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Although misleadingly designated as the third edition (of a widely read book first published in 1987), this is effectively a new book. The earlier versions restricted their discussion to case studies from south of the Sahara. Here, however, Graham Connah crowns his long and distinguished career as an Africanist archaeologist with a work that attempts a broader synthetic view extending over the whole continent. As I write this review, copies of all three versions – the first two being well-thumbed – are on my desk. The first two were handled by the Press at their Cambridge office and printed in-house; this – like other archaeological titles – has now been transferred to New York, being printed anonymously in the USA.
Comparison of the three ‘editions’ is instructive. The expansion in geographical coverage has already been noted, and must be welcomed. Not only is the Sahara ill defined, both its southern and northern margins have long been more permeable boundaries than frontiers. Civilisations on both sides have been influenced by its presence to a greater extent than they have been isolated. On the other hand, in all versions of Connah’s book, treatment remains episodic. Only the first edition sought to treat this problem, with a brief chapter 9 entitled ‘The problem of archaeological visibility: other pre-colonial cities and states in tropical Africa’. All three editions have a concluding chapter, ‘What are the common denominators?’, but differences receive scant consideration, and in this third edition the organisation of human societies in the interstices between the selected ‘civilizations’ is largely ignored.
The treatment of case studies (ten in the third edition) has followed a similar pattern throughout. A concise introduction contains a survey of historical and archaeological research and the effect of its varied emphases on available knowledge. This is followed by thematic surveys of topics such as subsistence economy, technology, social system, population pressures, ideology and external trade. This regimentation results in a uniformity of treatment which, while to some extent ironing out the effects of varied research emphases, nonetheless diminishes the idiosyncrasy of individual ‘civilizations’.
A book such as this must be highly selective in its approach. While not wishing to appear churlish, there are two areas where I would question Connah’s emphases. Like its earlier versions, the book under review carries the subtitle an archaeological perspective, but this is perhaps interpreted too narrowly. Relevant passages in the works of contemporary foreigners usually receive brief mention, but the implications of locally produced manuscripts (such as the Ethiopian sixth-century Abba Garima gospels) have been ignored. Conversely, although long-distance ‘foreign’ trade and exchange-networks are evaluated, more local connections with closer neighbours sometimes receive disappointingly scant attention.
References, cited in full in forty-four pages, have been judiciously selected to include both recent works and fundamental older ones, with those in English perhaps over-represented. Illustrations are disappointingly few, but on the whole are well chosen. Maps are clear and uncluttered with extraneous detail, but it is inexcusable for a book issued in 2015 from a major international publishing house to contain a map (p 113) that does not show South Sudan as a separate country, although this is correctly indicated on p 301.
The totally inadequate index is a disgrace, evidently compiled by someone with little concept of the book’s purpose or subject matter, and to whom the publishers provided no guidance or supervision. The only entry under ‘Zambia’ reads ‘see Interlacustrine Region; Upemba Depression’. The entry for ‘Gash Group’ appears under ‘Ethiopian/Eritrean Highlands’, but leads to a passage of text indicating its restriction to the lowlands. The only entry for Maryam Tsion Cathedral at Aksum occurs under ‘O’ for ‘old’. It would be tedious and disheartening to continue.
These criticisms of production, however, do not reduce my admiration for Graham Connah’s balanced, well-judged treatment of a broadened and rapidly expanding field of study. The work under review is far more than a new edition of an established and highly regarded work. It sets the study of past African civilisations firmly in its global context and will (or, at least, should) be read as avidly by specialists in other regions as by those whose interests focus primarily on Africa itself.
