ABSTRACT
This research project began in 1999 and has continued over the subsequent six years, 1 although with increasingly lengthy interruptions caused by the intrusion into the Sahara-Sahel of America’s ‘war on terror’. 2 The project was triggered by my shock, on returning to the Sahara in 1999, at seeing the state of deterioration of much of the Tassili-n-Ajjer rock art, and the almost complete disappearance of the once extensive Neolithic and Palaeolithic assemblages from regions such as Amadror and Tihodaine (southern Algeria). I had first seen the Tassili paintings in 1964, only a few years after their ‘discovery’ by Henry Lhote 3 in the late 1950s. 4 But, I had not travelled in either the Tassili or the regions of Amadror and Tihodaine for nearly 30 years. Much damage had clearly been inflicted on the Sahara’s cultural heritage in the intervening years.
