This is the only book currently available in English – or, as far as I am aware, in any language – to encompass in a single manageable volume the whole range of Ethiopian archaeology, from the Pliocene to recent times. As the book’s thirty-page bibliography clearly indicates, the relevant literature is diverse and widely scattered; Dr Finneran has rendered an extremely valuable service by pulling this material together and guiding his readers through it.
The core of the book is a survey of current literature, with the emphasis on that in English, arranged following the chronology of its subject matter. The chapter on the palaeolithic and early hominin fossils, extending through to the inception of cultivation and herding, provides in only thirty-four pages a useful overview but few original insights for a field that is developing so rapidly that any such treatment is inevitably somewhat outdated as soon as – if not before – it is published. Original interpretation by the author is progressively more prominent in later chapters, which deal with topics closer to Finneran’s own primary research interests. Here, a valuable attempt is made to view archaeological data in its specifically local anthropological context, although it must be regretted that the evidence of linguistics and of rock art is not more closely integrated with the overall narrative. Your reviewer was surprised at Finneran’s adherence to the view that references to ‘DMT’ in unvocalized inscriptions of the last millennium bc refer to a single overarching state, and surprised at comments on the layout of the Lalibela rock-hewn churches, but such differences of opinion are inevitable with a synthesis as broad as that attempted in this book, and do not detract from the overall value of the work.
It is not wholly clear at which principal readership the book is aimed. It will undoubtedly be of great value to the rapidly growing number of students in archaeology at Ethiopian universities. On the other hand, Finneran has devoted much space – particularly in his Chapters 1 and 7 – to presenting a view of Ethiopian archaeology in a broad theoretical context. This may not prove easy reading for students whose view of the past is locally based. While these chapters will undoubtedly provide a useful contribution to the ongoing recognition that the archaeology of sub-Saharan Africa is directly relevant to worldwide studies, they do not lie comfortably with the rest of the book.
Dr Finneran has not been well served by his publishers. His text appears not to have received attention from a competent copy-editor. Photographs are poorly reproduced; line drawings are mostly lifted with minimal modification from other publications and presented with little regard to style or scale. As noted above, the book will be particularly valuable to students and others within Ethiopia, yet its price – exorbitant by any standards – will be wholly beyond the means of readers in that country. There have been unconfirmed rumours of a paperback edition but, more than a year after initial publication, this has not yet materialized. To add further inadequacy, your reviewer’s copy of this book fell apart before he had finished reading it; examination revealed that, despite its hard covers, the pages were cut and glued, rather than sewn. This is surely inexcusable in a book so highly priced and intended for use in a country to whose climate so-called perfect bindings are notoriously unsuited.
