Tuesday, August 14, 2007

New Book: Atlas of Cultural and Environmental Change in Arid Africa


Heinrich Barth Institut Bookshop
I don't know exactly when during the year this book was released, but it was new to me at Poznan in early July.

The Atlas of Cultural and Environmental Change in Arid Africa is edited by Ofaf Bubenzer, Andreas Bolten and Frank Darius and published by the Heinrich-Barth Institute (Koln 2007). It is the 21st in the Africa Praehistorica series.

This is a fabulous book that breathes quality as soon as you turn the first page. It is full of colour illustrations, maps, diagrams and photographs which complement the excellent papers beautifully. The pages are so large that details on the diagrams and maps, which might have become lost in smaller publications, are clearly visible.
Unfortunately, the above site does not list the contents of the book, and it would take me too long to type them up myself. However, the contents are divided into five sections, containing 59 papers, a full bibliography and a set of fabulous satellite photographs. The sections are as follows:
  • Reconstrucing environment and human occupation
  • Landscape and land use
  • Routes and trade
  • Language and space
  • Economic and deomgraphic change

The text is in English, but a booklet containing a German version of the text is contained within a pocket in the back cover.

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