Afr Archaeol Rev (2010) 27:173–176 DOI 10.1007/s10437-010-9075-z BOOK REVIEW Laurel Phillipson, Using Stone Tools: the Evidence from Aksum, Ethiopia Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 77, Archaeopress, Oxford, 2009, 149 pp, ISBN 978 1 4073 0408 3 Matthew C. Curtis Published online: 2 July 2010 # The Author(s) 2010. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com This volume focuses on flaked lithic tools from surface collections and excavated assemblages in the Aksum area in Tigray, northern Ethiopia. The study reported in the volume concerns descriptions of lithic material documented as part of several archaeological surveys carried out by the author and colleagues over more than a decade and from a number of surface collections and excavation assemblages from Bieta Giyorgis Hill, surveyed and excavated by a Boston University and University of Naples ‘l’Orientale’ project. The volume does not cover in detail excavated lithic material from the 1993–1997 excavations at Aksum sponsored by the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA), as this material has been published elsewhere, and does not consider ground stone artifacts. Even without detailed consideration of the 1993–1997 BIEA lithic and ground stone material, the volume presents important insights into the production of lithic tools during the rise and development of sociopolitical complexity in the region between the early first millennium BC and late first millennium AD. While this time period, traditionally encompassing the Pre- Aksumite to early Post-Aksumite periods, is arguably the best studied period in the Holocene archaeology of the Horn of Africa, and the Aksum area is the most closely investigated region in Ethiopia, relatively little attention has been given over the years to the ways that flaked lithic artifacts were produced, utilized, and incorporated into local and regional economies and cultures of the Aksum area and wider highlands of the northern Horn. Therefore, the volume under review provides a most welcome contribution to an under-published and under-analyzed aspect of the region’s archaeology. The volume includes six chapters, several simple maps, dozens of drawn lithic illustrations, a short glossary of terms used, a bibliography, and a series of 15 plates containing close-up black and white photos of lithic forms and macroscopic wear on individual artifacts. Chapter 1 serves as a sort of preface and is guest-authored by Rodolfo Fattovich, providing a brief overview of research carried out in the Aksum M. C. Curtis (*) University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA e-mail: matthew-curtis@sbcglobal.net