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Many geographers have seen the Maghreb in terms of two major domains--a Mediterranean domain (tell) limited in extent and alone favourable for agriculture and sedentary life, and beyond, a vast steppe domain (sahara), antechamber of the desert, the home of pastoral nomadism. This approach closely reflects a European evaluation of the possibilities which the region offers for human settlement. However, the concept of tell and sahara has been used to explain many aspects of the social, economic and political evolution of the region, even though, over the centuries, the Maghreb has been conquered by divers invaders who each viewed the environmental possibilities in terms of their own past heritage, present situation and future expectations. The result has been a distorted picture of the region before the French occupation. With the decline of pastoral nomadism and the rapid urbanization which has taken place during the twentieth century, the opposition of tell and sahara, of cultivator and pastoral nomad, is no longer meaningful for the inhabitants of an independent Maghreb. A new approach to the geographical study of the region is demanded.

The Algerian rural settlement system has endured considerable upheaval recently: first, from the regrouping of at least 2 000 000 rural Algerians during the War of Independence; secondly, as part of the wider rural reorganization promoted since 1971 by an agrarian reform programme. The effects of the earlier resettlement are examined and then interpreted with the aid of concepts of stress and trauma. The ambivalent reaction of a traditional peasantry to the crisis of continuity which resettlement represents explains the continued existence in 1973 of centres considered temporary, 1955-61. A similar bipolar response to resettlement as part of the recent agrarian reform is postulated from the interim results of this recent restructuring of the rural settlement system.