A landmark introduction to the archaeology of Africa that challenges misconceptions & claims about Africa's past and teaches students how to evaluate these claims.
Provides an unprecedented and exciting introduction to the archaeology of Africa
Challenges misconceptions & claims about Africa's past and teaches students how to evaluate these claims
Includes a thoughtful introduction that explores the contexts that have shaped archaeological knowledge of Africa's past
Lays out research questions that have shaped the contours of African archaeology
Comprised of chapters specifically written for this volume by prominent archaeologists with regional and topical expertise
Series Editors' Preface vii
Figures viii
Tables x
Notes on Contributors xi
1 Introduction: Changing Perspectives on Africa's Pasts 1
Ann Brower Stahl
2 Barbarous Tribes and Unrewarding Gyrations? The Changing Role of Ethnographic Imagination in African Archaeology 24
Paul J. Lane
3 Discord after Discard: Reconstructing Aspects of Oldowan Hominin Behavior 55
Thomas Plummer
4 The Middle and Upper Pleistocene African Record for the Biological and Behavioral Origins of Modern Humans 93
Curtis W. Marean and Zelalem Assefa Copyrighted Material
5 A Late Pleistocene Archive of Life at the Coast, Klasies River 130
H. J. Deacon and Sarah Wurz
6 Modeling Later Stone Age Societies in Southern Africa 150
Peter Mitchell
7 Holocene "Aquatic" Adaptations in North Tropical Africa 174
Augustin F. C. Holl
8 Pastoralism and its Consequences 187
Diane Gifford-Gonzalez
9 Holocene Occupations of the Forest and Savanna 225
Joanna Casey
10 The Romance of Farming: Plant Cultivation and Domestication in Africa 249
Katharina Neumann
11 Metallurgy and its Consequences 276
S.Terry Childs and Eugenia W. Herbert
12 The Bantu Problem and African Archaeology 301
Manfred K. H. Eggert
13 The Archaeology of Sub-Saharan Urbanism: Cities and their Countrysides 327
Adria LaViolette and Jeffrey Fleisher
14 Interaction, Marginalization, and the Archaeology of the Kalahari 353
Andrew Reid
15 Southern Africa and the East African Coast 378
Gilbert Pwiti
16 Mosaics and Interactions: East Africa, 2000 b.p. to the Present 392
Chapurukha M. Kusimba and Sibel B. Kusimba
17 From Pottery Groups to Ethnic Groups in Central Africa 420
Pierre de Maret
18 Two Thousand Years of West African History 441
Scott MacEachern Index 467
