It is no easy task to assess warfare and military organisation in Africa’santiquity. A serious lack of sources – documentary, material or oral– across much of the continent means that a comprehensive survey ofprocesses and structures in the deep past is impossible; certainly, little isknown about warfare across much of sub-Saharan Africa before the early centuriesof the second millennium. However, it is possible to offer some speculativeremarks about that vast region in the context of the spread of Bantu languages:The available evidence concerning economic development and socio-politicalchange can be combined with intelligent guesswork to assess the militarydimensions of this early period. More concrete reconstructions are possiblefurther north, across the western savannah, where the first millennium CEwitnessed a succession of dynamic and expansionist polities which depended on acombination of agricultural productivity, long-distance trade and armed force.Likewise, the range of sources for the Ethiopian Highlands and the upper Nilevalley are comparatively rich and permit a closer examination of ancient Africanmilitarism. Of course, both western savannah and northeast riparian and highlandpolities were the products of their particular physical, climatic anddemographic environments, and therefore the extent to which they can be used tospeculate more broadly about the nature of early African warfare is limited.They do, however, demonstrate certain themes which are germane to other regionsof the continent.