Seventy-one archaeological sites from the Mukogodo Hills and Ewaso Ng'iro Plains, dating from the Middle Stone Age to the present day, are analysed in this study which seeks to test a series of hypotheses about human adaptation in the Quaternary period in this part of Africa. In essence, Pearl places cultural change alongside environmental change and addresses four main questions: whether the landscape affected the distribtion of archaeological sites in the study area; the nature of land-use patterns in the Middle to Late Stone Age; the impact of the arrival of pastoralism on the environment;...

The Middle Nile Basin, which is in effect the present Republic of the Sudan, from the 7th century CE accepted Islam through influences from both the north and the east and responded to the changes which have taken place in the Dar al-Islam. From the north these influences, through Egypt, have been largely from aeSunniAE sources and from the east, through the Red Sea Coast which have been aeSufiAE. This has profoundly affected the spiritual life of both the immigrant Muslims and the indigenous population who converted to Islam. Political divisions through the centuries maintained those...