The aim of the Crossroads project was to document material culture past and present from a 100 km-long stretch of the Niger River Valley which was subject to conflicting historical descriptions of its medieval landscape and which sits on some of the world's major axes of communication.
Excavations showed that the region was densely occupied in medieval times, with important ramifications for wider questions around the power base of precolonial polities, linkages between past and present cultural groups, communications along the Niger and across the Sahara, and the role of disease, environmental change, and enslavement.
[7] The project was presented in the exhibition Crossroads of Empires[8] at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, as well as a co-hosted conference in Cotonou, many publications[9] and outreach events in the source communities for the restitution of the research outcomes.
[10] From 2015 to 2018, Anne Haour co-led a Leverhulme Trust funded project with Alastair Grant (School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia), exploring the maritime and terrestrial networks which linked the Indian Ocean and West Africa through the trade in cowrie shells.
These two aspects of the research project also involved a subsequent phase of study of the material collected, including physical handling, description, analysis and measurement, as well as cataloguing and mapping.
The thorough study of cowries’ characteristics and features (shell length, teeth, shape) has resulted in the development of reliable criteria to differentiate the various species in most archaeological samples,[12] which eventually helps highlight the connections of medieval West Africa with the rest of the world.
[13] Interviews with Maldivian informants also helped document the use and value of cowries while situating their exploitation alongside other cultural practices such as fishing, boatbuilding, coir making, thatch weaving and local histories.
[14] Outputs include publications,[12][13] two UNESCO briefings[15][16] and a conference on the heritage of the western Indian Ocean organised with John Mack and colleagues at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts.
[24] Throughout her career, Anne Haour has established long-term collaborations in a range of African countries, notably in Senegal, Benin, Ghana, Mali, Niger, South Africa, Morocco, Tanzania, Kenya and Sudan.
The project was conducted at the secondary school City Academy Norwich and aimed to challenge Year 7 pupils’ stereotypes of Africa and also to raise their aspirations by giving them a taste of university-style lectures and a chance to design their own tour around the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts.
The website of Depicting Africa[28] makes available the didactic materials used during these lessons, with the aim of serving as a teaching resource for other schools working on stereotypes related to identity and religion.