Africa has the longest and arguably the most diverse archaeological record of any of the continents. It is where the human lineage first evolved and from where Homo sapiens spread across the rest of the world. Later, it witnessed novel experiments in food-production and unique trajectories to
urbanism and the organisation of large communities that were not always structured along strictly hierarchical lines. Millennia of engagement with societies in other parts of the world confirm Africa's active participation in the construction of the modern world, while the richness of its history,
ethnography, and linguistics provide unusually powerful opportunities for constructing interdisciplinary narratives of Africa's past.
This Handbook provides a comprehensive and up-to-date synthesis of African archaeology, covering the entirety of the continent's past from the beginnings
of human evolution to the archaeological legacy of European colonialism. As well as covering almost all periods and regions of the continent, it includes a mixture of key methodological and theoretical issues and debates, and situates the subject's contemporary practice within the discipline's
history and the infrastructural challenges now facing its practitioners. Bringing together essays on all these themes from over seventy contributors, many of them living and working in Africa, it offers a highly accessible, contemporary account of the subject for use by scholars and students of not
only archaeology, but also history, anthropology, and other disciplines.
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Part I: Introduction
1. Peter Mitchell and Paul Lane: Introducing African Archaeology
Part II: Doing African Archaeology: Theory, Method, Practice
2. Graham Connah: Archaeological Practice in Africa: A
Historical Perspective
3. Peter Schmidt: Oral History, Oral Traditions, and Archaeology: The Application of Structural Analyses
4. Roger Blench: Language, Linguistics, and Archaeology: Their Integration in the Study of African Prehistory
5. Scott MacEachern: Genetics and
Archaeology
6. Ceri Ashley: Archaeology and Migration in Africa
7. Diane Lyons: Ethnoarchaeological Research in Africa
8. Christian Tryon: Studying African Stone Tools
9. Olivier Gosselain and Alexandre Livingstone-Smith): A Century of Ceramic Studies in Africa
10. Shadrack
Chirikure: The Archaeology of African Metalworking
11. Benjamin Smith: Rock Art Research in Africa
12. Timothy Insoll: The Archaeology of Ritual and Religions in Africa
13. Stepahnie Wynne-Jones: Material Culture, Space, and Identity
14. Jeff Fleisher: Landscape Archaeology
15.
Colin Breen: Maritime Archaeology in Africa
16. Noemie Arazi and Ibrahima Thiaw: Managing Africa's Archaeological Heritage
17. Chapurukha Kusimba and Carla Klehm: Museums and Public Archaeology in Africa
18. Amanda Esterhuysen and Paul Lane: Archaeology and Education
19. John Giblin:
Politics, Ideology, and Indigenous Perspectives
Part III: Becoming Human
20. Robert Foley: Hominin Evolution as the Context for African Prehistory
21. Manuel Dominguez-Rodrigo: The Oldowan: Early Hominins and the Beginning of Human Culture
22. Mohamed Sahnouni, Sileshi Semaw
and Michael Rogers: The African Acheulean: An Archaeological Summary
23. Marta Lahr: Genetic and Fossil Evidence for Modern Human Origins
24. Lawrence Barham: Beyond Modernity
Part IV: Hunters, Gatherers, and Intensifiers: The Diversity of African Foragers
25. Lyn Wadley:
Theoretical Frameworks for Understanding African Hunter-Gatherers
26. Marlize Lombard: Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa before 20,000 years ago
27. Laura Basell: The Middle Stone Age of Eastern Africa
28. Els Cornelissen: Hunting and Gathering in Africa's Tropical Forests at the end
of the Pleistocene and in the Early Holocene
29. Elena Garcea: Hunter-Gatherers of the Nile Valley and the Sahara before 12,000 years ago
30. Nick Barton and Abdeljalil Bouzouggar: Hunter-Gatherers of the Maghreb: 25,000-6000 years ago
31. Barbara Barich: Hunter-Gatherer-Fishers of the
