Peter Mitchell - African Connections: Archaeological Perspectives on Africa and the Wider World

A NY BOOK, and particularly perhaps one with a scope as large as this one, reflects the input of many people. For the initial suggestion and their continuous encouragement, including comments on the text, I should like to thank Joe Vogel and Mitch Allen, the staff of AltaMira Press who helped see it through to publication, especially Monica Riley and Terry Fischer, and Sam Challis, who produced all the maps.

Many colleagues took the trouble to comment on draft chapters or, in some cases, earlier versions of some of the arguments presented here. I may not always have taken their advice, but I am nonetheless grateful for their suggestions and corrections of fact. For their assistance here I should like to thank Larry Barham, Nick Barton, Yvonne Brink, Jeremy Coote, Matt Davies, Vivian Davies, Anne Haour, Tom Huffman, Tim Insoll, Ken Kelly, Kevin MacDonald, John Mack, Susan McIntosh, David Phillipson, Innocent Pikirayi, Andrew Reid, Garth Sampson, Ann Stahl, Marijke van der Veen, Gavin Whitelaw, and Andrew Wilson. Several of these individuals also helped by contributing illustrations, and I have acknowledged them and other colleagues who were kind enough to assist in this way in the text.

This book also draws onand, I hope, benefits fromcontacts with many other Africanists over the years. David Phillipson first interested me in African archaeology as an undergraduate and has been of immense support to me and other British-based Africanists. Teaching with him in the Cambridge of 198283 were John Alexander, Graham Connah, and Francis van Noten, all of whom opened my eyes to other parts of the continent. That process continued in Oxford under the supervision of Ray Inskeep, who encouraged me to take on this project and provided important insights in its initial stages; it is a great sadness that he died before its completion. Through him my own fieldwork and research have concentrated in southern Africa and I am grateful to all my colleagues there, but especially to John Parkington and the other members of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cape Town and to David Lewis-Williams, Karim Sadr, Ben Smith, and Lyn Wadley at the University of the Witwatersrand. John Sutton kindly hosted a visit several years ago to Kenya and Tanzania, while George Abungu helped organize a trip to the Lamu Archipelago. Ken Kelly deserves thanks for allowing me to participate in his excavations at Savi, thereby introducing me to West African archaeology. Pierre de Maret and other contributors to the International Certificate in African Archaeology, as well as the organizers of and participants in successive conferences on African archaeology in Los Angeles, Poznn, Cambridge, and Bamako, expanded my horizons further, with Steven and Melanie Brandt and Susan McIntosh facilitating a truly enjoyable visit to sites in Mali. Proving the worth of conferences still further, the 1992 SAfA meeting at Los Angeles also introduced me to Kit Wesler, a colleague with a great facility for the kind of wide-ranging, intercontinental comparative study of which African archaeology still stands in need if its voice is to be heard beyond the confines of the Africanist community itself. Working in Oxford I have also been fortunate to benefit from teaching in an environment where able students are not in short supply: Sam Challis, Luiz Costa, Matt Davies, Will Ellerby, Marcus Starling, and Chris Wingfield in particular helped me change my mind on many things, while Anne Haour, John Hobart, Fumiko Ohinata, and Brian Stewart helped doctoral supervision to get off to a flying and very pleasurable start. Finally, I should like to thank all those other colleagues who are now working in African archaeology from within the United Kingdom; the growth in our numbers and the collegiality displayed at recent meetings augur well for the future of the subject.

This is the second book I have written since my daughter was born. To Chiara, Gloria who made her and so many other things possible, andfor reasons best known to ourselvesCesare, many thanks for your support, comment, and distraction.