strictly to their place in the order of the dance while the actions of small children are often quite outside the organization of the main activity. We must also remark that whilst the general feeling of the dance is one of good-fellowship, nevertheless such gatherings create dangers disruptive to the unity and concord of the ceremony. Some of these dangers we have already mentioned-slanderous songs, sexual indiscretions, drunkenness, competition (for self-display is esentially aggressive when thwarted), and so on-and we have tried to show that there is social machinery to prevent these disorders. Men also like to air their grievances at such a public gathering. Anyone who watched several beer dances would see quarrels and could not subscribe to the statement that the dance was always an activity of perfect concord in which individual vanity and passions were completely socialized by the constraining forces of the community. Radcliffe Brown has not recognized the complexity of motives in the dance.

We have mentioned a few of the points on which more observation is to be desired. All these details are important. We want cinematographic pictures of dances in their full social setting.

ROLE OF THE DANCE IN RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES. Above all, it is necessary to know on what occasions dances are held and, if they form part of some ceremonial complex, what role, if any, do the dancers take in the performance of the rites. It is quite possible that Zande beer dances are held on a variety of occasions, but amongst the Azande of the bush I have only come across their performance in connexion with the cycle of mourning and mortuary feasts.1

The Zande beer dance takes place at feasts in honour of the spirits of the dead. It is a sacred obligation on the part of the relatives of a dead person to erect a monument of a heap of stones over his or her grave. This may take place from a year to five years after burial. About a year before the mortuary feast there is an economic and

The only exception to this statement is that the dance is held on visits by European officials. Amongst the Azande who have been concentrated by the Government into settlements there is, I believe, a growing tendency for the dance to be held as a play activity without any ritual associations.

religious ceremony at which a number of women thresh the millet which is needed to make beer for the occasion of the feast. From this time what we may call the feast cycle begins and continues till the concluding ceremonies about a year hence. During this period from time to time dances are held, the object of which appears to be to mark the time till the mortuary feast, to remind the locality that preparations for the oncoming festivity are in progress.

You are sitting round the fire in the evening when you hear the distant beating of drums and you ask the Natives what this signifies. They tell you that it is a pumbwë (feast). You walk in the cool of the night through the tall wet grasses to attend the ceremony and you are disappointed to find that it is only a small affair, with some forty to fifty persons dancing, and that there is no beer provided by the master of the homestead. It is customary to give such dances now and again between the threshing of the millet and the main ceremony in honour of the dead.

On this last occasion the dance is a very big affair and may be attended by some hundreds of persons. I have seen quite five or six hundred persons attending one of these dances and was told by the Natives that often there were many more. This feast dance closes the cycle and there are no more dances in the homestead.

We must therefore not think of the dance simply as a play activity, but as forming part of an important social undertaking associated with religious ceremonial.

This does not mean that the dancers take any part in the ceremonial relating to the spirits of the dead. These intimate functions are carried out by the kindred of the dead and by other persons bound to them by close social ties. The relatives do not take part in the festivities. Their activities are quite distinct from those of the friends and neighbours who have come to dance. These latter have come to enjoy themselves. The dance is an important local affair to them and no young person of either sex would care to miss it. They come in holiday mood. But the activities which form part of the intimate ritual of the spirits and the ceremonial exchange between relatives-inlaw are not unrelated to the more boisterous and profane activities of the dance. Even if the emotions of the dead man's relatives and

Hh

the emotions of the dancers are different, nevertheless the dance must be regarded as part of the whole ceremonial complex.

The beating of the drums attracts large numbers of neighbours to the homestead of the man who has made himself responsible for the carrying out of ritual duties to the dead. This crowd gives a background against which the rites are performed. Not only does it flatter the giver of the feast that a large number of persons should attend it, but their presence gives support to the more serious events of the occasion. The crowd gives social recognition to the carrying out of a sacred duty towards the dead and to the obligations of ceremonial exchange between the master of the feast and his relativesin-law. A crowd makes the banal and unpleasant labour of carrying stones to the grave, the indecent wrangling over the number of spears and amount of beer which are exchanged, an impressive and memorable occasion. It raises the unwelcome labour in preparing for the feast and the irksome obligations of relatives into a dignified ceremony in honour of the spirits of the dead. Such I think is the function of the dance as part of the complex of religious ceremonial.

E. E. EVANS-PRITCHARD.

LA RENAISSANCE DE L'OLIVIER ET LA PROPRIÉTÉ FONCIÈRE DANS L'AFRIQUE DU NORD

BY J. LADREIT DE LACHARRIÈRE

[A summary of this article in English appears on p. 517].

