Africa and Africans in Antiquity

The study of African archaeology and history, the editor argues, has been marred by the extremist attitudes of both condescending European historians and African-American Afrocentrists. These eleven papers, from a conference held in Ohio in 1991 and since revised, re-examine evidence from north-eastern Africa in order to affirm the cultural achievements of the multi-ethnic civilisations of the region, including Meroe and Zimbabwe, and to place them within their wider context. Subjects include contacts between Africa and Asia, Egypt and Nubia, the Kushites, Meroe, Carthage, Cyrenaica and Marmarica, Greco-Roman attitudes towards black Africans, state formation in Egypt and Ethiopia, and the origin myths of the Great Zimbabwe ruins.