Lawrence Barham &: Peter Mitchell. The first Africans: African archaeology from the earliest toolmakers to most recent foragers.

Lawrence Barham &: Peter Mitchell. The first Africans: African archaeology from the earliest toolmakers to most recent foragers. LAWRENCE BARHAM &: PETER MITCHELL. The first Africans: Africanarchaeology The continent of Africa has the longest record of human activity of any part of the world and along with its geographical extent, it contains an enormous archaeological resource. Scholars have studied Egyptology for centuries but archaeologists have only paid serious attention to the rest from the earliest toolmakers to most recent foragers.xviii+602 pages, 117 illustrations, 5 tables. 2008. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press Cambridge University Press (known colloquially as CUP) is a publisher given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII in 1534, and one of the two privileged presses (the other being Oxford University Press). ; 978-0-521-84796-4 hardback 50 [pounds sterling] &$99; 978-0-521-61265-4 paperback 18.99 [pounds sterling] & $36.99. Syntheses of African archaeology were relatively uncommon at onetime but in recent years there have been increasing attempts to escapethe particularism par��tic��u��lar��ism?n.1. Exclusive adherence to, dedication to, or interest in one's own group, party, sect, or nation.2. that formerly characterised the subject and to presentthe data in a continental or semicontinental context. Peter Mitchell hasbeen one of those who have made such contributions and in this new bookhe has collaborated with Lawrence Barham to produce a study of Africanhunter-gatherers from the earliest times up to the present. This is amighty task indeed, tackled in eleven chapters packed with information.Barham appears to have been mainly responsible for Chapters 3-6 (up toabout 70000 years ago) and Mitchell for Chapters 7-10 (since about 70000 years ago), with Chapters 1-2 and 11 written jointly. The two mainparts of the book have different approaches: Chapters 3-6 deal with theevolution of human attributes such as tool-use, bipedalism, meat-eating,the use of fire, symbolic thought, and so on; while Chapters 7-10 surveythe detailed archaeological data for later hunter-gatherers, togetherwith issues of continental relevance. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The varied information on which the book is based, the history ofrelevant research in Africa, the problems of chronological frameworks,and the book's themes and structure are introduced in Chapter 1,while Chapter 2 discusses geographical, ecological, and chronologicalmatters. Thereafter, we contact the first tool-users and tool-makers(Chapter 3), early Pleistocene Early Pleistocene (also known as Lower Pleistocene, or Calabrian) is a subdivision of the Pleistocene Epoch of the Geologic time scale. The beginning of the stage is defined at 1.806 �� 0.005 Ma (million years ago). technologies and societies (Chapter 4),mid-Pleistocene foragers (Chapter 5) and their successors (Chapter 6reviews the period from c.430 000 to c.70 000 years ago). Chapter 7takes us to the end of the Pleistocene, and Chapter 8 examines thetransition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene. Mid-Holoceneintensification is the subject of Chapter 9, leading to Chapter 10 whichdiscusses the relationships between foragers and farmers over the lastfew thousand years. Hunter-gatherers and their descendants in thepresent, as well as archaeologists' responsibilities to them is theconcern of the final chapter (11); it also summarises the main themes ofthe book and concludes by suggesting objectives for future research. The461 pages of text are then followed by 12 pages of Notes, (referred toin the text by superscript Any letter, digit or symbol that appears above the line. For example, 10 to the 9th power is written with the 9 in superscript (109). Contrast with subscript. numbers), a 4-page Glossary, 107 pages ofReferences, and 15 pages of Index. Harvard referencing For the use of Harvard referencing in Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Harvard referencingHarvard referencing is a format for writing and organizing citations of source materials. is usedthroughout the text and is very detailed. The book is well produced withvery few typographical ty��pog��ra��phy?n. pl. ty��pog��ra��phies1. a. The art and technique of printing with movable type.b. The composition of printed material from movable type.2. errors, although its maps are over-reduced,making some of them difficult to use, and some photographs are of poorquality. The text is also disrupted by the inclusion of'insets', similar to the 'boxes' now so common instudent texts but in this case identified only by a narrow enclosingline and in some cases running over more than one page. Occasionallythese insets appear so close together in the text that they confuserather than enlighten the reader. It is apparent that this book represents an impressive scholarlyachievement. A particularly important part of that achievement is theway in which the authors have drawn on a wide variety of data thatincludes primate studies, genetics, palaeoanthropology, linguistics,isotopic studies of both palaeoclimate and human diet, sociobiology,ethnography, and other sources, as well as the results of diversearchaeological analyses. The outcome is a book that is clearly intendedfor academics and their students, in archaeology as well as in relateddisciplines, combining the functions of text-book and work of reference.Nevertheless, it is clear that the authors intended that it should alsobe read in its entirety, because it addresses themes and issues ratherthan data alone; but this will take a determined reader. Without doubtthis is an important book. It reaches out to a new African New African is an English-language monthly news magazine based in London. Published since 1966, it is read by many people across the African continent and the African diaspora. archaeologythat will develop in future years. This new approach uses Marine IsotopeStages as its main chronological framework and Clark's modalterminology for its lithic technology In archeology, Lithic Technology refers to a broad array of techniques and styles to produce usable tools from various types of stone. The earliest stone tools were recovered from modern Ethiopia and were dated to between two-million and three-million years old. , rejects progressivist approaches,questions the utility of the forager/farmer dichotomy, and embraces astaggering variety of evidence. In the process the book rejects theepochalistic model of Africa's past and questions the naming ofarchaeological assemblages. Yet the authors are still constrained by thechains of past literature: they repeatedly lapse into terminology like'Middle Stone Age', 'Iron Age', or even'Pastoral Neolithic', and retain conventional nomenclature formany stone industries. It seems that we have not yet arrived at a newAfrican archaeology but this book has taken a significant step in thatdirection. GRAHAM CONNAH School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian NationalUniversity, Canberra, Australia (Email: graham.connah@effect.net.au)