INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH REPORTS 39. 24. Armitage Report on Yeii in C O. African (West) No.538 p. 157. 25. H. Klose Togo unter deutscher f lagge p. 362. 2,6. Insp. Parmeter Letter dated March 31 1897 in C O. African (West) No.529 p.206. 27. Tomlinson, op. cit. 28. Al-Hajj Umar: Poem on the causes of the Civil War IASAR/27. 29. G.E. Ferguson Letter to Adjutant in C7917 of 1896. * . *• 30. G.E. Ferguson. Memorandum of interview at Salaga in 1892, in C O. African (West) No.497 of 1895. "The king of Gonja died about a year ago, and there is anarchy in the country. The kings of Kosoo, Gun and Boniape were claimants to the stool". Marion Johnson. SIERRA LEONE ARCHAEOLOGY In February and March 1966, I conducted a short survey of the af£haeologyof Sierra Leone. This was sponsored by the Institute of African Studies, Fourah Bay College, with the kind support of the Ministry of Lands, Mines and Labour, the main purpose being to discover whether the archaeo- logical potential of the country was sufficient to warrant, or demand, the appointment of a Research Fellow in Archaeology. It is surprising that so little work has been done there. The miniature Museum is continuously crowded with people anxious to know of their cultural heritage; and in addition to its variegated recent material culture, 40. INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH REPORTS Sierra Leone possesses medieval remains of the greatest attraction. For example, unbroken beakers, well designed and modelled in thin earthenware, the famous steatite carvings (nomoli), stone maeeheads and brass bracelets, can now be ascribed to this period, to a culture which declined in the sixteenth century. I saw much of the southern half of the country, from the lower It is almost certainly the Manguy described by Valentim reaches of the Scarcies to the creeks of the Sherbro, and inland as far as Kono, but was unable to go north to Kabala and Falaba, nor to examine the gold-rich banks of the Pampana River - two areas which I would expect to be of great interest. The survey was very profitable. One site must be classed amongst the most important in Atlantic Africa, This is Baka (8 29.6'N; 13 4.6' W), situated in a dominant spot on the estuary of the Rokel (Sierra Leone) River. Fernandes in 1507 as the largest settleme"nFln the area, and in addition fro locally-made pottery and stone objects if yielded very early European imports including the oldest tobacco-pipe I have yet found, an English or Dutch ctay of 1590-1600, and a glazed handle, probably of the sixteenth century. A short and inexpensive excavation here would not only reveal the cultural effects of early trade with Europe, but would also provide dating evidence which could be extrapolated up-country, and perhaps even as far as the ancient Mali capital near Bamako. Neither in Ghana nor Nigeria, nor indeed in any country between Morocco and Mozambique, is there ariiy site known of similar promise. This site aside, there was still sufficient material to make thm tour worth while, ranging from the cultures transitional between the sfocm, smd iron ages to that of the early settlers of the colony. What struck m& post, in both ancient and modern culture, was that although there ore v%w$ great differences between Sierra Leone and Ghana, there are also strong, similari- ties. Indeed, the very contrasts make if easier to understands some aspects of the history of Ghana, There can be no doubt that in three oi? four yeanjtime when an archaeologist has been appointed in Sierra Leone afwdi ha& had time to do a little field-work, our knowledge of the cultural dewfefjwent of West Africa will be significantly greater. A copy of my report, apart from some appendices^ will be l&dged in the Institute library; a major part of ltf an essay on the iron agm i INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH REPORTS 41. Leone, will be published as soon as possible in the journal Sierra Leone Studies. I wish to thank Professors J . H. Nketia and I . G. Wilks, and the Pro-Vice-Chance I lor, for allowing me to be absent during term; and to express my gratitude to Mr. M. Crowder and Mr. J. Hyde of the Institute of African Studies, Fourah Bay College, as the most instrumental of the many who made my work possible, successful, and extremely enjoyable. Paul Ozanne. COMPARATIVE STUDY OP THE VOLTA-COMOE LANGUAGES Both WESTERMANN AND BRYAN and GREENBERG recognise the genetic unity of a group of languages which they call Akan and which includes Akan (Twi-Fante), Anyi-Bawule, Nzema, Ahanta and the Guan languages. On the advice of my colleagues in Ghana I now call this group Volta-Comoe in order to avoid confusion with the Akan (Twi-Fante) language. I have for many years been interested in the comparison of Akan (Twi-Fante) with other languages of the Western Sudanic (Niger-Congo) family.' At an early stage I sought regular sound correspondences between the Akuapem Twi dialect of Akan, on which a vast amount of material was available in CHRISTALLER'S Dictionary of the Asante and Fante language called Twi, and the Common Bantu worked out by GUTHRIE from the languages of the Bantu group. The Bantu group was the only one within the Western Sudanic family for which ah overall system of sound correspon- dences and a list of starred forms had been established, and I had the privilege of access to GUTHRIE'S 'Index of Common Bantu starred forms' 1. See J . H. GREENBERG, Languages of Africa (Mouton, The Hague 1963).