"OLIVIER, très vieil arbre. Il en est peu qui puisse s'enorgueillir d'une tradition si ancienne et si humaine: un de ses rameaux dans le bec de la colombe n'annonçait-il pas à Noé la fin de la colère divine? Sur tout le pourtour de la Méditerranée, l'olivier trouve des conditions favorables dans les sols considérés comme les plus arides aussi bien que sur les terres les plus riches. Il est en Syrie, en Anatolie, en Italie, en Provence, en Espagne; Athènes en a fait l'attribut de sa marraine, la sage Pallas; les rives redoutées de l'Afrique septentrionale en sont couvertes comme par contraste, car l'arbre de paix a fructifié au milieu des pires complications de l'histoire, de celles déterminées par le seul goût des rapines qui, pendant des siècles, a poussé les tribus pillardes à dévaster villes et campagnes, les pirates barbaresques à écumer la mer.

Aux siècles anciens, Carthage commerçante avait compris de quelle importance était pour elle la maîtrise sur ce que nous appellerions aujourd'hui le marché mondial des matières grasses. Tandis que ses suffètes et Hannibal faisaient greffer les oléastres (oliviers sauvages) et planter manu militari des olivettes dans les environs de la cité, les expéditions menées dans des buts politiques contre les peuples environnants ne négligeaient pas les intérêts économiques de la Mère Patrie et détruisaient - cela s'est reproduit depuis dans un autre cadre et contre d'autres arbres - les olivettes de Sardaigne concurrentes pour les plantations carthaginoises. Rome encouragea à son tour culture, fabrication, et les innombrables moulins dont les ruines parsèment l'Afrique témoignent en même temps que des bienfaits de l'ordre importé, de l'activité des agriculteurs berbères. Mais les dissensions intestines, la ruine de l'Empire, l'afflux des barbares, la ruée arabe anéantirent en quelques siècles les efforts des générations antiques. Pendant un millénaire, les Nord-Africains culti

vèrent au minimum. La nature pourtant était si bienveillante qu'elle leur donnait de quoi, leurs besoins satisfaits, exporter à l'étranger le précieux produit. Le Proche Orient s'alimentait en huile aux pressoirs moghrébins: le port tunisien de Sousse envoyait chaque année des 'lillerolles' d'huile par dizaines de milliers vers l'Égypte et vers les lieux saints de l'Islam avec des soins particuliers, car pour éviter à la marchandise destinée à La Mecque et à Médine la souillure d'emballages suspects les expéditions étaient faites dans des jarres et non dans des tonneaux qui auraient pu contenir du vin.

Si la Tunisie se trouvait ainsi largement exportatrice, le Maroc, au contraire, retenait dans son économie propre toute sa production. Les sultans, pour fermer leur pays à la pénétration des chrétiens, interdisaient tout commerce au grand dam des producteurs moghrébins et des acheteurs européens. Les uns et les autres souhaitaient la liberté commerciale, et l'activité de Ben Aissa, ambassadeur de Moulay Ismael à la cour de Louis XIV, se manifestait autant en négociations politiques qu'en tractations commerciales avec les négociants qui, par son entremise et moyennant commission, poussaient le diplomate à obtenir du souverain chérifien la libre sortie des huiles marocaines. A Alger, les Turcs avaient résolu autrement la question. Les deys s'étaient faits les uniques courtiers du commerce; ils avaient établi à leur profit un monopole sur la vente de l'huile, et si les fabriques marseillaises, à ce moment les plus grandes consommatrices de cette matière première, voulaient s'approvisionner dans la Régence, elles devaient passer sous les fourches caudines du maître d'Alger, expert à tenir des prix.

L'ensemble de ces conditions était défavorable à l'extension de la culture de l'olivier dans l'Afrique du Nord. Pourtant cette culture résista aux méfaits des hommes pour des causes occasionnelles fort heureusement conjuguées; la première est que l'olivier ne meurt pas de vieillesse; si on n'arrache pas tronc et souche, il repart et, comme l'écrit un des plus fidèles observateurs de cet arbre, M. Tourniéroux, conseiller agricole du Protectorat tunisien:1

'Arrivé à un certain âge, il dépérit, le tronc s'évide, l'extrémité des rami''L'Oléiculture en Tunisie,' par J. Tourniéroux, extrait du Bulletin de la Direction générale de l'Agriculture, du Commerce et de la Colonisation du Protectorat Français, 1922.