After completing his PhD on the European Palaeolithic at Cambridge, Philip Allsworth-Jones served as a staff member of the Department of Archaeology in Nigeria for a number of years, during which time much of the fieldwork described in this book was carried out. He subsequently held an analogous appointment at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, but he has continued to take an interest in West Africa ever since. He is currently an Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Archaeology of the University of Sheffield, and while holding this appointment he has in recent years published a number of works on Nigeria, including the results of his excavations at the rock shelter sites of Itaakpa and Kariya Wuro. This is his first attempt to tell the whole story of the Middle Stone Age in West Africa in book form.
