This book is a very welcome addition to the Africanist literature. Its major strength is the position chosen by the authors in ongoing debates about the past and future of anthropology. Their work reflects the shift away from a grand biology-derived paradigm of social 'evolution' and toward a more modest and humanistic concern for the particular.... I strongly recommend this book on the basis of its ambition and its wealth of detail.
Colleen E. Kriger, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
International Journal of African Historical Studies
This book is a welcome addition to an excellent and growing list by AltaMira Press on African archaeology and prehistory.... [Bisson's] synthesis of ethnohistoric accounts of copper smelting in Central Africa is perhaps the best available rendering of how copper smelting was conducted.... De Barros brings an informed and wide-ranging synthesis to a complicated topic that is a phenomenally rich field of symbolic study.... [This book is] also an excellent reference to more particular and authoritative literature. It has obvious importance to archaeologists and other scholars interested in ideology and technology.
Peter Schmidt, University of Florida
American Antiquity
If only the rest of the world had the rich record of metallurgy and society that Africa has! In the US archaeologists struggle with bits, literally bits, of rare prehistoric metallurgical data, from which they wring (or, too often, invent) a past for indigenous metal-using societies. Not so in the Africa depicted by Bisson and company. The book begins with a comprehensive summary of metals and precolonial African society by Augustin F.C. Holl. This very useful chapter is followed by detailed accounts of early copper working (Bisson) and early ironworking (Philip de Barros), each focused not only on rich, dense, field-based material evidence but full accounts of the social context of mining, smelting, smithing, and trading. The final chapter is a narrative ethnographic account of traditional ironworking as collected by S. Terry Childs in contemporary Uganda. This is an absolutely first-rate book blending historical, archaeological, and ethnographic data that will correct widely held misconceptions about African technologies while providing an entertaining read. Highly recommended for academic collections.
S.R. Martin, Michigan Technological University
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