A Survey of Recent Results in the Radiocarbon Chronology of Western and Northern Africa

This paper is the first in a series summarizing, for the benefit of historians and archaeologists from other areas, the latest developments in radiocarbon dating for the later prehistory of western and northern Africa. These articles will appear every two years, alternating with similar surveys of eastern and southern Africa. A selection of more than 200 dates from those not previously published in this Journal is discussed, and dates obtained by thermoluminescence are quoted for the first time. It should be emphasized that most of the dates included are published in advance of full reports which are being prepared by the archaeologists concerned. The conclusions reached are therefore provisional and may well require modification in the light of a fuller examination of the related archaeological data.