Je tiens à vous dire mon émotion d'avoir été désignée pour cette conférence, consacrée à la mémoire de Lord Lugard. Car je n'ai pas aujourd'hui l'intention de faire un exposé académique: en effet, je préfère vous apporter les premiers résultats d'une recherche ‘sur le terrain’ qui se situe dans un cadre assez exceptionnel, celui d'une cérémonie soixantenaire itinérante chez les Dogon du Mali. Je vous présenterai cette recherche dans l'état où elle se trouve actuellement, c'est-à-dire encore en cours d'enquête et d'examen; mon propos constitue une introduction aux films que vous allez voir, réalisés par notre collègue Jean Rouch, chaque année, depuis quatre ans, à l'occasion de ces cérémonies.

This collaboration began when Ames and Gregersen met in Zaria, the capital of one of the old Hausa kingdoms in northern Nigeria. Gregersen, an anthropological linguist, was collecting material for a grammar of Hausa language, and Ames was making an anthropological study of the status and role of professional musicians.

The main subject of this paper is the way in which patterns of settlement and modes of working and holding land are transformed and adapted to diverse political and economic relations. The changes discussed occurred in adjustment, under British Imperial rule, between a large-scale, commercial landlord—initially a mining and trading company—and local rulers and residents in the area of the landlord's monopoly in north-eastern Botswana. Ecological conditions in the middle and high veld of Botswana are of crucial importance for the discussion, since these posed various risks and costs for the landlord, the local rulers, and the residents. I examine primarily a sequence of decisions and the locally crucial constraints that prevailed and set a course for further choices. ‘Tribal ruler’ is the generic term which I use for such political offices as ‘paramount chief’, ‘chieftain’, and also the Protectorate Administration's grade of Sub-Chief. A paramount chief or, simply, chief, is a ruler of the highest rank, having a major territory, whose authority extends over a series of subordinates, including some chieftains. Chieftains, in turn, are petty rulers over lesser territories, and in the grades of the Administration, never higher than Sub-Chief, though they may be independent and not under a chief as an administrative superior.

The holding of land in the Ife Division is governed by a multiplicity of arrangements. Some ‘own’ land in the ordinary sense of the term; some enjoy unrestricted rights over property which in fact belongs to the ebi and not to the individual; and others again hold by leases or grants which permit cultivation under a host of different conditions. A listing based on legal and conventional norms would consequently run to considerable length, and the sheer number of discernible types may well bewilder rather than clarify.

The quarterly bibliography of current publications in Africa has doubled its size during the last few years, with the result that separate publication has become both necessary and desirable, in a form which will make it readily available to a wider public. From 1971 the bibliography will be published as a quarterly bulletin under the title International African Bibliography.