ABSTRACT
West African archaeologists, like many colleagues elsewhere, provide five basic cultural services. They engage in research to recover artefactual materials and analyse and interpret finds to aid our understanding of past ways of life. They curate and display artefacts for public education and entertainment. They help to establish a cultural-chronological framework. Finally, they increase people’s awareness of their cultural heritage. Thus the West African archaeologist is situated-both formally and informally-within cultural education, which I define as the development of taste and the creation of awareness and appreciation of the national cultural heritage. Its aim is knowledge of the past for its operational value in the present, and as a source of hope for the future (Okita 1981, 1985).
