The Archaeology of Southern Africa
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.
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The Archaeology of Southern Africa
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.
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The Archaeology of Southern Africa

The Archaeology of Southern Africa

by Peter Mitchell
The Archaeology of Southern Africa

The Archaeology of Southern Africa

by Peter Mitchell

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781009324755
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication date: 06/06/2024
Series: Cambridge World Archaeology
Edition description: 2nd ed.
Pages: 584
Product dimensions: 6.97(w) x 9.92(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

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.
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