This book provides the first truly comprehensive multi-period study of the archaeology of Ethiopia, surveying the country's history, detailing the discoveries from the late Stone Age, including the famous 'Lucy' and moving onto the emergence of food production, prehistoric rock art and an analysis of the increasing social complexity that can be observed from the remains of the first nucleated settlements. The author then discusses the Aksumite empire, the emergence of Christianity in the Middle Ages and Ethiopia's encounters with the west, leading up to the feudal Ethiopia of the twentieth century and the present day.
This book is an excellent and very readable story of the rich heritage of this very misunderstood country.

List of figures, List of tables, Preface, Acknowledgements, 1. A sense of place: Ethiopia, Africa and the world, 2. From 'Lucy' to the LSA: technological development from the Pliocene to the mid-Holocene period, 3. From hunting to herding and plant cultivation: beyond ecological determinism and neo-evolutionary trajectories, 4. Afro-Arabians? Emergent social complexity in the northern highlands in the first millennium BC, 5. Aksum, 6. After Aksum: medieval and post-medieval archaeology, 7. Epilogue: the past in the present, Bibliography, Index