Abstract
Little is known of the local astronomies of central Africa, and because of decades of horrific civil strife, this is particularly true of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The present case study combines archival consideration of unpublished letters by earliest European visitors with ethnographic research in the mid-1970s among Tabwa and related peoples living along the western shores of and inland from Lake Tanganyika. Early data are very sparse, and in more recent days local astronomy is little-developed; but hypotheses are nonetheless possible about how people understood the regularities of the heavens as well as astonishing events like the apparition of Sungrazer Comets of the 1880s. A mnemonic logic shared by Tabwa, Luba, and other regional groups that was sometimes given material form or realized through performance arts may have informed how central African skies were “read” in earlier times.
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References
Roberts AF (1981) Passage stellified: speculation upon archaeoastronomy in Southeastern Zaire. Archaeoastronomy 4(4):27–37
Roberts AF (1982) “Comets importing change of times and states”: ephemerae and process among the Tabwa of Zaire. Am Ethnol 9(4):712–729
Roberts AF (2005) Monotony and surprise in Tabwa cosmology. In: Chamberlain VD, Carlson J, Young J (eds) Songs from the sky: indigenous astronomical and cosmological traditions of the world. Ocarina Books/Center for Archaeoastronomy, Bognor Regis/College Park; also listed as Archaeoastronomy 12–13, pp 281–292
Roberts AF (2012) Performing cosmology: harmonies of land, lake, body, and sky. In: Kreamer C (ed) African cosmos: performing the moral universe. National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, pp 1–20
Roberts MN, Roberts AF (1996) MEMORY: Luba art and the making of history. Prestel, Munich, for the Museum for African Art, New York
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Roberts, A.F. (2015). “Reading” Central African Skies - A Case Study from Southeastern DRC. In: Ruggles, C. (eds) Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6141-8_95
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6141-8_95
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