For over fifty years, archaeological research in Africa has been done at the Institute of Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Cologne. In addition to the rock art research started in Namibia in 1963, Northeastern Africa established itself as a second focus region in the early 1980s - both areas that had been largely "terra incognita" of prehistoric research until then.
The focus of the various projects (including the DFG projects
Rock Art in the higher Brandberg,
B.O.S. and
SFB 389 ACACIA) in addition to the rock art was especially on human-environment relationships.
The long tradition of Cologne Africa research manifests itself not only in manifold / a large number of publications but also in an extensive collection of finds, slides, drawings and texts. These are located in the
Forschungsstelle Afrika
which has existed since 1986 at the Institute of Prehistoric Archaeology of the University of Cologne.
Since 2012, the African Archaeology Archive Cologne (AAArC) has made it its mission to digitize the archives and documentation available there and make it available in the object database
ARACHNE.
Meanwhile, large parts of the inventories have already been digitized and are available online, the deeper exploration and contextualization of the objects represented in ARACHNE is expected in the course of the coming years.
The project gets funded by the German Research Foundation.
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Terms of use
The African Archaeology Archive Cologne (AAArC) is a research archive / tool and open for all researchers, students,
teachers and the general public world-wide. The use of AAArC is free, full use can optionally
require registration with Arachne. The users of AAArC are however required to accept and follow
the terms of use. By using the AAArC page each user acknowledges that he / she has read and agreed to
the following terms of use.
Access possibilities
As a part of iDAI-Welt the content of AAArC is licensed under the following
Creative Commons License:
Creative Commons – Attribution – Non-Commercial – No Derivatives
The license agreements of the Creative Commons License apply to those contents of the AAArC portal which are visualised on our website and are only accessible there. Contents, which cannot be retrieved directly via the Arachne web site (e.g. high-resolution printable scans), are subject to different regulations that do not pertain to the Creative Commons License.
For research purposes, digital copies of data visible only in reduced resolution can be viewed in full resolution after registration.
High resolution versions of the archived data for publication or presentation or access to the original documents in the archive of the Institute of Prehistoric Archaeology, African Archaeology can be granted upon special request. Due to data protection, not visualized data can be accessed upon personal request only.
Please contact:
African Archaeology Archive Cologne (AAArC)
Forschungsstelle Afrika (African Archaeology)
Jennerstr. 8
D-50823 Cologne
Phone: +49 – (0)221 – 55 66 80
Fax: +49 (0)221 – 55 02 303
Email: aaarc-online@uni-koeln.de
Citing from AAArC:
In AAArC, every object is identified by a unique permalink that is shown below the title of the object.
When citing from AAArC, every user is obliged to quote the relevant permalink. AAArC is an online tool that
is regularly complemented, extended, and revised. For this reason it is essential to quote the
permalink in combination with the date of access. The structure of the citation has been defined
as follows: permalink (Month Day, Year). For example: https://arachne.dainst.org/entity/5078790
(accessed June 6, 2016)
Liability of the user
Each user is liable for damage due to the illegal or improper use of the research data accessible at AAArC.
Each user is responsible for any damage resulting from foreign use of its own access due to intent or gross negligence of the user.
Each user idemnifies AAArC from all third party claims, damages and / or other liabilities arising from illegal or improper behavior of the user.
