Rivers Medal, 1934, and North African Studies

Abstract

THE selection of Miss Gertrude Caton-Thompson for the award of the Rivers Memorial Medal for 1934 by the Council of the Royal Anthropological Institute will be cordially endorsed by all who follow the progress of archaeological studies with any degree of close interest. The medal is awarded annually, and was founded to perpetuate the memory of the late Dr. W. H. R. Rivers by recognising work of outstanding merit in any branch of anthropological studies. Miss Caton-Thompson's work as an excavator of archaeological sites has covered a varied field in time and space. It has ranged from the earliest prehistoric period to the fringe of historic times in Egypt, the Libyan Desert and southern Africa. Her investigation of the Zimbabwe culture of Southern Rhodesia has not only pricked the bubble of speculation, but it has also based the solution of an obscure problem of African ethnology on an assured body of archaeological fact. No one will question that Miss Caton-Thompson's work is “characterised by wide knowledge, sound judgment and insight”, to quote the words of Dr. H. S. Harrison in making the presentation of the medal at the meeting of the Royal Anthropological Institute on April 9, at which Miss Caton-Thompson delivered a lecture on the results of the Institute's archæological expedition to the oasis of El Kharga, of which she has been in charge. The importance of these investigations may be gauged from her examination of their bearing on some Stone Age problems of North Africa, problems which recent studies, especially by French archaeologists, show to be assuming an increasing importance in the reconsideration of the prehistory of North Africa and its relation to the origin and development of the later palæolithic and mesolithic cultures of Europe. (See NATURE, 133, 107; 1934. 134, 975; 1934. 135, 550; 1935. An account of the investigation of the rock-shelter of Afalou in Algeria will appear shortly.)