Sahara and the Sahel 12,000-4000 years ago
32. Sibel Barut Kusimba: Hunter-Gatherer-Fishers of Eastern and South-Central Africa since 20,000 years ago
33. Peter Mitchell: Southern African Hunter-Gatherers of the last 25,000 years
Part V: Food for Thought: The Archaeology of African
Pastoralist and Farming Communities
34. Diane Gifford-Gonzalez and Olivier Hanotte: Domesticating Animals in Africa
35. Dorian Fuller and Elizabeth Hildebrand: Domesticating Plants in Africa
36. Savino Di Lernia: The Emergence and Spread of Herding in Northern Africa: A Critical
Reappraisal
37. Randi Haaland and Gunnar Haaland: Early Farming Societies Along the Nile
38. Peter Breunig: Pathways to Food-Production in the Sahel
39. Matthew Curtis: Archaeological Evidence for the Emergence of Food-Production in the Horn of Africa
40. Paul Lane: The Archaeology
of Pastoralism and Stock-Keeping in East Africa
41. Joanna Casey: The Stone to Metal Age in West Africa
42. Bertram Mapunda: The Appearance and Development of Metallurgy South of the Sahara
43. Pierre de Maret: Archaeologies of the Bantu Expansion
44. Karim Sadr: The Archaeology of
Herding in Southernmost Africa
45. Peter Mitchell: Early Farming Communities of Southern and South-Central Africa
46. Daryl Stump: The Archaeology of Agricultural Intensification in Africa
Part VI: Power, Prestige, and Consumption: African Towns and States and their
Neighbours
47. Paul Sinclair: The Archaeology of African Urbanism
48. Cameron Monroe: The Archaeology of the Pre-Colonial State in Africa
49. Matthew Davies: The Archaeology of Clan- and Lineage-Based Societies in Africa
50. Ian Shaw: Pharaonic Egypt
51. Derek Welsby: Kerma
and Kush and their Neighbours
52. Fares Moussa: Berber, Phoenicio-Punic, and Greek North Africa
53. Anna Leone and Fares Moussa: Roman Africa and the Sahara
54. David Edwards: Medieval and Post-Medieval States of the Nile Valley
55. David Phillipson: Complex Societies of the
Eritrean/Ethiopian Highlands and their Neighbours
56. Said Ennahid: States, Trade, and Ethnicities in the Maghrib
57. Kevin MacDonald: Complex Societies, Urbanism, and Trade in the Western Sahel
58. Detlef Gronenborn: States and Trade in the Central Sahel
59. Akin Ogundiran: Towns
and States of the West African Forest Belt
60. Pierre de Maret: Recent Farming Communities and States in the Congo Basin and its Environs
61. Andrew Reid: The Emergence of States in Great Lakes Africa
62. Adria Laviolette: The Swahili World
63. Innocent Pikirayi: The Zimbabwe Culture
and its Neighbours: Origins, Development, and Consequences of Social Complexity in Southern Africa
64. Alex Schoeman: Southern African Late Farming Communities
65. Chantal Radimilahy: Madagascar from Initial Settlement to the Growth of Kingdoms
Part VII: African Societies and the
Modern World System
66. Intisar El Zein: The Archaeology of the Ottoman Empire in Northern and Northeastern Africa
67. Natalie Swanepoel: Contexts of Interaction: The Archaeology of European Exploration and Expansion in Western and Southern Africa in Comparative Perspective
68.
Ibrahima Thiaw and François Richard: An archaeological Perspective on West Africa and the Post-1500 Atlantic World
69. Ken Kelly: Connecting the Archaeologies of the Atlantic World: Africa and the African Diasporas
70. Sarah croucher: The Archaeology of Colonial Encounters in Eastern
Africa
Index
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Peter Mitchell is Professor of African Archaeology, Tutor and Fellow at St Hugh's College, Oxford, and Honorary Research Associate, GAES, at the University of the Witwatersrand. From 2004 until 2006 he served as President of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists, and since 2006 has been
Honrary Secretary of the British Institute in Eastern Africa. Paul Lane is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of York and Honary Research Associate, GAES, at the University of the Witwatersrand. From 2008 to 2010 he served as President of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists.
