Prehistoric rock art in southern Africa has been studied — with remarkable success — in the light of ethnographic data obtained from modern ‘San’ or ‘Bushmen’. Yet examples of rock paintings reflect conceptual associations similar if not identical to those identified among Bantu-speakers. It is recommended that the art be studied in the light of linguistic as well as ethnographic data without adopting a ‘San-centric’ stance.

The pilgrimage to Mecca made on foot across Africa from west to east between the desert and the tropical forest keeps many West Africans in close touch with the valley of the Nile. The pilgrims follow a route along which culture must from the earliest times have been spread by refugees, traders, military expeditions and the like. (In these latter days motorized convoys of West African troops and aerial reinforcements for the Middle East have followed the same route).

Over twenty years’ service in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (of which twelve years were spent in Darfur, where the cultural and political influence of West Africa was strong in medieval times, and is still felt today), has left me much interested in West Africa, although I have never been there.

Since taking his PhD at the University of Sheffield Dr Stephen Pierpoint has been working as ‘Archaeologist’ for the North Derbyshire Archaeological Committee. During his research he obtained three radiocarbon determinations (financed by Shffield University) for the Neolithic and Bronze Age of Yorkshire of considerable interest.

A study of warfare in late medieval Merv, pivotal city on the silk route.

These brief remarks of Al Makdisi, from his account of the first colonization of Khwarizm, contain much of interest. For evidently in early medieval times there still survived in Khwarizm a vague traditional memory of an ancient culture, when the sandy islands of the great Oxus delta and the lowlands round the Sea of Aral were inhabited by sedentary fisher-folk, the ancestors of the creators of the brilliant but little known civilization of ancient Khwarizm.

The Roman road from Legioliuna (Castleford) to Calcaria (Tadcaster), and its modern descendant, the Great North Road, cross the Cock Beck at Aberford, eight miles north-east of Leeds, Yorkshire (FIG. I). The crossing is defended by a triple system of southward facing banks and ditches which total some 4½ miles in length. The main bank, distinguished by the steepness of its scarp, still rises to 25 feet above the bottom of its ditch, and shows in places the stonework which originally revetted it.