Sub-Saharan Africa - Antiquities, Africa - Anthropology & Sociology, Sub-Saharan Africa - Archaeology, Prehistoric Antiquities, Ancient Cultures - Archaeology, Hunting and Gathering Societies

The First Africans

Name: The First Africans
Author: Peter J. Mitchell
ISBN: 9780521612654

by Peter J. Mitchell, Larry S. Barham

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Overview

Africa has the longest record - some 2.5 million years-of human occupation of any continent on earth. For nearly all of this time, its inhabitants have made tools from stone and have acquired their food from its rich wild plant and animal resources. Archaeological research in Africa is crucial for understanding the origins of humans and the diversity of hunter-gather ways of life. This book is provides an up-to-date, comprehensive synthesis of the record left by Africa's earliest hominid inhabitants and hunter-gatherers. It combines the insights of archaeology with those of other disciplines, such as genetics and paleoenvironmental science. African evidence is critical to important debates, such as the origins of stone toolmaking, the emergence of recognizably modern forms of cognition and behavior, and the expansion of successive hominids from Africa to other parts of the world. Africa's enormous ecological diversity and exceptionally long history also provide an unparalleled opportunity to examine the impact of environment change on human populations. More recently, African foragers have been viewed as archetypes of the hunter-gatherer way of life, a view that is debated in this volume. Also examined is the relevance of African hunter-gatherers for understanding the development and spread of food production and the social and ideological significance of rock art.

About the Author:
Lawrence Barham is Senior Lecturer in the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool

About the Author:
Peter Mitchell is Professor of African Archaeology at the University of Oxford and Tutor and Fellow in Archaeology at St. Hugh'sCollege, Oxford

Synopsis

A synthesis of the record left by Africa's earliest inhabitants combining archaeology, genetics and palaeo-environmental science.

About the Author, Peter J. Mitchell

Lawrence Barham is Professor in the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool. A scholar of the evolution of symbolic behaviours, he is the author of The Middle Stone Age of Zambia and co-author of Human Roots: Africa and Asia in the Middle Pleistocene. Barham serves on the Council of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and is editor of the journal Before Farming: The Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers.

Peter Mitchell is Professor of African Archaeology at the University of Oxford and Tutor and Fellow in Archaeology at St Hugh's College, Oxford. He is the author of The Archaeology of Southern Africa and African Connections: Archaeological Perspectives on Africa and the Wider World, as well as co-editor of Researching Africa's Past. Mitchell is Honorary Secretary of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and a member of the editorial boards of several leading journals, including Antiquity, World Archaeology and the South African Archaeological Bulletin.