African Civilizations
An Archaeological Perspective

This new revised edition offers expanded coverage, new illustrations and an extended new list of references.

Graham Connah (Author)

9781107621275, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 12 November 2015

423 pages, 74 b/w illus. 18 maps
25.3 x 17.7 x 2.3 cm, 0.77 kg

This new revised edition of African Civilizations re-examines the physical evidence for developing social complexity in Africa over the last six thousand years. Unlike the two previous editions, it is not confined to tropical Africa but considers the whole continent. Graham Connah focuses upon the archaeological research of two key aspects of complexity, urbanism and state formation, in ten main areas of Africa: Egypt, North Africa, Nubia, Ethiopia, the West African savanna, the West African forest, the East African coast and islands, the Zimbabwe Plateau, parts of Central Africa and South Africa. The book's main concern is to review the available evidence in its varied environmental settings, and to consider possible explanations of the developments that gave rise to it. Extensively illustrated, including new maps and plans, and offering an extended list of references, this is essential reading for students of archaeology, anthropology, African history, black studies and social geography.

1. The context
2. Origins: social change on the lower Nile
3. The Mediterranean frontier: North Africa
4. Sudanic genesis: Nubia
5. Isolation: the Ethiopian and Eritrean Highlands
6. Opportunity and constraint in the West African savanna
7. Achieving power: the West African forest and its fringes
8. Indian Ocean networks: the East African coast and islands
9. Cattle, ivory and gold: social complexity in Zambezia
10. Central Africa: the Upemba Depression, Interlacustrine region and far west
11. Settlement growth and emerging polities: South Africa
12. What are the common denominators?

Subject Areas: Physical anthropology [JHMP], Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Anthropology [JHM], Archaeology [HD], African history [HBJH]