Some of humanity's earliest ancestors lived in southern Africa and evidence from sites there has inspired key debates on human origins and the emergence of complex cognition. Building on its rich rock art heritage, archaeologists have developed theoretical work that continues to influence rock art studies worldwide, with the relationship between archaeological and anthropological data central to understanding past hunter-gatherer, pastoralist, and farmer communities alike. New work on pre-colonial states contests models that previously explained their emergence via external trade, while the transformations wrought by European colonialism are being rewritten to emphasise Indigenous agency, feeding into efforts to decolonise the discipline itself. Inhabited by humans longer than almost anywhere else and with an unusually varied, complex past, southern Africa thus has much to contribute to archaeology worldwide. In this revised and updated edition, Peter Mitchell provides a comprehensive and extensively illustrated synthesis of its archaeology over more than three million years.
In this new edition, Peter Mitchell provides a comprehensive synthesis of Southern Africa's archaeology over more than 3 million years. It includes new work that addresses pre-colonial states and the transformations wrought by European colonialism, emphasising Indigenous agency and feeding into efforts to decolonise the discipline.
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This revised and updated edition provides a comprehensive synthesis of Southern Africa's archaeology over more than 3 million years.
List of illustrations; List of tables; Acknowledgements;
1.
Introduction;
2. Frameworks;
3. Contexts;
4. Origins;
5. A cognitive
revolution;
6. Hunter-gatherers of the late Pleistocene;
7. Archaeologies of
the Pleistocene/Holocene transition;
8. Hunting, gathering, intensifying:
forager histories in the Holocene before 2000 BP;
9. Taking stock: herders
and hunter-gatherers;
10. Farmers and foragers: the first millennium;
11.
Forming states: the Zimbabwe culture and its neighbours;
12. Recent farmers
and hunter-gatherers in southernmost Africa;
13. Colonisation, conquest,
resistance;
14. Perspectives and prospects; Glossary; References; Index.
Peter Mitchell is Professor of African Archaeology at the University of Oxford, Tutor and Fellow of Archaeology of St Hugh's College, Oxford, and Research Associate at the Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witswatersrand. A past president of the Society of African Archaeologists, he is co-editor of Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa.
