ABSTRACT
In the present company, demeaning the word medieval by encasing it in invertedcommas is bound to appear bad form. But to admit the implied offence would be to beg the question of what all that follows is all about. And in justice to the subject of this chapter it has to be done. For while Western Europe was settling into its Middle Age West Africa was somewhere in its Iron stage, somewhere between its Middle and its Later stages (opinions on the matter vary). Yet it was very much more than a mere ghost at Western Europe’s medieval feasts, those feasts whose tables it did so much to adorn.
