Many readers will be familiar already with the new series of ‘Oxford Handbooks in Archaeology’ from Oxford University Press. The publisher's website describes the series as ‘the new essential desktop reference for everyone working in archaeology’ and to date nineteen such volumes have been published, encompassing areas as diverse as death and burial, material culture, maritime archaeology and geographically based treatments. Peter Mitchell and Paul Lane are to be congratulated on the impressive achievement of bringing together a number of established and newer scholars in the field of African archaeology, and producing an exhaustive and very accessible volume.

Seventy chapters are grouped into seven sections. The first part presents an editorial overview from Mitchell and Lane, which stresses the importance of Africa within global archaeological debate. In their words (p 8), ‘it is our contention that an African perspective is now essential to most debates of significance in world archaeology as a whole’. The second part, ‘Doing African Archaeology’, is an eclectic and wide-ranging selection of papers that places the study of African archaeology within a wider methodological and theoretical context, covering subjects as diverse as genetics, linguistics, religion, museums and heritage management. Inevitably, in a section of this nature, some contributions are stronger than others, but undeniably this is a comprehensive framework to buttress the case studies presented later.

Part 3, ‘Becoming Human’, is perhaps the collection of papers within the book that has the potential to date the fastest. This is of course a dynamic area of prehistoric archaeological and palaeoanthropological/biological anthropological research. Robert Foley's chapter on human evolution is particularly commended for its clarity in bringing together a complex range of data, and Lahr's contribution on the origins of modern humans from an archaeological and fossil perspective is similarly strong in this respect. Part 4 then fleshes out the rich archaeological record for hunter-gatherer lifeways in Africa. Focusing on the later Pleistocene/early–mid-Holocene material from across the continent, the emphasis is upon a diversity of evidence and the recognition of a trend towards social complexity and economic intensification.

Part 5 considers the archaeological background to early African food production. For the non-Africanist prehistorian, this section should offer plenty to consider. A number of individual geographical case studies follow on from two scene-setting chapters on the antiquity of stock-keeping (pastoralism remains of course a significant economic strategy in areas of eastern Africa, for example) and plant cultivation, highlighting the role of both indigenous and external animal resources and plant cultigens in the wider picture. The question of agricultural origins in Africa presents a far more complicated picture than that viewed, for example, from north-western Europe. At the end of this section we are introduced to the emergence of metalworking in Africa, as well as the complex linguistic and archaeological problems recognised by the ‘Bantu Expansion’ and the African Iron Age. Pierre de Maret is well suited to provide an overview of this subject and he does so with great skill.

Part 6 brings us to the emergence of complex polities across the continent. Case studies of urbanism, state formation at varied levels and the development of formative African empires (as well as early phases of European contact within the context of Roman settlement of northern Africa) are all discussed here. Ian Shaw's contribution reminds us, of course, that pharaonic Egypt should be viewed as an African entity. Part 7 moves us into the last thousand or so years and charts African interaction with wider world systems, examining European (and Asian) colonial encounters and slavery and the question of archaeological recognition of African diasporas.

This is a well-produced and accessible work. It will be of great value to students of archaeology and related disciplines as it presents a huge body of complex and diverse data in a very clear and lucid manner, thankfully often jargon-free and reader-friendly. This may also suit university lecturers as well, who may find the sheer geographic and temporal scope of the study area an impediment to keeping ‘current’. At £120 it will be beyond the range of the pockets of students, African and European, so it is to be hoped that access via e-books will be more competitively priced. There is also the danger that certain parts of the book are not as future-proof as others (this happened quite rapidly with the only other comparable comprehensive collected volume on African archaeology published to date: Shaw et al Reference Shaw, Sinclair, Andah and Okpoko1993) but these are wider issues which are specific to the publisher and the concept of the handbook series and not to the editors of and contributors to this satisfying and mighty volume.