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Robert-Chaleix, D., and M. Sognane. 1983. “Une industrie métallurgique ancienne sur la rive mauritanienne du fleuve Sénégal.” In Métallurgies anciennes: Nouvelles contributions, 45–62. Ed. N. Echard. Mémoire de la Société des Africanistes no. 9. Paris.

Thilmans, G., and A. Ravise. 1980. Protohistoire du Senegal: Sintiou-Bara et les sites du fleuve. Memoires, no. 91. Dakar: IFAN.

Togola, T. 1996. “Iron Age Occupation in the Méma Region, Mali.” African Archaeological Review 13, no. 2: 91–110.

van der Waals, D., A. Schmidt, and M. Dembelé. 1993. “Prospections de sites archéologiques dans le delta intérieure du Niger.” In Vallées du Niger, 218–232. Ed. J. Devisse. Paris: Editions de la réunion des musées nationaux.

Vanacker, C. 1979. Tegdaoust II: Fouille d’un quartier artisanal. Paris: Arts et Metiers Graphiques.

Africa, Swahili Coast of

See Swahili Coast of Africa

Akrotiri-Aetokremnos

Until the excavations by Alan Simmons at Akrotiri-Aetokremnos, there was no evidence of any pre-Neolithic occupation of cyprus. This small, collapsed rock shelter on the south coast of the island contains deposits of stone tools and animal bones representing a relatively short period, approximately 10,000 b.c. A large proportion of the bones are of the pygmy hippopotamus, which became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene period. It is possible that human predation was a factor in this extinction. Although the site has been important in establishing an early date for Mediterranean island colonization, it is still difficult to use this single site as the basis for developing more general models of the processes involved.

David Frankel

References

Simmons, A. H. 1991. “Humans, Island Colonisation, and Pleistocene Extinctions in the Mediterranean: The View from Akrotiri-Aetokremnos Cyprus.” Antiquity 65: 857–869.

Albright, William Foxwell

(1891–1971)

The son of an American Wesleyan missionary couple, Albright spent his childhood in Chile. While working as a high school teacher in South Dakota, he taught himself Hebrew and Akkadian, eventually winning a scholarship to Johns Hopkins University. Albright became one of the most eminent Orientalists of the twentieth century and was known as the father of biblical archaeology. He directed the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem from 1920 to 1929, and again between 1933 and 1936. Albright established the modern discipline of biblical archeology, in which ancient Near Eastern archaeological material was used to elucidate scholarly understanding of the Bible. He was to dominate this field from the early 1920s until the 1960s. His protégé, G. Ernest Wright of Harvard University, carried on the Albright tradition by blending the “biblical theology” movement of the 1950s through the 1970s with “biblical archaeology.”

Between the two world wars many of the American excavations in Palestine were at biblical sites and were staffed by Protestant seminarians and clergymen, who were supported by funds raised by churches. These included Albright’s own excavations at Tell en-Nasbeh (1926–1935), at Beth-shemesh (1928–1933), and at many smaller sites. Albright also excavated Tell el-Fûl (1922), Bethel (1934), and Tell Beit Mirsim (1926–1932), from which he established a pottery chronology for Western Palestine. Albright was Chairman of the Oriental Seminary at Johns Hopkins, and from 1930 to 1968 he edited the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. It was in this latter role that he recognized and publicised the great discoveries of the Ugaritic tablets (1929–1930) and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1947 on).

Tim Murray