This book provides a full up to date account of the evidence relating to the Middle Stone Age in Nigeria and the other countries of West Africa. It relies upon the author’s own fieldwork and extensive personal knowledge of the region and its archaeology. It is abundantly illustrated with maps, photographs, and drawings. The emphasis is on stratigraphy, chronology, site situation, and artefact characteristics, with such general background information about the countries concerned as is required. A summary account is also provided of the current situation in relation to this topic (covering climate, archaeology, and human evolution) in the African continent as a whole, so that a judgement can made as to how the West African evidence fits in with the rest. In general accounts of the African palaeolithic record up to now, West Africa tends to be neglected, so this book goes a long way to fill a gap in the available literature.

15 papers originally given at a 2009 conference in Sheffield. There is a wide covereage both in terms of chronology and themes, ranges from the Pleistocene of Dogon country in Mali, to discussion of the development of archaeolgy and museums in present day Angola and Benin. Other topics include metallurgy, agriculture and stone industries as well as settlement studies.

In 1998 the Authors of this report initiated a Jamaican Taino archaeological project as a joint program of the Department of History, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, and Murray State University, Kentucky, USA. The objectives were to conduct a systematic archaeological investigation of a Taino community (c. 1000-1700 AD), towards understanding its chronology, subsistence economy, trade connections, and social organization. The Taino occupation sites of St. Mary Parish, on the north coast of Jamaica, were selected so as to compare findings from a number of different areas within a Taino community which could be recovered through controlled excavations. The first season of excavations was at the Green Castle site, near Annotto Bay, Jamaica, in 1999; these excavations were completed in three years, and two neighbouring sites were then investigated, Newry and Coleraine, in 2002 and 2003, respectively. A brief excavation at the Wentworth site, near Port Maria, west of Annotto Bay was also undertaken. Contents: 1) Jamaican Taino archaeology, problems and prospects (Philip Allsworth-Jones and Kit W. Wesler); 2) Excavations (Philip Allsworth-Jones and Kit W. Wesler); 3) Chronology (Kit W. Wesler); 4) Ceramics (Kit W. Wesler); 5) Lithic assemblages (Philip Allsworth-Jones and Anthony R.D. Porter); 6) Excavation and preservation of the two pre-Columbian burials found at the Green Castle site (Ana Luisa Santos); 7) So Much To Choose From: Exploiting Multiple Habitats for Subsistence at Four North Coast Archaeological Sites in Jamaica (Lisabeth A. Carlson); 8) Mollusk shells (Simon F. Mitchell et al); 9) Sampling below the 1/8th inch range (Nicole L. Patrick and Philip Allsworth-Jones); 10) Summary and conclusions (Philip Allsworth-Jones and Kit W. Wesler).