Merrick Posnansky
Merrick Posnansky
Professor Emeritus
Biography
In Memoriam: Merrick Posnansky
We are sad to announce that Merrick Posnansky, Professor Emeritus in the Departments of History and Anthropology, passed away on September 29, 2024, at the age of 93. Merrick joined the UCLA faculty in 1977 after spending two decades in Kenya, Uganda, and Ghana, where he dedicated himself to research and teaching.
Professor Alpers, working in the same field as Professor Posnansky, shared his memories:
Remembering Merrick Posnansky
I first met Merrick Posnansky in September 1966 at the Fourth Symposium of the East African Academy in Kampala, Uganda, where he was Director of the African Studies Program at Makerere University College. A year later we met again at a conference on “East Africa and the Orient” held at Nairobi, Kenya. Somewhere along the line we cemented our friendship and established a connection that in 1976 brought Merrick to our Department of History at UCLA. But it was not until 2013, at my retirement ceremony, that Merrick disclosed to me and those in attendance that he had been the reader for my first published article, which appeared in the Uganda Journal in 1965. I should have figured this out for myself, as Merrick was at that time Editor of the Uganda Journal. But I had not, and Merrick kept mum about his hand in advancing my fledgling academic career for the next half century. This until then unspoken revelation says much about Merrick’s gentle nature and his modesty.
In Los Angeles, Merrick joined forces with Chris Ehret to establish the reputation of UCLA as the preeminent center for training historians of early African history. Joining the methodologies of historical archaeology and historical linguistics, together they trained several of the leading figures in the next generation of early African historians. Their co-edited publication, The Archaeological and Linguistic Reconstruction of African History (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982) was an influential pioneering volume. In his role as a UNESCO consultant Merrick was able to visit Somalia, where he recruited two excellent Ph.D. students from Somalia and laid the groundwork for a larger exchange program with the School of Education at the Somali National University.
Merrick and Eunice, until her passing in 2003, were always gracious hosts and engaging guests at the African history parties that our field organized every year. Merrick was also an avid gardener. In the backyard of their Encino home, Merrick and Eunice had an enormous passion fruit vine that produced so much fruit that he sometimes sold it at the local farmers’ market!
In all my interactions with Merrick, both professional and personal, his personal integrity and great experience in Africa marked our relationship, as I believe it did for everyone with whom he engaged. He will be remembered with great respect and fondness by all who knew him.
Ned Alpers
Research
The archaeology of state formation and urban growth in Ghana and Togo; archaeology of the African Diaspora; cultural conservation and archaeological education in tropical Africa; postage stamps and national cultural policy.
Publications
The Hani ethnoarchaeological survey, initiated in 1970, involves monitoring daily and seasonal activities in a Ghanaian traditional community of around 2000 peasant cultivators some 270 miles northwest of the capital. This twenty-five year longitudinal study facilitated the observation of processes of change and the attitudes of the villagers to major environmental, economic, and political changes. Hani is the successor village to the medieval and early modern town of Begho (ca. AD 1100-1800) which with a probable population of over 10,000 was one of the largest towns in the southern part of West Africa at the time of the arrival of the Portuguese in 1471. Excavations were conducted at the site from 1970 to 1979. Conclusions have been drawn as to the effects of different types of change. The work, initiated while Dr. Posnansky was Professor of Archaeology at the University of Ghana, has continued in close cooperation with former colleagues and students of that university. The project is now in the writing up stage and a summary account appears in the African Archaeological review for 2002.
