The Comoro Archipelago is situated at the head of the Mozambique Channel, midway between Cape Amber and Cape Delgado. The largest of the four islands, Great Comoro (or Grande Comore), 175 miles from Mozambique, is the northernmost island in the group. Mayotte (or Mayotta), the first of the islands to become a French colony, and the southernmost in the group, is the closest to Madagascar. To the northwest of Mayotte is Anjouan (or Johanna), referred to by authors, both ancient and modern, because of its fertility, as the “Pearl of the Comoro Islands”; immediately to the south of Great Comoro, and almost parallel with Anjouan, is Mohilla (or Moheli), the smallest island in the group.

The population of the islands is a mixture of African, Arab, and Malagasy, numbering over 170,000 people, with the heaviest concentration on Anjouan. The exportation of agricultural products has always been the chief industry of the archipelago. Its location at the head of the Mozambique Channel, and the wide range of food products available, made the Comoro Islands a popular supply stop for ships bound for India and the Far East via the Mozambique Channel; for the ships of the British antislavery squadron; and for whalers fishing in the southern Indian Ocean. European technological progress and the opening of the Suez Canal combined to render this function obsolete. During the last half of the nineteenth century, Mayotte, which became a French colony in 1841, was a moderately successful sugar colony. Plantations were also opened on Anjouan and Mohilla, but it was not until after the establishment of a French protectorate over the other two islands in 1886 that plantation economies and new crops were introduced to the rest of the archipelago. Ylang-Ylang, a perfume essence, is the major export crop; sisal, vanilla, cocoa, and coffee are also exported. Coconuts are the only export commodity which has survived from the precolonial economy.

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.

The Research Liaison Committee of the African Studies Association has compiled A Directory of Studies Centers and Research Institutes Abroad engaged in Africa-oriented research. The Directory is available by individual countries or in its entirety by writing to the RLC office.

Professors Igor Kopytoff, Vernon McKay, and Benjamin Rivlin are the 1967 liaison representatives of the Association. Each has visited African universities, research institutes, and government offices during the past few months to collect information on research in progress and on the perspectives and problems of field research in the countries of Africa.

The 1968 liaison representatives have been appointed by the Association's president, William A. Hance. Professors Robert A. Lystad and Robert L. West have joined the RLC and will be traveling to Africa during the summer, 1968.

A request to scholars recently returned or going to Africa. The RLC would welcome the following information: 1. Data on research project, including title of project, discipline or disciplines reflected, financial sponsorship, home institution, academic advisor, institutional affiliation in Africa, date of departure and expected duration of stay in Africa; 2. A brief report on living conditions, actual cost in relation to anticipated cost, field problems, and any other information with would be of assistance to those planning fieldwork in Africa.