This memoir was written at the suggestion of the Director of the National Museum of Southern Rhodesia, Dr George Arnold, who, in view of my imminent retirement from the keepership of my department, considers that the moment is an appropriate one for a review of the work that has been done in research in prehistory in Southern Rhodesia. While I am fully conscious that it is a tale only half told, I hope that it will serve as a useful milestone in the long journey still ahead before a complete story becomes possible. The colony of Southern Rhodesia, which is half as big again as Great Britain, hides many secrets yet, and, despite the great opening-up of communications that has taken place during the past twenty years, many parts are still difficult of access and little known. The number of serious investigators is so small that together we have done no more than touch the fringe of the subject, but what is here set down will at least show that a beginning has been made. With what success, the future alone will tell.

I am aware that the arrangement of the book is a little unusual in that I have not chosen to arrange it in the form of a consecutive account of the Stone Age cultures which we have been able to recognise, but have preferred to adopt an arrangement whereby the different localities selected for description are allowed to tell their own story. I hope, however, that this will cause no confusion in the reader's mind, nor should it do so if the table I have given of the cultural succession is referred to when necessary. We realize nowadays as never before the essential part which geology plays in the elucidation of our Stone Age problems, and the method I have adopted seems to me more profitable, and will I hope prove interesting reading.

I should like to record the pleasure it has given me to co-operate with those of my period whose names appear from time to time in the following pages. Their contribution has been a substantial one, and prehistory is the richer for it. May their number be increased in the future.