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Pikunda-Munda and Batalimo-Maluba

Archaeological Investigations of the Iron Age Settlement History of the Western and Northern Congo Basin

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Abstract

The spread of pottery-producing communities into the Congo rainforest is commonly linked to demic diffusion, driven by the so-called “Bantu Expansion.” It is considered the primary linguistic, cultural, and demographic process in Holocene sub-Saharan Africa. A key region in the reconstruction of this process is the western Congo Basin. This paper presents, for the first time, a coherent picture of the archaeological settlement history in the western and northern Congo Basin, uncovered by fieldwork of the late 1980s along the rivers Ngoko, Sangha, Likwala-aux-Herbes, Ubangi, and Lua. Archaeological research of the River Reconnaissance Project, directed by Manfred K. H. Eggert from 1977 to 1987, produced a pottery sequence for the region. Archaeological features and findings uncovered during the project’s field campaigns in the northern and western Congo Basin have only recently been studied in detail. The present analysis provides the only reliable source for a reconstruction of the cultural dynamics within the region due to the lack of subsequent archaeological fieldwork. Archaeological data and the sequence of pottery styles within the western Congo Basin, along the Sangha river, cannot support the claim that this region, due to a climate-induced extension of savannas, played a unique role as a ‘‘corridor” within the expansion of putatively “Bantu” speaking groups during the latter half of the 1st millennium BCE.

Résumé

La progression des communautés productrices de poterie dans la forêt tropicale du Congo a été communément généralement liée à une diffusion démique, entraînée par ce qu’on appelle “l’expansion Bantoue.” Ce phénomène est considéré comme le plus important processus linguistique, culturel et démographique de l’Afrique subsaharienne durant l’Holocène. Une région clé pour la reconstruction de ce processus est l’ouest du bassin du Congo. Cet article présente, pour la première fois, une image cohérente de l’histoire des peuplements archéologiques dans l’ouest et le nord du bassin du Congo, basée sur des travaux de terrain menés à la fin des années 1980 le long des rivières Ngoko, Sangha, Likwala-aux-Herbes, Oubangi et Lua. Les recherches archéologiques du River Reconnaissance Project, dirigées par Manfred K. H. Eggert de 1977 à 1987, ont fourni une séquence de la céramique pour la region. Cependant, les contextes archéologiques et les découvertes réalisées lors des campagnes de terrain du projet dans le nord et l’ouest du bassin du Congo n’ont été étudiés en détail que récemment. L'analyse présente ici constitue dès lors la seule source fiable pour la reconstruction des dynamiques culturelles au sein de la région en raison du manque de travaux archéologiques ultérieurs. Les données archéologiques et la séquence des styles de poterie dans l’ouest du bassin du Congo, le long de la rivière Sangha, ne permettent pas d'étayer l’affirmation selon laquelle cette région, en raison d’une extension des savanes induite par le climat, a joué un rôle important de “couloir” dans l’expansion de groupes de langues putatives “bantou” au cours de la seconde moitié du 1er millénaire avant notre ère.

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Data Availability

All data and computer code generated during this research is available here: https://github.com/dirkseidensticker/PikundaMunda_BatalimoMaluba_AAR.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks go to Manfred K. H. Eggert for granting access to the findings from his project and supporting all aspects of this research. Additional thanks go to Hans-Peter Wotzka for funding two radiocarbon dates from Maluba and advising the research from 2012 to 2016, and Thomas Knopf as well as Manfred K. H. Eggert for their supervision afterward. Katharina Jungnickel deserves thanks for commenting on an earlier draft of this paper, and Nicolas Nikis thankfully reviewed the French version of the abstract. I further thank the two anonymous reviewers whose comments and suggestions greatly improved the paper.

Funding

Newly obtained radiocarbon dates on food crusts, dated at the radiocarbon dating laboratory of the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage in Brussels (RICH) was funded by the FWO postdoctoral scholarship (1287922N) granted to the author.

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Seidensticker, D. Pikunda-Munda and Batalimo-Maluba. Afr Archaeol Rev (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10437-024-09576-7

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