Red Gold of Africa: Copper in Precolonial History and Culture

Front Cover
Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1984 - Art - 413 pages
The classic history of copper working and use throughout Africa
A finalist for the 1985 Herskovits Prize
First Paperback Edition
 

Contents

Prologue The Age of Metals
3
Sources of copper in Africa precolonial period
14
Ancient Workings in subSaharan Africa
15
Copper deposits in Southern Africa
22
Ritual Social
29
Mining and Smelting
49
Smithing Drawing Casting and Alloying
76
The Copper Trade before
103
Copper as a Medium of Exchange
185
Mbochi currencies
199
Copper as a Medium of Art
208
Copper as a Medium of Power
240
Copper and the Language of Materials
277
Conclusion Red Gold
296
ABBREVIATIONS
307
NOTES
309

English copper and brass exports and reexports to Africa
145
English exports of wrought copper to Africa 179098
151
The Copper Economy in the Nineteenth Century
154
COPPER IN TRADITIONAL AFRICAN SOCIETY
183
BIBLIOGRAPHY
373
INDEX
393
Copyright

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About the author (1984)

Eugenia W. Herbert is the E. Nevius Rodman Professor of History Emeritus at Mount Holyoke College and book review editor of the African Studies Review. Among her recent publications are Iron, Gender, and Power: Rituals of Transformation in African Societies and Twilight on the Zambezi: Late Colonialism in Central Africa.

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