The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research supported a research conference on Bantu Origins in Sub-Saharan Africa, which was held from March 25 through 30, 1968, at the Center for Continuing Education, University of Chicago. The participants in the meeting were J. Desmond Clark, University of California at Berkeley; David Dalby, School of Oriental and African Studies, London; J. M. J. de Wet, University of Illinois, Urbana; Christopher Ehret, Van Nuys, California; Brian M. Fagan, University of California at Santa Barbara; Geoffrey Gaherty, University of Toronto; Jack Harland, University of Illinois, Urbana; Thomas N. Huffman, University of Illinois; Charles M. Keller, University of Illinois, Urbana; Roland Oliver, School of Oriental and African Studies, London; Irvine Richardson, Michigan State University, East Lansing; Albert C. Spaulding, University of California at Santa Barbara; Jan Vansina, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Frank Willett, Northwestern University; and C. C. Wrigley, University of Sussex. They were selected from a broad range of disciplines and spent five days in free-ranging discussions on Bantu origins and its related research problems. No formal papers were presented, thereby leaving maximum time for discussion, nor is any publication resulting from the conference planned. This brief report summarizes some of the general conclusions of the meeting and sets out certain recommendations made by participants at the conference; a draft was circulated to all the delegates for examination prior to publication.

The second Pan-African Psychiatric Conference was convened in Dakar, Senegal, from the 5th to the 9th of March, 1968, under the cochairmanship of Professor Henri Collomb, Professor of Neuropsychiatry, University of Dakar, and Professor T. A. Lambo, Professor of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Among the 230 participants in the conference less than ten had been present at the first Pan-African Psychiatric Conference which was held in Abeokuta, Nigeria, in 1961. The total number of participants at the second conference was far greater than that at the first, reflecting the rapid development of scientific interest in African psychiatry and the concomitant rapid increase of mental health facilities and psychiatric personnel working in Africa. Other differences between the two conferences were the exclusion of neurology from the program of the present conference and the extremely limited participation by British psychiatrists in the second pan-African conference, whereas the earlier conference had been largely dominated by the British school of neurology and psychiatry, prominently represented by Sir Aubrey Lewis and Lord Brain. The second Pan-African Psychiatric Conference, receiving as it did an important element of financial support from the French government through its technical assistance branch, was largely dominated by the French school of psychiatry. Senior French participants included Professor P. Castaigne, Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery at the University of Paris, and Professor Roger Bastide, Professor of Social Psychiatry at the Sorbonne.

In October 1968, the University of Ghana commenced an extensive program in African archaeology. Graduate students from overseas are eligible to enroll for courses at the University, though no scholarships are presently available for non-Ghanaians.

The Department of Archaeology of the University of Ghana was established in 1951 under the professorship of A. W. Lawrence. It presently has a senior teaching establishment of four together with a curator and two senior research fellows under the chairmanship of Professor Merrick Posnansky. The Department has a small specialist library, a museum, laboratory, dark room, workshops, and a team of trained technical staff.

Most of the Department's research work is normally conducted in the dry season from November to May each year. In the past Professor Oliver Davies, author of the Quaternary of the Guinea Coast (1964) and West Africa before the Europeans (1967), conducted extensive fieldwork relating to the Stone Age and neolithic periods of Ghana's past and made large surface collections from all parts of Ghana which provide a rich topographical source of information on archaeology in Ghana. The Department has conducted extensive excavations in Ghana and its research fellows are presently engaged in writing up the results of the Volta Basin Research Project, in which more than thirty sites have been excavated since 1963 in advance of the formation of a large lake consequent upon the construction of the Volta Dam. The majority of the excavated sites have been of Iron Age date. In September 1968, Mr. C. Flight commenced a new season of excavations at “Neolithic” rock shelter sites at Kintampo, where occupations and burials dated to the middle of the second millennium B.C. were uncovered in 1967. Other excavations conducted during 1968 included work by Mr. D. Calvocoressi at the funerary terracotta site of Ahinsan and by Mr. Duncan Mathewson at the seventeenth-century A.D. Gonja site of Jakpasere. In 1969 a training excavation will be conducted at Elmina on the sixteenth- to eighteenth-century A.D. town in the vicinity of the Portuguese castle.

It is a well-known saying that Africa begins at the Pyrenees. What is also obvious is that due to historical, cultural, and geographical reasons, Spain constitutes a unique bridge between Africa and Europe. Within Spain itself, as it advances toward the south, one can appreciate how the north of Africa gradually penetrates into Europe. Hence the African root in Spain is a logical consequence of the geographical reality and the evolution of social historic facts, which throughout the centuries have strongly related Spain and Africa, particularly its northwestern regions; so that when Africa is mentioned in Spain the Maghreb often comes to mind. For the same reason Arabic and Islamic studies occupy a privileged position in Spanish Africanism.

Historically speaking, since the end of the nineteenth century, coinciding with the last impulse in exploration and delimitation of areas under European influence in the sub-Saharan continent, an Africanist movement in research and study has always been manifest in Spanish cultural life. Four definite phases can be traced in its development.

1. The first phase, dating from the end of the last century and the beginning of the present one, is characterized by deep social and political instability (the Spanish-American War, the civil wars, etc.). The ever increasing gap between West Europe and Spain, and the consequent feeling of isolation, created a favorable “Africanist atmosphere” in intellectual milieux. In that time, institutions such as the Real Sociedad Geográfica or the Liga Africanista Española, to mention the most important, did away with the first major obstacle: the emphasis on scientific dedication to Hispanic-American and Arab studies. The above mentioned institutions promoted with success a systematic work in widespread African investigation.