Dr Emanuele Lugli. After spending a year learning French in Paris, Roisin then completed an MSt. in Medieval Studies at the University of Oxford (2016), where she was supervised by Professor Gervase Rosser and Professor Martin Kauffmann. In 2017, Roisin was awarded a CHASE AHRC studentship as a doctoral candidate at the University of Kent’s Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, under the supervision of Dr Emily Guerry.

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