2024 - Heritage and Silver: Amazigh Engagements with Islamic Coins in Morocco
Dr. Sara Ann Knutson’s project investigates how Amazigh communities in Morocco have historically incorporated Islamic coins into silver jewelry and other objects, treating them not simply as currency, but as carriers of meaning, memory, and heritage. Coins from as early as the Umayyad period appear integrated into elaborate silver assemblages, reflecting local interpretations of the Islamic past.
Combining archaeological, anthropological, and ethnographic methods, Dr. Knutson will trace how these traditions evolved, what values coins carried, and how communities continue to adapt them today. She will document both museum-held historical assemblages—especially in Paris’ Musée du Quai Branly—and living traditions still practiced in Marrakech, Agadir, Taroudant, and Tiznit.
The project highlights an often-overlooked aspect of Islamic material culture: the active, creative ways in which local communities interact with, repurpose, and reinterpret objects from the past. It will result in an open-access educational resource, helping to bridge academic, museum, and community understandings of these traditions.
Dr. Knutson, an anthropological archaeologist based at the University of British Columbia, builds on her previous Barakat Trust-funded pilot study. This expanded project will contribute meaningfully to both scholarship and community heritage work in Morocco.
