Mobile technologies in the ancient Sahara and beyond

Abstract

highlights its main contributions. Much effort went into the writing of this volume because of the number of authors involved and its multidisciplinary approach (archaeology, anthropology, linguistics, botany, zoology, etc.). The book offers a complex vision of different organisational forms of economic life and different evolutionary patterns of Sino-African exchanges. A broad array of commodities (ceramics, textile, coins, etc.) traded between China and East Africa that have been recovered from archaeological excavations are described and discussed. However, the book is not without its flaws. Firstly, the same artefacts appear to have been discussed several times in different articles, creating some redundancy that weakens the general structure of the book. This may be due to the difficulty of co-ordinating the contributions, to which we can add the differences in scientific paradigms and methodologies of the 19 authors, who come from various scientific backgrounds. Readers may expect the book to offer a two-way Sino-African connected history both spatially and chronologically, but, in fact, it is the East African side that is privileged. Furthermore, in the preface, Chapurukha Kusimba, the lead editor and contributor, states that the aim of the book is to theorise China-East Africa relationships in their own terms. However, despite the best intentions of the contributors, this very theoretical ambition is not realised. Instead, the authors have presented syntheses of the current state of knowledge of their own particular topics. None has undertaken specific historiographical reflections, from either the perspectives of politics or science. However, such historiographical reflections are indispensable for comprehending the book’s role in what is a new phase of Chinese-influenced historiography in East Africa. Moreover, dealing with Sino-African relations implies thinking about its articulation in a complex geography of space and time, not just dealing with its two endpoints. Unfortunately, intermediate spaces such as Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Persian Gulf are not considered in the book. Similarly, the plurality within both China and East Africa is also not sufficiently considered. Finally, the investigation of such a long chronology of Sino-African relations is a perilous adventure if one does not pay enough attention to the cyclical evolution of the Indian Ocean world-system that has already been highlighted by other researchers.