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The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology

Online ISBN:
9780191750090
Print ISBN:
9780199569885
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology

Peter Mitchell (ed.),
Peter Mitchell
(ed.)
School of Archaeology, Oxford University and University of the Witwatersrand
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Peter Mitchell, Professor of African Archaeology, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, United Kingdom; Research Associate, School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

Paul J. Lane (ed.)
Paul J. Lane
(ed.)
Department of Archaeology, University of York
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Paul J. Lane Jennifer Ward Oppenheimer Professor of the Deep History and Archaeology of Africa at the University of Cambridge, UK, and Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Geography, Archaeology, and Environmental Studies, Witwatersrand University, S

Published online:
5 September 2013
Published in print:
4 July 2013
Online ISBN:
9780191750090
Print ISBN:
9780199569885
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology presents a series of articles by colleagues working across the continent for incorporation within a volume that sets African archaeology within its theoretical, methodological, and historical context and simultaneously spans the entire history of human culture on the African continent. The book is organised into seven parts. After the Introduction, Part II examines how African archaeology emerged as a recognisable element within the broader discipline. Part III addresses the archaeological, fossil, and genetic evidence for early human origins from the beginning of the hominin line and the earliest archaeological evidence to the evolution of the one surviving hominin species, Homo sapiens. Part IV considers the variation evident across time and space in the ways in which people structured their material and cognitive worlds while securing food and raw materials by exploiting a wide range of plants and animals. Part V shifts to societies that developed a radically different approach to their subsistence needs, obtaining food from many different domesticated animals and plants combined together in a diversity of ways. After introductory articles considering the archaeology of those communities, as well as the archaeologies of African urbanism and state formation, the remaining articles of Part VI address the relations between town and state, élites and non-élites, and Africa and other parts of the world. Part VII examines how African communities participated in the creation of the globalised world in which they now live.

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