While only the Spanish title is listed here, this attractive and long-overdue work is split into four equal parts, written in Basque, modern literary Arabic (as opposed to the Hassaniya spoken by the inhabitants), Spanish and French. The area covered runs roughly from 24° 00′ north down to the frontier with Mauritania at 21° 20′ north, and its sparse investigation by academics hitherto lies in the poor resources of Spain prior to 1975 and to unforeseen later developments. For earlier works see Almagro Basch Reference Almagro Basch1946 and Mercer Reference Mercer1976. The monotony of the huge plains is often broken by spectacular granite domes on whose summits and flanks a wealth of discarded pottery and grinding equipment is visible. Here and there below are areas where much activity clearly took place, with habitation sites, petroglyphs and numerous stone funerary structures, few of which have been previously documented (see Almagro Basch Reference Almagro Basch1946).
The catalogue of sites found is impressive and the numerous illustrations in colour do much to give the reader an idea of the terrain in general. A wealth of detail on the area and its vegetation is provided, and some of the inhabitants – animal, human and reptile – are skilfully portrayed in typical attitudes and contexts. Prehistoric occupation of the area is divided into the recent pre-desert Lower and Middle Holocene (c 10,000 to 3000 bp) and the earlier Pleistocene Period (before 10,000 bp).
It is not easy to photograph stone funerary/cult structures, many of which today seem little more than untidy stone heaps when viewed from ground level. Even a description may be of little help to a person unfamiliar with the material. In general one may say that the monuments seen in Tiris appear less complex and smaller than others to the north and in territories lying to east and south. The photography of faded petroglyphs may also present a problem, dependent on the time of day and on the orientation of jumbled and eroded rocks. Some motifs or even scenes may always be partly in shadow. The logistics of desert investigation may not allow for a stay of even twenty-four hours, while returning at a different time of day may prove ineffective and costly in time and fuel. Unexpected finds can prove maddeningly time-consuming and hard to fit into a programme. Hence we must be tolerant of these difficulties and hope that more work can be done at such spots during further visits. Several of the photographs were taken outside the so-called ‘Devil’s Cave’, a carvings site listed by UNESCO that was sprayed with graffiti by UN soldiers in autumn 2007. Some of the methods used to record petroglyphs – such as tracing and apparent colouring in red – may attract comment from rock-art experts. Some of the rock pictures shown are in areas outside Tiris and there are some intriguing small photos that lack captions.
Examination of the selective inventory of one hundred sites gives rise to some questions. Of these fifty-seven are defined as monumental sites (sometimes containing more than one structure), twenty-four are habitation or industrial sites, ten are production workshops for stone implements and nine are ‘rock art’ stations. If one may accept that many structures shown are ‘post-palaeolithic’, as defined by the text, the addition of the words ‘of neolithic tradition’ sometimes appears hard to justify without the physical existence of dated material. For example, a crescent-shaped structure (p 256) with a height of 1.6m is quite likely to be neolithic in age, to judge only by dates of rather similar examples in the Niger Republic. If it were flat and set within a clear low border, it would be more likely to be post-neolithic, or in any event later than c 2000 bp (Milburn Reference Milburn1996).
The same applies to another crescent on p 278. On p 282 is a tumulus (a rough stone pile) apparently set at the centre point of a circular bordered platform of 15m diameter. This looks similar to many in the central Saharan Ahaggar region and may be truly neolithic in date. Be that as it may, a number of stone structures could well be ‘of neolithic tradition’; one geologist has seen the coast as reaching hyper-aridity by 2000 bc, with later nomads passing through the desert, leaving stone tumuli and sometimes odd erect megaliths (Petit-Maire Reference Petit-Maire1981). The function of some of these megaliths remains unresolved, even if a tumulus associated with a structure apparently similar to that on p 254 yielded long ago a contracted skeleton thought to exhibit black African characteristics within a stone cist. On p 344 are shown two low concentric rings, which recall other probably ritual structures further north.
The last thirty pages contain numerous photos of small stone objects and pottery, all adding to the wealth of material contained in this inventory. Future excavation and evaluation are anticipated and the author and his assistants, both Europeans and Saharaouis, are to be warmly congratulated on having worked so hard to add to our knowledge of this lovely, though today rather inhospitable, area.
