In the following tour d'horizon I will try to indicate some of the main achievements of prehistoric research in Libya together with some of the ways in which they have been amplified by work in nearby regions. Finally I shall try to suggest some of the more promising avenues of future enquiry, as I see them.

In 1947 when R. W. Hey, William Watson, and I set out on our first field expedition to Libya the picture was very different from that which would form the background to such an undertaking today. No physical methods of time measurement of any kind were available, nor was there any serious estimate of the total chronological framework of the Ice Age or of human evolution as such. As to the situation in neighbouring territories, Dr. Gaton Thompson will I hope forgive me if I describe the then state of research in Egypt as sketchy and incomplete to a degree, while the position in the Maghreb despite the pioneering efforts of R. Vaufrey and E. G. Gobert was still marked by immense gaps and uncertainties. In Libya itself we knew of only a single excavated site, Hagfet et-Tera near Benghazi dug by C. T. Petrocchi during the early war years.