African Civilizations: Precolonial Cities and States in Tropical Africa: An Archaeological Perspective

by Graham Connah

Urban settlements and states were a feature of precolonial societies in many parts of Africa. In this study, Graham Connah uses the direct evidence provided by archaeological investigation to demonstrate the complexity of these urban societies, to understand their origins, their economic basis and social structure. Well illustrated chapters deal with African civilizations in Nubia, Ethiopia, the West African savanna, the West African forest, the East African coast, the Zimbabwe plateau and Central Africa.

Genres: History, Archaeology, Africa, Anthropology, Nonfiction, Textbooks

270 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Graham Connah is an Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales, and is a Visiting Fellow in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University, Canberra. He has excavated and conducted archaeological fieldwork in Britain, Nigeria, Egypt, Uganda, and Australia. His best known books are The Archaeology of Benin (1975), Three Thousand Years in Africa (1981), African Civilizations (2nd ed., 2001), The Archaeology of Australia’s History (2nd ed., 1993), Kibiro (1996), Forgotten Africa (2004), also published in German (2006), French (2008) and Italian (2009), The Same Under a Different Sky? (2007), and Writing About Archaeology (2010). He was the founding editor of the journal Australasian Historical Archaeology (1983–88), and is a past President of the Australasian Society for Historical Archaeology (1993–97). His main interest remains the archaeology of tropical Africa, particularly the last 4000 years.

Reviews

[Rowland Pasaribu · Rating 3 out of 5]

In African Civilizations Connah surveys the pre-colonial history of tropical Africa, with chapters on seven regions. Despite the title, he avoids the quagmire of attempts to define "civilization", opting instead to use more practical concepts of urbanization, social complexity, and state formation. And he manages a nice mix of archaeological specifics and broader perspectives, staying clear of both the engulfing whirlpool of unconnected detail and the devouring monster of unchecked theory. African Civilizations will be a real treat for anyone interested in pre-colonial Africa.

The seven areas covered are Nubia and the middle Nile (nearly 5000 years: Kerma, Napata, Meroe, and the Christian and Islamic eras), the Ethiopian highlands (the "pre-Aksum", Aksum, and medieval Christian periods), the West African savannah (Senegal, the Inland Niger Delta, northern Nigeria, south-west Chad), the West African forest and fringes (sites in Ghana and Nigeria including Old Oyo, Benin City, and Igbo-Ukwu), the East African coast and islands (from Mogadishu through Kilwa to the Comoro islands and Madagascar), Great Zimbabwe and related sites (the Zimbabwe Plateau), and the Upemba Depression and the Interlacustrine Region (two areas in Central Africa, thousands of kilometres apart, where fieldwork happens to have been carried out).

Each of the chapters follows the same format. A brief introduction is followed by a look at "geographical location and environmental factors", covering ecology, climate, soils, diseases, and barriers to movement. The core of each chapter is a section "sources of information", typically around twenty pages long. This describes the historical sources in just a page or two, then surveys the archaeological record in much greater depth. Here Connah presents details of key excavations and sites, with a nice selection of site plans, maps, chronologies, and halftones of artifacts and landscapes. His approach follows the modern trend towards settlement studies and away from the narrower traditional focus on monuments and elite sites.

Six shorter sections in each chapter then consider the key themes of subsistence economy, technology, social system, population pressures, ideology, and external trade, focusing on the role of these factors in urbanization and state formation. Connah generally describes the theories of others rather than offering his own, and his conclusions are almost always tentative and qualified. In the chapter on the West African forest, for example, he writes "there is ... good reason to suspect there would have been a growth in functional specialization", "it seems likely that by the early second millennium AD the subsistence economy of the rainforest was able to produce a surplus", and "it is possible that quite localized population pressure was one of the factors which led to an increasing elaboration of social hierarchies" (to pick just a few examples). While this may frustrate those after simple answers, it seems like a wholesome approach given the limited evidence and the patchiness of the archaeological fieldwork.

Nor does Connah make any attempt to fit a single theoretical framework across the different areas. The overall introduction touches on theories of states, notably that of Haas, and a brief six page conclusion looks at "common denominators", but the emphasis is on the diversity of African environments and the resulting variety in the development of cities and the formation of states. "The physical evidence for African social complexity [merits:] far more attention from archaeologists than it has yet had and might have a far greater role in the formation of social theory than has yet been the case".

African Civilizations is solidly referenced and has a thirty five page bibliography, but some further reading suggestions would have been nice: as it is the reader intrigued by any of the specific regions covered isn't offered any obvious starting points in the broader literature.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this text, Connah takes a region-by-region approach to synthesizing extant archaeological research into the origins of urbanization and state-formation in precolonial sub-Saharan Africa. He does not overstate the ability of such research to provide conclusive answers, frequently noting the limited and highly selective scope of archaeological fieldwork on the continent to date, but does express confidence in the potential of archaeological methods, properly applied, to generate meaningful evidence concerning these questions.

Throughout, a clear concern with arguing for the autochthonous origins of social complexity is demonstrated, with external trade networks and cultural influences serving to develop and reinforce indigenous power structures, rather than to impose them wholesale. While giving due attention to intracontinental trade, religious ideology, and technological specialization as catalysts of social stratification, Connah perhaps most emphasizes the role of environmental factors in placing constraints on subsistence, and how this facilitated the accumulation of wealth and coercive power by those who were able to control the means of food-production, for example by monopolizing the limited areas of agriculturally-optimal soil.

This book is a valuable contribution to the understanding of tropical Africa's history and prehistory, as well as theoretical discourse concerning the evolution of complex social structures. Indeed, its evocation of the political and technological development attained by many African states on the eve of European colonization may occasion reflection upon what might have been, had they retained autonomy somewhat longer.