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The Archaeology of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa. By Timothy Insoll. Cambridge World Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xv, 470; 125 illustrations. $95.00 cloth, $37.00 paper.
Timothy Insoll's detailed overview of the archaeology of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa can be read as both an encyclopedic summary of Iron Age archaeology as well as a challenge to begin thinking about the archaeology of religion and religious practice. In many ways, this volume is a much-needed and more nuanced revision of works such as J. S. Trimingham's regional summaries and overviews of the "influence" of Islam on sub-Saharan Africa.1 Additionally, it serves as a materialist companion to Nehemiah Levtzion and Randall Pouwels's recent History of Islam in Africa (2000). This ambitious volume focuses on the material correlates of Islam and Islamic practice, delineates what an archaeology of Islam might look like, and how it might be attempted. Insoll rightly indicates that although archaeologists might recognize that Islamic practice was one of most significant processes in the development of many African societies after the seventh century A.D. (through trade, politics, and the social processes of conversion), they have not yet found a cohesive language to investigate and express those themes.
The bulk of the volume is a detailed assessment of the archaeology of Islam in seven regions (Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, the Nilotic Sudan, the East African coast, the Western Sahel, the Central Sudan, the West African...