The collections of the British Museum provide an exceptional resource for exploring both African antiquity and its contemporary arts and cultures. This book looks at the continent as a whole. It describes through a series of essays the history and arts of particular regions and the sources of the collections now in the Museum. Each section will be well-illustrated with a mix of archival and contemporary field photographs, and will also integrate illustrations of up to 50 important individual objects from this world-famous collection. The objects will have a commentary on their significance by leading figures in the field of African studies, many of them native to the areas from which the objects derive. The book brings to bear a mix of Western and African scholarship in an innovative collaboration to reassess one of the great African collections.