active local research societies (especially in Oran, Constantine, and Tebessa) and the great interest in Maghrebian prehistory taken by leading figures in France (e.g., marcellin boule, editor of L’Anthropologie), the Bordesian analytical revolution penetrated faster in North Africa. The abundance of local sequences, most unusually for Africa, was complemented by several generations of regional syntheses (Vaufrey in 1955, Balout in 1955, Camps in 1974, Hugot in 1979). The downside was a marked deference to the European stages and typological terms.

The remnant Aurignacian question was put to rest by R. Vaufrey, who demolished the land-bridge thesis and showed that the Capsian geometrics and microburins were of Mesolithic (Tardenoisian) age. From the 1930s, under Lionel Balout of the Musée Bardo in Algiers, students such as G. Souville, G. Camps and H. Camps, J. Tixier, and H. Huget received training that stressed the inadequacy of the diagnostic or index artifact. The typological work of R. de Bayle de Hermens (Capsian), H. Camps-Fabrer (bone), and J. Tixier (epipaleolithic) was particularly exacting. Unfortunately, the pace of research in North Africa slowed appreciably as a result of the violence of national independence and the economic and political conditions of the modern Maghrebian states.

Postindependence: Emergence of National Research Goals after 1960

Although the pace of research diminished after independence, there was also a break with traditional North African research in the form of greater internationalization and greater institutional support. Most work continues along the typological direction set by J. Tixier (experimental knapping) and L. Balout (refined local sequences and classification), but some of their younger colleagues (G. Aumassip, A. Gautier, A. Muzzolini, and C. Roubet) have tried to go beyond lithics to a reconstruction of past ways of life. Perhaps these efforts would be more advanced were more North Africans at the forefront of research, but such is not the case despite the opening of serious instruction at the University of Algiers in 1952. Instead, the weight of research is directed toward environmental adaptation or processes, such as the origin of food production, and has shifted east to Libya and more especially to the Egyptian western desert and the prehistoric Nile Valley.

The biggest difference between international efforts in the mahgreb—such as projects run by the Canadian D. Lubell and the German B. Gabriel—and efforts that have a more traditionally typological thrust is a greater appreciation of interassemblage, intersite, and interregional diversity. The Bordesian quantitative standards have been accepted with a Bordes-like resistance to functional studies. In rock art, too, there is an overwhelming tendency by otherwise outstanding observers such as Italian archaeologist Alfred Muzzolini to look for regions of coherent, homogeneous style or design choice—which are thought to be characteristic of bounded, coherent peoples. Change in art style is presumed to be evidence of migration or of population swamping. Still, the institutional support of Mahgrebian research continues, and the Centre Algérien de Recherches Anthropologiques, Préhistoriques et Ethnographiques, and the Laboratoire d ’Anthropologie et Préhistoire et d’Ethnologie of the University of Provence sponsor new research. One clearly sees the integration of older typology and emerging processual concerns in the Encyclopédie Berbere, compiled on a continuing basis by G. Camps, and in the journal Sahara begun by Muzzolini in 1988.

If the overall effect of independence has been a diminution of research in Congo (formerly Zaire), there has been much new high-quality work in the surrounding central African nations, and the influences of internationalization and greater institutional support are as evident here as they are in North Africa. Although there was not a single archaeologically trained Congolese national at independence, the situation has slowly improved with a steady trickle of students returning from the Free University of Brussels and with the establishment, in 1975, of the Institute of the National Museums of Zaire (IMNZ). The IMNZ is charged with regulating excavations and antiquities generally and has the enormous ongoing task of stemming the free flow of art and antiquities out of the country.