African Genesis

African Genesis
Author: Sally C. Reynolds
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 599
Release: 2012-03-29
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1107019958

This book reviews key themes and developments in palaeoanthropology, exploring their impact on our understanding of human origins in Africa.

Handbook of Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa

Handbook of Pleistocene Archaeology of Africa
Author: Amanuel Beyin
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 2194
Release: 2023-08-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3031202902

This handbook showcases an Africa-wide compendium of Stone Age archaeological sites and methodological advances that have improved our understanding of hominin lifeways and biogeography in the continent. The focal time spans the Pleistocene Epoch (c. 2.5 million–11,700 years ago) during which important human traits, such as obligate bipedalism that freed the hands to engage in creative activities, a large brain relative to body size, language, and social complexity, developed in the general forms that they are found today. The handbook is the first of its kind, and it is expected to play a significant role in human evolutionary research by: ❖ Collating the African Stone Age record, which exists in a fragmented state along the lines of national boundaries and colonial experiences. ❖ Showcasing emerging conceptual and methodological advances in African Pleistocene archaeology. ❖ Providing reference datasets for teaching and researching African prehistory. ❖ Making Africa’s Stone Age record accessible to researchers and students based in Africa who may not have access to journal publications where most new field discoveries are published. The Handbook features 128 chapters, of which 116 are site entries grouped by the host countries and presented in an alphabetical order. A number of those site-related entries examine multiple archaeological localities lumped under specific projects or study areas. The rest of the contributions deal with methodological topics, such as luminescence and radiocarbon dating, field data recovery, lithic analysis, micromorphology, and hominin fossil and zooarchaeological records of Pleistocene Africa. The introductory chapter provides an historical overview of the development of Stone Age (Paleolithic) archaeology in Africa beginning in the mid-19th century, and paleoenvironmental and chronological frameworks commonly used to structure the continent’s Pleistocene record. By making a good amount of African Stone Age literature accessible to researchers and the public, we wish to promote interest in human evolutionary research in the continent and elsewhere.

Human Beginnings in South Africa

Human Beginnings in South Africa
Author: H. J. Deacon
Publisher: New Africa Books
Total Pages: 230
Release: 1999
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780864864178

The Stone Age is now beginning to be recognised as vital in establishing who we are and where we have come from. This period has long been neglected.

World Prehistory and Archaeology

World Prehistory and Archaeology
Author: Michael Chazan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 476
Release: 2021-04-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000349071

World Prehistory and Archaeology provides an integrated discussion of world prehistory and archaeological methods, presenting an up-to-date perspective on what we know about our human prehistory and how we come to know it. A cornerstone of World Prehistory and Archaeology is the discussion of prehistory as an active process of discovery. Methodological issues are addressed throughout the text to engage readers. Archaeological methods are introduced, following which the question of how we know the past is discussed. This fifth edition involves readers in the current state of archaeological research, revealing how archaeologists work and interpret what they find. Through the coverage of various new research, author Michael Chazan shows that archaeology is truly a global discipline. In this edition there is a particular emphasis on the relevance of archaeology to contemporary society and to the major issues that face us today. This edition will provide students with a necessary grounding in the fundamentals of archaeology, before engaging them with the work that goes into understanding world prehistory. They will be given the tools to place this knowledge in the context of the modern world, acknowledging the relevance of archaeology to the concerns of today.

The Middle Stone Age of Nigeria in its West African Context

The Middle Stone Age of Nigeria in its West African Context
Author: Philip Allsworth-Jones
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2019-05-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789691397

A fully up-to-date account of the evidence relating to the Middle Stone Age in Nigeria and the other countries of West Africa, based upon the author’s own fieldwork and extensive personal knowledge of the region and its archaeology.

Africa from MIS 6-2

Africa from MIS 6-2
Author: Sacha C. Jones
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2016-03-04
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9401775206

Bringing together archaeological, paleoenvironmental, paleontological and genetic data, this book makes a first attempt to reconstruct African population histories from out species' evolution to the Holocene. Africa during Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 6 to 2 (~190-12,000 years ago) witnessed the biological development and behavioral florescence of our species. Modern human population dynamics, which involved multiple population expansions, dispersals, contractions and extinctions, played a central role in our species’ evolutionary trajectory. So far, the demographic processes – modern human population sizes, distributions and movements – that occurred within Africa during this critical period have been consistently under-addressed. The authors of this volume aim at (1) examining the impact of this glacial-interglacial- glacial cycle on human group sizes, movements and distributions throughout Africa; (2) investigating the macro- and micro-evolutionary processes underpinning our species’ anatomical and behavioral evolution; and (3) setting an agenda whereby Africa can benefit from, and eventually contribute to, the increasingly sophisticated theoretical and methodological palaeodemographic frameworks developed on other continents.

Encyclopedia of Human Evolution and Prehistory

Encyclopedia of Human Evolution and Prehistory
Author: Eric Delson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 2060
Release: 2004-11-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1135582270

Praise for the first edition: "The most up-to-date and wide-ranging encyclopedia work on human evolution available."--American Reference Books Annual "For student, researcher, and teacher...the most complete source of basic information on the subject."--Nature "A comprehensive and authoritative source, filling a unique niche...essential to academic libraries...important for large public libraries." --Booklist/RBB

From Tools to Symbols

From Tools to Symbols
Author: Francesco d’Errico
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 695
Release: 2005-06-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1776142292

A number of researchers have tried to characterise the anatomy and behavioural systems of early hominid and early modern human populations in an attempt to understand how we became what we are. Can archaeology, palaeo-anthropology and genetics tell us how and when human cultures developed the traits that make our societies different from those of our closest living relatives? In which cases are these differences substantial, and when do they simply reflect our definitions of culture, species, the image we have of their evolution or of ourselves? From Tools to Symbols, a collection of twenty-seven selected papers from a South African-French conference organised in honour of the well-known palaeo-anthropologist Phillip Tobias, provides a multidisciplinary overview of this field of study. It is based on collaborative research conducted in sub-Saharan Africa by South African, French, American and German scholars in the last twenty years, and represents an excellent synthesis of the palaeontological and archaeological evidence of the last five million years of human evolution.