PhD Graduate Dr. Tomos Evans Successfully Defends Dissertation
Congratulations to recent Anthropology PhD graduate Dr. Tomos Evans! On November 12, 2024, Tomos successfully defended his dissertation, “Earthwork Landscapes of Protection and Regulation: Chronology, Construction, and Meaning at Sungbo’s Eredo, Africa’s Largest Known Structure.” Tomos’s research focused on the history and archaeology of Sungbo's Eredo in southern Nigeria, a 100-mile-long linear earthwork of banks and ditches, and the largest known anthropogenic structure in Africa. Drawing upon archival, archaeological, and ethnographic evidence, the project investigated when, how, and why this massive, monumental landscape was constructed and used, and the evolving ways in which it was engaged with and conceptualized by Ijebu-Yoruba communities in the region.
In addition to internal funding, Tomos received several highly competitive external grants and fellowships allowing him to undertake several field seasons in southwest Nigeria, as well as archival research across the US, UK, and South Africa. These included: the Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, the Emslie Horniman Fund administered by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, and grants from the American Philosophical Society and Explorers Club Washington Group. He completed the final months of his Ph.D. work in Washington, D.C., under a Junior Fellowship in Garden and Landscape Studies at Harvard’s Dumbarton Oaks, and a Predoctoral Fellowship at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, which afforded opportunities to engage with a range of materials pertaining to Ijebu-Yoruba, and wider West African, art, architecture, and landscape.
In January 2025, Tomos will be starting a new position as Assistant Professor of the Archaeology and Art History of Africa and the African Diaspora World (tenure track) at Washington University at St. Louis. It is a joint appointment between the Art History and Archaeology (AHA), and African and African-American Studies (AFAS) departments, for which he will be continuing his research on the archaeology of West African earthwork landscapes and the art history of southern Nigeria, and teaching and researching African and African diasporic art, archaeology, and mortuary landscapes.
Tomos wishes to extend personal thanks to the faculty, staff, and graduate community at William & Mary’s Department of Anthropology, as well as to numerous friends and colleagues in Nigeria, the US, UK, and elsewhere who supported him throughout his Ph.D. He is especially grateful to his doctoral committee: Drs. Neil Norman, Gérard Chouin, Grey Gundaker, and Akinwumi Ogundiran; his main fieldwork collaborators: Emmanuel Adeara, Stanley Nwosu (University of Pittsburgh), Farouk Ajibade (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), Olatunde Ayodokun, and Ibrahim Sadiq; the supportive community of faculty, staff, and students at Augustine University, Ilara-Epe, where he was based during his fieldwork, especially the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Christopher Odetunde, and Registrar, Mrs. Margaret Aziba; the Alara of Ilara-Epe Oba Olufolarin Olukayode Ogunsanwo and his chiefs; and the Ife-Sungbo Archaeological Project: Gérard Chouin, Adisa Ogunfolakan, Joseph Ayodokun, and other project members for their support. Last but not least, Tomos is immensely grateful to Mrs. Lisa Darling who very kindly gave him access to Dr. Patrick Darling’s papers. Patrick had a tremendous impact on the scholarship on Sungbo’s Eredo, and Tomos’s dissertation was dedicated to him, as well as to Mr. Moyib Olusegun – one of Nigeria’s greatest active field archaeologists who worked at the Eredo, and tragically lost to us in 2021.
