Guides: Archaeology: Africa

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The subdivisions of this guide are based on the curatorial sections of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology. Therefore, information specifically for Egyptian and North African archaeology will be found in the sections for Egypt and Mediterranean respectively.

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Anthropology PLUS
ACCESS NOTE: 5 users. Combines Anthropological Literature from Harvard University and Anthropological Index from the Royal Anthropological Institute of the UK. Offers worldwide indexing of all core periodicals, in addition to lesser known journals, from the early 19th century to today. Broad geographical coverage emphasizes the Commonwealth and Africa and extends to Eastern Europe, the Americas, Asia, Australasia, and the Pacific. Covers fields of social, cultural, physical, biological and linguistic anthropology, ethnology, archaeology, folklore, material culture and interdisciplinary studies.
eHRAF Archaeology
eHRAF Archaeology provides a selection of full-text documents that are searchable by keyword or tags from HRAF's Outline of Archaeological Traditions. For the continent of Africa, it covers the archaeology of North Africa, including Egypt, through the third millennium B.C.E. and the archaeology of sub-Saharan Africa through 1500 C.E.
Modeled after HRAFs Collection of Ethnography, the Collection of Archaeology provides access to archaeological materials for comparative studies. Includes general and topical descriptions for approximately 350 major prehistoric traditions of the world, entries on approximately 1500 regional subtraditions; and entries on approximately 2000 archaeological sites. Twenty interactive maps can be queried or present data on more than 50 variables. WWW format allows rapid searching by culture, site, topic, or word.
International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS)

World Heritage Sites: Africa (also known as Aluka)
AfricaBib.org focuses on social science research in Africana studies.
African Diaspora Archaeology Network (ADAN) "provides a focal point for archaeological and interdisciplinary studies of African diasporas, with news, current research, information and links to other web resources related to the archaeology and history of descendants of African peoples."

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World Heritage Sites: Africa (also known as Aluka)

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World Heritage Sites: Africa (also known as Aluka)

Anthropological fieldwork online
A primary source database comprised of ethnographies of the early 20th century.

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African archaeology by David W. Phillipson
Call Number: Penn Museum Library. GN861 .P47 2005
ISBN: 1107139287
Publication Date: 2005
Archaeology of Central Africa by Maret, Pierre de
ISBN: 9780199846733
Publication Date: 2014
Series: Oxford bibliographies. African studies.
Archaeology of Eastern Africa by Davies, M. I. J.
ISBN: 9780199846733
Publication Date: 2015
Series: Oxford Bibliographies. African Studies.
Archaeology of Southern Africa by Mitchell, Peter
ISBN: 9780199846733
Publication Date: 2015
Series: Oxford Bibliographies. African Studies.
Archaeology of West Africa by Swanepoel, Natalie
ISBN: 9780199846733
Publication Date: 2019
Series: Oxford bibliographies. African studies.
The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology by Peter Mitchell (Editor); Paul Lane (Editor) Africa has the longest and arguably the most diverse archaeological record of any of the continents. It is where the human lineage first evolved and from where Homo sapiens spread across the rest of the world. Later, it witnessed novel experiments in food-production and unique trajectories tourbanism and the organisation of large communities that were not always structured along strictly hierarchical lines. Millennia of engagement with societies in other parts of the world confirm Africa's active participation in the construction of the modern world, while the richness of its history,ethnography, and linguistics provide unusually powerful opportunities for constructing interdisciplinary narratives of Africa's past. This Handbook provides a comprehensive and up-to-date synthesis of African archaeology, covering the entirety of the continent's past from the beginnings of human evolution to the archaeological legacy of European colonialism. As well as covering almost all periods and regions of the continent, itincludes a mixture of key methodological and theoretical issues and debates, and situates the subject's contemporary practice within the discipline's history and the infrastructural challenges now facing its practitioners. Bringing together essays on all these themes from over seventy contributors,many of them living and working in Africa, it offers a highly accessible, contemporary account of the subject for use by scholars and students of not only archaeology, but also history, anthropology, and other disciplines.
ISBN: 9780199569885
Publication Date: 2013
Archaeology and the Study of Africa by Ann B. Stahl
ISBN: 9780199846733
Series: Oxford Bibliographies. African studies.