Title:	The First Africans African Archaeology from the Earliest Tool Makers to Most Recent Foragers
Authors:	mitchell, peter Lawrence Barham
Keywords:	African Archaeology
Issue Date:	2008
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Description:	Africa has the longest record – some 2.5 million years – of human occupation of any continent on earth. 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 provides an up-to-date, comprehensive synthesis of the record left by Africa’s earliest hominin inhabitants and hunter-gatherers. It combines the insights of archaeology with those of other disciplines, such as genetics and palaeoenvironmental 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. Africa’s enormous ecological diversity and exceptionally long history also provide an unparalleled opportunity to examine the impact of environment change on human populations. More recently, African foragers have been viewed as archetypes of the hunter-gatherer way of life, a view that is debated in this volume. Also examined is the relevance of African hunter-gatherers for understanding the development and spread of food production and the social and ideological significance of rock art.
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/52982
ISBN:	978-0-511-45531-5
Appears in Collections:	Archeology and Heritage Management

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