Really brilliant stuff from /u/commustar and /u/Jasfss! For a topic encompassing the whole continent and hundreds of years of history, this podcast has done a great job of providing a brilliant overview of urbanisation and social development in Africa. I really liked the frequent references to how the various societies and cultures interacted - it makes a nice change from much of the "popular" history that approaches these things in almost total geographical isolation.

I learnt more from it than I would like to admit so big thumbs up from me! Going to be recommending this around our African studies department for some time to come.

Hi guys, I hope everyone is enjoying the podcast. Thanks to /u/400-Rabbits and /u/Jasfss for having me on.

Apologies to anyone who was hoping for more information about urbanism among the forest kingdoms of West Africa (Akan, Yoruba, Igbo, etc), or about urbanism in the Lakes Region, or Nubian urbanism, or about Luba, Lunda, Rozwi, Mutapa, etc. traditions. My neglecting to mention them is certainly not an attempt to make it seem "there wasn't anything there". I simply am not that informed about those urban traditions, and I did not feel able to provide accurate or informative discussion about those societies.

For anyone who is interested, I found the following books and articles to be informative when preparing for this podcast.

• the African City in History by Bill Freund, Cambridge University Press, 2007. Proffessor Freund provides a brief introduction to Ethiopian, Kongoan, Egyptian and Islamic cities in the pre-colonial period in Chapter 1. Subsequent chapters devote increasing attention to colonial and post-colonial movements in African cities.

• Urbanism in the Preindustrial World edited by Glenn R. Storey, University of Alabama Press, 2006. Chapter 8 is dedicated the archaeological practice of investigating cities in precolonial Africa. Chapurukha Kusimba, Sibel Barut Kusimba, and Babatunde Agbaje-Williams devote the bulk of the chapter to discussing the challenges of providing reliable estimates for population sizes.

• Ancient Middle Niger: Urbanism and the self-organizing landscape by Roderick J. McIntosh, Cambridge University Press 2005. Interesting if specialized discussion about urban spaces like Jenne-jeno. McIntosh and his wife were part of the team in the late 1970s that first excavated Jenne-Jeno, and their voices are still quite authoritative on the topic of Middle-Niger urbanism.

• The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology edited by Peter Mitchell and Paul Lane, Oxford University Press, 2013. Chapter 47; the Archaeology of African Urbanism provides a very useful overview of the state of the art concerning African Urbanism within Archaeology. In addition to areas covered in my podcast, it additionally discusses the Great Lakes region, Akan, Yoruba and Igbo urbanism. It is especially valuable for the quite extensive bibliography at the end of the chapter, which is a springboard to more specialized reading on the topic.

• Africa's Urban Past edited by David Anderson and Richard Rathbone, published by James Currey Ltd, 2000. I relied very heavily on John Thornton's chapter titled "Mbanza Kongo/Sao Salvador; Kongo's holy city" as the basis for my discussion of Mbanza Kongo in the podcast.

• The Archaeology of Islam in Africa by Timothy Insoll, Cambridge University Press, 2003. Insoll is quite informative about the development of Hausa cities, and looks deeply into urbanism in the Lake Chad region.

I've listened to about half so far, and it is absolutely fascinating!

Though I have one concern (on the podcast implementation). I listen to podcasts on my daily commute, and the sound levels tend to be low on this one, making it hard to hear at times. I had assumed it was my phone, but it's not an issue I have with other podcasts. Is that something that can be tweaked in the future? If it's difficult, no worries! I can adjust my listening habits to listening to this one at other times.