AFRICA : The Archaeological Background

This book aims at showing that the informed observation of some differences from one part to the other of the African continent should motivate scientists to reveal and then explain how decisions taken as well as past development influenced and conditioned the subsequent evolutionary itineraries of African and Africans, yesterday and today, along a slope of social, economic and politic evolution, and how solutions used or attempted solutions worsened the situation instead of improve it.

From the perspective of methodology, this work innovates by rendering all research conducted as part of the academic traditions found on the continent: Anglo-American, French, German, Italian and African. It then suggests a cognitive approach to funeral practices, technological innovation and systems of representation. To accomplish this, two key concepts borrowed from non-linear dynamics are used: "path-constraint" and "sensitivity to initial conditions," in order to throw new light on the current conditions of the African conti-nent. At the end of the exercise, although the standard chronological order, which has been present throughout the last ten millennia, is respected generally, the diversity of developments and forms of evolution, which are sometimes successive and sometimes overlap, is shown using detailed case studies.