The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology ed. by Peter Mitchell and Paul Lane (review)

African archaeology is blossoming. Its perspectives and practices are varied, grounded, and savvy. Recent and on-going projects exhibit impressive breadth and depth. In certain African countries, African institutions and scholars now play key roles in the discipline and in (re)making African history. Contemporary archaeologists are more aware of the need for public engagement in archaeological studies and the social and political contexts of knowledge production. Despite the continent’s size, its remarkable diversity, and its lengthy material record, the relatively small contingent of Africanist archaeologists is better addressing the future of the continent’s past. Their work inspires scholars and generalists alike in their quest to understand the contributions made by Africans to the human condition and story.

This growth in African archaeology spans the discipline’s practices, its ideas, and the substance of its work. Interdisciplinary in nature, African archaeology has the ability to address the continent’s diverse communities and pasts in fundamental ways. This is as true for periods that have left behind other historical evidence (e.g., documents or oral traditions) as it is for eras that have not. Archaeology continues to grow in its relevance to Africans as public interest in cultural heritage peaks. Oddly, in this stimulating climate, the work of Africanist practitioners faces continued peripheralization by fellow archaeologists who work in both the Old World and New World. Updates about archaeology in Africa, including recent approaches and evidentiary findings, are essential given archaeology’s evolving practices and copious new findings. The material “turn” in the social sciences and humanities makes a synthetic review and reappraisal of African archaeology all the more crucial for generalists, specialists, and the next generation of students of Africa.

In The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology the editors, Peter Mitchell and Paul Lane, have compiled seventy chapters by seventy-four expert authors to present an up-to-date survey of archaeology in Africa. This massive volume includes an introduction (part 1), a robust discussion of current theory, method, and practice (part 2), and five sections that engage key topics and evidence (parts 3–7). The latter sections cover the beginnings of humankind and early material culture (part 3), early foragers (part 4), food producers through time (part 5), urban societies (part 6), and global connections in Africa during the last five hundred years (part 7). The Handbook is a new and important guide for present knowledge about the rich and extensive past of Africa and its comparative significance. In the more than one thousand pages of this volume, the interdisciplinary nature of African archaeology is made apparent, time and again. Unlike past compendia of its type, roughly one-third of the volume’s authors work at institutions in Africa or are of African descent. Women scholars and leading junior researchers also are well represented. And in several chapters, contributors consider the role of African worldviews (beyond science) in their interpretations. Black-and-white maps, photographs, line-drawings, and/or graphics accompany most chapters. At thirty pages in length, the index is sizable, although the choice of its entries leaves something to be desired.

Since World War II, only a handful of synthetic volumes or series (in English) have addressed the full scope of African archaeology. Even fewer texts target a general academic audience and an informed readership. Perhaps this is unsurprising. Even single-authored texts that provide an overview of African history—say, Joseph Harris’s Africans and Their History (Plume, 1972) or John Iliffe’s Africans: The History of a Continent (Cambridge University Press,1995)—minimize the long-term past and archaeological research and misapply or misinterpret certain archaeology terms and findings. Multi-authored texts that stress or include archaeology to a significant degree include the multi-volume (and multi-year) Cambridge History of Africa and the UNESCO General History of Africa as well as Joseph O...