Introduction

There is a clear West African bias to the papers in this volume. Much of the reason for this is the influence of Peter Lewis Shinnie on the life and careers of a number of the researchers presented here. Peter passed on in the summer of 2007, but his voice still echoes in these pages. Shrines, in the African context are cultural signposts that help us understand and read the ethnic, territorial, and social lay of the land. Just as the church steeple in Europe once marked the centre of a community whose boundaries lay at the point where the