The First Africans
African Archaeology from the Earliest Toolmakers to Most Recent Foragers

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

Lawrence Barham (Author), Peter Mitchell (Author)

9780521847964, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 June 2008

622 pages, 5 tables
23.4 x 15.5 x 3.5 cm, 0.94 kg

"It is apparent that this book represents an impressive scholarly achievement...Without a doubt this is an important book." --Graham Connah, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

Africa has the longest record - some 2.5 million years - of human occupation of any continent. 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-gatherer ways of life. This book is a synthesis of the record left by Africa's earliest hominin inhabitants and hunter-gatherers, combining the insights of archaeology with those of other disciplines, such as genetics and palaeo-environmental science. African evidence is critical to important debates, such as the origins of stone tool making, the emergence of recognisably modern forms of cognition and behaviour, and the expansion of successive hominins from Africa to other parts of the world.

1. Introducing the African record
2. Frameworks in space and time
3. First tool users and makers
4. Early Pleistocene foragers
5. Mid-Pleistocene foragers
6. Transitions and origins
7. The Big Dry: the archaeology of marine isotope 4-2
8. Hunting, gathering, intensifying: the mid-Holocene record
9. Foragers in a world of farmers
10. The future of the first Africans' past.

Subject Areas: Prehistoric archaeology [HDDA], Archaeology by period / region [HDD], African history [HBJH]