The book is the first systematic archaeological monograph devoted to the Maldives. It features contributions by leading archaeologists and material culture researchers and offers an archaeological account of this island-nation from the beginnings of the Islamic period, it complements and nuances the picture presented by external historical data, which identify the Maldives as a key player in global networks. The book is aimed at students and researchers interested in the archaeology and history of the Indian Ocean, Islamic studies, island and coastal communities, maritime networks, and the medieval period, with special relevance for the ‘Global Middle Ages’. It will appeal to art historians, archaeologists, museologists, and heritage and material culture studies researchers with related interests.

The book is the first systematic archaeological monograph devoted to the Maldives. It features contributions by leading archaeologists and material culture researchers and offers an archaeological account of this island-nation from the beginnings of the Islamic period, it complements and nuances the picture presented by external historical data, which identify the Maldives as a key player in global networks. The book is aimed at students and researchers interested in the archaeology and history of the Indian Ocean, Islamic studies, island and coastal communities, maritime networks, and the medieval period, with special relevance for the 'Global Middle Ages'. It will appeal to art historians, archaeologists, museologists, and heritage and material culture studies researchers with related interests.

These seventeen papers were presented at a conference on African archaeology, held at St Hugh's College, Oxford, in April 2002. The topics span nineteen countries, from Morocco in the far northwest of the continent to Lesotho, Madagascar and South Africa in the south, from Mauritania in the west to Ethiopia and Kenya in the east. Together they show the strength of research in African archaeology being undertaken at the present time by British-based academics, and the relevance of Africa to a whole range of archaeological debates, including: early hominid evolution and the recent appearance and expansion of our own species, palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, the early development of food-production, the development of metallurgy, the formation of complex societies, and the sociopolitical impacts of long-distance trade.

In response to a general lack of research in the Zindar region of northern Nigeria, Ann Haour collates information and data related to one important but ill-understood site - Kufan Kanawa. Although the site comprised a stone enclosure with walls up to 6km long, enclosing an area of 261 hectares, the site is not well documented. This volume draws on the results of excavations at the site in 1999 and 2000, as well as anthropological interviews and a critique of the historiography of the area, to discern the nature of the site, when it was occupied (a small number of C14 dates suggest a date c.15th century AD) and its significance in terms of trade, urbanism and political complexity in this part of Africa.

African Pottery Roulettes Past and Present considers ethnographic, museological and archaeological approaches to pottery-decorating tools called roulettes, that is to say, short lengths of fibre or wood that are rolled over the surface of a vessel for decoration. This book sets out, for the first time, a solid typology for the classification of African pottery decorated with such tools, and forges a consensus on common methodology and standards. It gives an overview of history of research into roulette decoration in Africa and elsewhere Jomon Japan, Neolithic Europe, Siberia, and New York among others; outlines the contemporary distribution of roulette usage in sub-Saharan African today, a 'success story' from Senegal to Tanzania; and proposes methodologies for the identification of selected roulette decoration types in the archaeological record. By achieving standardisation in pottery analysis, this book will help researchers make meaningful comparisons between different sites of West Africa, and thus guide further research on the West African past. As roulette decoration has been such a global phenomenon in the past, the book will also be of interest to all researchers with an interest in ceramics from different parts of the world.

Studies of liminality have a long history in anthropology. In archaeology, identifying past people - rather than faceless entities - through material culture is still a work in progress, but a project that has seen increased attention in recent years. Focusing on West Africa, this book argues that we should explore what happens when the primary label assigned to a person's identity is that of an outsider - when he or she is of, but not in, society. Such outsiders can be found everywhere in the West African past: rulers show off their foreign descent, traders migrate to new areas, potters and blacksmiths claim to be apart from society. Thus far, however, it is mainly historians and anthropologists who have tackled the question of outsiders or liminal people. This book asks what archaeology can bring to the debate, and drawing together for the first time the extensive literature on the subject of outsiders, looks in detail at the role they played in the past 1000 years of the West African past, in particular in the construction of great empires.