These seventeen papers were presented at a conference on African archaeology, held at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, in April 2002. The topics span nineteen countries, from Morocco in the far northwest of the continent to Lesotho, Madagascar and South Africa in the south, from Mauritania in the west to Ethiopia and Kenya in the east. Together they show the strength of research in African archaeology being undertaken at the present time by British-based academics, and the relevance of Africa to a whole range of archaeological debates, including: early hominid evolution and the recent appearance and expansion of our own species, palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, the early development of food-production, the development of metallurgy, the formation of complex societies, and the sociopolitical impacts of long-distance trade.