1. Introduction -- 2. Frameworks -- 3. Origins -- 4. Modern humans, modern behaviour? -- 5. Living through the late Pleistocene -- 6. From the Pleistocene into the Holocene: social and ecological models of cultural change -- 7. Hunting, gathering and intensifying: Holocene foragers in southern Africa -- 8. History from the rocks, ethnography from the desert -- 9. Taking stock: the introduction and impact of pastoralism -- 10. Early farming communities -- 11. The Zimbabwe Tradition -- 12. Later farming communities in southernmost Africa -- 13. The archaeology of colonialism -- 14. Southern African archaeology today.