Martin Hall explains how archaeologists find sites, design an excavation, date finds, and write history. The reader is given an outline of the history of the African continent, from the early hominids to the present. South Africa: David Philip/New Africa Books

A comprehensive reference on the taxonomy and distribution in time and space of all currently recognized southern African fossil mammals. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Cognitive Archaeology: Mind, Ethnography, and the Past in South Africa and Beyond aims to interpret the social and cultural lives of the past, in part by using ethnography to build informed models of past cultural and social systems and partly by using natural models to understand symbolism and belief. How does an archaeologist interpret the past? Which theories are relevant, what kinds of data must be acquired, and how can interpretations be derived? One interpretive approach, developed in southern Africa in the 1980s, has been particularly successful even if still not widely known globally. With an expressed commitment to scientific method, it has resulted in deeper, well-tested understandings of belief, ritual, settlement patterns and social systems. This volume brings together a series of papers that demonstrate and illustrate this approach to archaeological interpretation, including contributions from North America, Western Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, in the process highlighting innovative methodological and substantive research that improves our understanding of the human past. Professional archaeological researchers would be the primary audience of this book. Because of its theoretical and methodological emphasis, it will also be relevant to method and theory courses and postgraduate students.

"Indexes to papers read before the Museums Association, 1890-1909. Comp. by Charles Madeley": v. 9, p. 427-452.

In this overview of the origins and development of black societies in southern Africa, Martin Hall reconstructs the region's past by throughly examining both the archaeological and the historical records. Beginning with the gradual southward movement of the earliest farmers nearly two thousand years ago, Hall tracks the emergence of precolonial states such as Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe. Farmers, Kings, and Traders concludes with the devastating effects of colonialism. Through a close reading of the accounts of early travelers, colonialists, archaeologists, and historians, Hall places in context the often contradictory histories that have been written of this region. The result is an illuminating look at how ideas about the past have themselves changed over time.

This is the first comprehensive synopsis of the biodiversity of Diptera, which with more than 150.000 described species contain more than one tenth of all described animal species. The first part is a review of what is already known, with treatments of all the major biogeographical regions and important archipelagoes; the second part contains case studies on open-ended taxa, Diptera as ecological indicators, and how to estimate the still unknown proportion of our fauna; and the third part discusses the digital and molecular tools needed to document the fauna. The book has an emphasis on principles and analytical approaches as well as on practical ‘how-to’ information and is intended for academicians and other professionals but with a significant outreach to students.

From the exodus of early modern humans to the growth of African diasporas, Africa has had a long and complex relationship with the outside world. More than a passive vessel manipulated by external empires, the African experience has been a complex mix of internal geographic, environmental, sociopolitical and economic factors, and regular interaction with outsiders. Peter Mitchell attempts to outline these factors over the long period of modern human history, to find their commonalities and development over time. He examines African interconnections through Egypt and Nubia with the Near East, through multiple Indian Ocean trading systems, through the trans-Saharan trade, and through more recent incursion of Europeans. The African diaspora is also explored for continuities and resistance to foreign domination. Commonalities abound in the African experience, as do complexities of each individual period and interrelationship. Mitchell's sweeping analysis of African connections place the continent in context of global prehistory and history. The book should be of interest not only to Africanists, but to many other archaeologists, historians, geographers, linguists, social scientists and their students.