Bibliograph

Prehistoric stone tools of Eastern Africa, a guide, John J. Shea

Type

Label

Prehistoric stone tools of Eastern Africa, a guide, John J. Shea

Language

eng

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Prehistoric stone tools of Eastern Africa

Medium

electronic resource

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Oclc number

1151661891

Responsibility statement

John J. Shea

Series statement

Cambridge Histories online

Sub title

a guide

Summary

Stone tools are the least familiar objects that archaeologists recover from their excavations, and predictably, they struggle to understand them. Eastern Africa alone boasts a 3.4 million-year-long archaeological record but its stone tool evidence still remains disorganized, unsynthesized, and all-but-impenetrable to non-experts, and especially so to students from Eastern African countries. In this book, John J. Shea offers a simple, straightforward, and richly illustrated introduction in how to read stone tools. An experienced stone tool analyst and an expert stoneworker, he synthesizes the Eastern African stone tool evidence for the first time. Shea presents the EAST Typology, a new framework for describing stone tools specifically designed to allow archaeologists to do what they currently cannot: compare stone tool evidence across the full sweep of Eastern African prehistory. He also includes a series of short, fictional, and humorous vignettes set on an Eastern African archaeological excavation, which illustrate the major issues and controversies in research about stone tools.--, Provided by publisher

Creator