Description
Book SynopsisCriticising the popular view about the progressive development of powerful hierarchies led by chiefs and kings, this book offers evidence from case studies in sub-Saharan Africa supporting the idea that complexity has emerged and developed in a variety of ways. It includes contributions from historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists.
Table of Contents1. Pathways to complexity: an African perspective Susan Keech McIntosh; 2. The segmentary state and the ritual phase in political economy Aidan Southall; 3. Perceiving variability in time and space: the evolutionary mapping of African societies Ann B. Stahl; 4. Western representations of urbanism and invisible African towns Roderick J. McIntosh; 5. Modelling political organization in large scale settlement clusters: a case study from the inland Niger Delta Susan Keech McIntosh; 6. Sacred centres and urbanisation in West Central Africa Raymond N. Asombang; 7. Permutations in patrimonialism and populism: the Aghem chiefdoms of Western Cameroon Igor Kopytoff; 8. Wonderful society: the Burgess shale creatures, Mandara polities, and the nature of prehistory Nicholas David and Judy Sterner; 9. Material culture and the dialectics of identity in the Kalahari: AD 700–1700 James Denbow; 10. Seeking and keeping power in Bunyora-Kitara, Uganda Peter Robertshaw; 11. The (in)visible roots of Bunyoro-Kitara and Buganda in the Lakes Region: 800–1300 David L. Schoenbrun; 12. The power of symbols and the symbols of power through time: probing the Luba past Pierre de Maret; 13. Pathways of political development in Equatorial Africa and neo-evolutionary theory Jan Vansina.
