AFRICA - THE WESTERN PROVINCE Palaeolithic Remains.—Itis only recently that stone imple ments of River-drift type, and therefore to be regarded provision ally as of Palaeolithic age, have been discovered in West Africa. In the British Museum there is a series of massive implements of Chellean type, consisting of quartz porphyry, which on the surface have weathered to the softness of chalk. These come from the alluvial deposits of the Bauchi plateau, as do a smaller number of implements of Mousterian type of the same mineral, and one very steep end-scraper of a more homogenous stone showing no surface weathering. (These implements are described by H. J. Braunholtz in Occasional Paper No. 4 of the Geological Survey of Nigeria.) There is also in the national collection a number of short stumpy implements of Drift type of a reddish quartzite, for the most part with unworked butt, found on the golf links of Accra (Gold Coast). Similar specimens have been found in the local gravels, the actual specimens in the museum having appar ently been washed up from the beach.
Under the title "Tumbakultur" Oswald Menghin (Anthropos. 20, 1925) has described a culture characterized by series of im plements, widespread in the Lower Congo area, which he tends to approximate, though with difficulty, to the Campignian of Europe. Be this as it may, Menghin finds a long series of artifacts passing insensibly from implements of coup-de-poing type, Campignian pits, flattened ovates of almost laurel-leaf type, to notched and roughly cruciform spear or arrowheads, some, though larger and coarser, irresistibly recalling the "freak" forms from Breonio in Italy. Apart from these, many ground stone axes have been found in the Congo area.
"In addition to the concentric outer pillars, there are several instances where the outer pillars are arranged on the eastern side of the circle in a straight line, or even in two parallel lines, in a north and south direction. Such lines are invariably to the east of the circle. . . ." The circles are considered sacred to the Earth Spirit, and cere monies are performed in them to propitiate the latter, as also for the protection of the crops. It does not, however, appear that Parker excavated in them, and their date and purpose must be left for further exploration, though in the light of information received on the spot the contents of the circle (human remains, spearheads, copper armlets) dug by J. L. Todd and G. B. Wolbach (Man, No. 96, 19I 1) suggest that in recent times these monuments were the sites of sacrifice for success in warfare.
In some of the northern villages of the Cross River Division of Nigeria, i.e., in the villages of the Akayu, Indem and Atam dis tricts (on the left bank of the Aweyong river) there are stone circles, the stones often more or less conical and carved to repre sent the human body from the waist upwards. These have been described and figured by C. Partridge (Cross River Natives, 1905, pp. 268-599) ; the navel is specially prominent, and cicatrices seem to be reproduced. At Agba village the circle surrounds an old tree, and the grove of the great chief who erected the circle. The tree is sacred, and of the stones it was said by the ancestors "these stones are your forefathers, your very great chiefs ; every year you must sacrifice to them" (p. 271).
Beads.—Inthe past, claims of high antiquity have been made on behalf of the so-called "aggry" beads that have been found in West Africa. Yet as stated by Sir Hercules Read, with the single exception of the necklace to be discussed immediately none of these beads shows features not to be found in mediaeval or later beads from the factories of Venice. The necklace, presented to the British Museum by L. P. Davies, was ob tained from the grave of "a renowned chief" at Mansu, a town on the route from Elmina to Kumasi. It is described in detail in Man (19o5, For present purposes interest centres in some 20, beads of crystalline glass, irregular-faceted, and especially one bead of crystalline glass moulded like a mulberry. Sir- Hercules Read writes of these as being in a state of iridescent decay, the surfaces being in many cases deeply pitted and presenting exactly the same appearance as beads of the same kind from the Mediterranean area. He points out that the crystalline glass in this necklace is identical in appearance with those from the tombs at Kameiros in Rhodes, dating from the 6th century, and goes on to suggest, but "without insisting too strongly on this point," that here are "glass beads of classical style found for the first time in West Africa, and presenting features that in point of date may justifiably be asso ciated with the name and time of the Carthaginian Hanno, a name often invoked when objects of indeterminate age are found on the African coast." Though probably not of any great age, reference must be made to the soap-stone carvings of human heads or figures (occasionally animal figures) found in the ground, sometimes apparently in pits, in certain districts of Sierra Leone, where they are used as agri cultural charms. These figures are for the most part roughly carved, the work being well within the scope of present-day Africans, and Joyce (Man, No. 57, 1905, and No. 4o, 2909), points out that there is really no reason to see in them—as has been pro posed—evidence of foreign, i.e., Egyptian or Carthaginian in fluence. The objects described by Frobenius from Old Ife (The Voice of Africa, 1913, vol. i, chap. 14; "The Archaeological Finds"; and Das Unbekannte Africa, Munich, 1923), the ancient capital of the Yoruba, are also probably of no great age ; there do not seem to be any which the i6th century Benin civilization might not have produced.
Possibly of about the same date are a number of bronze and silver objects, now on deposit in the British Museum, from a sandy mound (no doubt a grave) at Tumuni in the Sokoto Prov ince of Northern Nigeria. Sir Hercules Read holds that they exhibit features and analogies which are unusual in negro African metal work, pointing to artistic or commercial relationship with the culture of the Mediterranean area, doubtless at a period remote from the date of the manufacture of the relics themselves.
The most important pieces are a bucket with incurved sides and lugs, and a barrel-shaped armlet ( ?) for wear on the bicepital region. The lines and casting of both, and the geometrical pat terns tooled on their surfaces, are good and careful work. While the find as a tomb-group may date to A.D. 1480, as suggested by H. R. Palmer, yet, as stated by Read, they are of unusual interest from the analogies they present with the early Mediterranean cul tures, and we may have here a distant echo of the early art of the Bronze age. At the same time there is no reason to think that the actual objects are anything but local productions, though they may differ from those of more recent date.