In this paper I isolate for study a particular set of ancestors, the maternal ancestors in patrilineal societies and paternal ancestors in matrilineal societies. I call these the ‘extra-descent group ancestors’, for they are the ancestors of the parent who is residual with reference to the descent group of Ego. Thus among the Tallensi of northern Ghana, since membership of the descent group is traced patrilineally, the mother is the residual parent, and consequently the maternal ancestors are extradescent group ancestors, while the patrilineal ancestors are descent ancestors. Conversely, among the Plateau Tonga of Zambia, where there is a matrilineal system of descent, the father is the residual parent, and therefore the extra-descent group ancestors are the paternal ancestors, while the descent ancestors are matrilineal. It is with the character and actions of the extra-descent group ancestors that I shall be mainly concerned.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, a change came about in the hereditary régime of the Bemba kingdom during civil strife between members of the kingdom's royal and noble strata. The rulers of the kingdom, who shared in the Central African trade of slaves and ivory for guns and calico, fought to defend their positions and to meet the competition from opponents who could enter into new relations of power. Past conceptions of the kingdom in terms of centralization have obscured this, hindering understanding of the specialized structures of authority among royals and nobles, the differences among the ruling strata, and the variable interlocking of their federal administrations. Richards has argued, in somewhat contradictory fashion, that the kingdom, primarily unified through ritual beliefs, was nevertheless centralized owing to an apparent concentrating of control over territorial administration in the hands of royals:

In Northern Rhodesia the kingdom of the Bemba was kept united by the strong belief of the people in the ritual powers of their king. All district chieftainships were filled by princes of the blood who moved in succession by genealogical seniority from one chieftainship to another. Clan leaders were unimportant politically and the king's favourites never held office. A royal dynasty in control of all territorial posts seem to have been sufficient to achieve centralization of a loose type.

The first part of this paper seeks to develop an approach to traditional African thought already sketched in several previous contributions to this journal. My approach to this topic is strongly influenced by the feeling that social anthropologists have often failed to understand traditional religious thought for two main reasons. First, many of them have been unfamiliar with the theoretical thinking of their own culture. This has deprived them of a vital key to understanding. For certain aspects of such thinking are the counterparts of those very features of traditional thought which they have tended to find most puzzling. Secondly, even those familiar with theoretical thinking in their own culture have failed to recognise its African equivalents, simply because they have been bunded by a difference of idiom. Like Consul Hutchinson wandering among the Bubis of Fernando Po, they have taken a language very remote from their own to be no language at all.

Professor Marwick's Sorcery in its Social Setting is only the third major J- work to be dedicated to this theme since Evans-Pritchard's publication of Oracles, Witchcraft, and Magic among the Azande in 1937 and Kluckhohn's Navaho Witchcraft in 1944. He has produced a comprehensive and balanced survey of sorcery beliefs and accusations among the Cewa. The study is particularly rich in ethnographic depth. The attitudes of the people to witchcraft are portrayed with a rare sensitivity and warmth.

In her book, The Akan of Ghana (1958), Eva L. Meyerowitz examines some of the religious beliefs and practices of the Akan in an attempt to show that they are of Libyo-Phoenician origin and that Akan civilization is essentially pre-Arab North African in character. As an example of an Akan New Year festival she describes the annual Aboakyer (lit. ‘the catching of an animal’) ritual of the Effutu people of southern Ghana and interprets it in a manner which supports her theory of Akan origins (Meyerowitz, 1958, pp. 38–42). This research note subjects Meyerowitz's treatment of the Aboakyer to critical analysis. It is concerned with her theory of Akan origins only in so far as it results in misinterpretation of the Aboakyer. The note does not provide a full account of the Aboakyer, but a brief outline showing the sequence of ritual events. The field-work upon which it is based was conducted among the Effutu in 1964 and 1965 and included the study of the Aboakyer rituals of these years.