Bernard-Olivier Clist

Middle to Late Holocene Paleoclimatic Change and the Early Bantu Expansion in the Rain Forests of Western Central Africa

This article reviews evidence from biogeography, palynology, geology, historical linguistics, and archaeology and presents a new synthesis of the paleoclimatic context in which the early Bantu expansion took place. Paleoenvironmental data indicate that a climate crisis affected the Central African forest block during the Holocene, first on its periphery around 4000 BP and later at its core around 2500 BP. We argue here that both phases had an impact on the Bantu expansion but in different ways. The climate-induced extension of savannas in the Sanaga-Mbam confluence area around 4000–3500 BP facilitated the settlement of early Bantu-speech communities in the region of Yaoundé but did not lead to a large-scale geographic expansion of Bantu-speaking village communities in Central Africa. An extensive and rapid expansion of Bantu-speech communities, along with the dispersal of cereal cultivation and metallurgy, occurred only when the core of the Central African forest block was affected around 2500 BP. We claim that the Sangha River interval in particular constituted an important corridor of Bantu expansion. With this interdisciplinary review, we substantially deepen and revise earlier hypotheses linking the Bantu expansion with climate-induced forest openings around 3000 BP.

Early Bantu settlements in West-Central Africa: a review of recent research

Recent fieldwork carried out during 1985 and 1986 in Gabon and in Equatorial Guinea (west-central Africa) by the archaeology department of the Centre International des Civilisations Bantu has yielded very promising early results. On the basis of 54 radiocarbon dates so far processed with the aid of the Paleogab project of the Ecole Normale Superieure, Libreville, a first tentative chrono-stratigraphic sequence for this part of west-central Africa has been established.

Pour une archéologie du royaume Kongo: la tradition de Mbafu

A synthesis of archaeological research in and around the Kongo kingdom is outlined. It is shown that publications dealing with the Late Iron Age are few in number for a time segment which saw the birth and development of such social complexity as the Kongo kingdom. A general picture of Late Iron Age ceramic groups in Lower-Congo is drawn. One of the ceramic Groups, Group II, dated to AD 1400–1800, is thoroughly discussed. The ceramic style, dates, spatial analysis and regional context are dealt with. This paper partly helps to fill a major gap in Kongo ceramics studies and outlines future research trends. The formal methodologies developed over past decades for the analysis of ceramics are sadly not much used in Central Africa. The systemic approach permits one to at last describe thoroughly the ornamental style which is a prerequisite to being able to ascribe a particular ware or a particular site to a ceramic Tradition or Group. One key synthetic result is that the old Group II is now redefined as the Mbafu Tradition.

Combined Spectroscopic Analysis of Beads from the Tombs of Kindoki, Lower Congo Province (Democratic Republic of the Congo)

Raman spectroscopy and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis are commonly applied to archaeological objects as a fast and nondestructive way to characterize the materials. Here, micro-Raman spectroscopy and chemometrics on handheld XRF results were used to completely characterize beads found during archaeological excavations in the Congo. Metallic objects, organogenic materials, and glass beads were studied. Special attention was paid to the glassy materials, as they seem to be of European production. The matrix family and crystalline phases assemblage, as well as the results from principal components analysis on the elemental data, were used to define groups of beads of similar composition, and therefore probably of similar origin. This research project establishes the feasibility of this approach to archaeological glasses, and can be used to confirm and support the bead typologies used by archaeologists.

Did human activity really trigger the late Holocene rainforest crisis in Central Africa

In a paper by Garcin et al. in PNAS (1), it is assumed that a sharp increase in settlement activities in the Central African rainforest during the first millennium BC caused widespread deforestation between 2,600 and 2,020 cal y BP (the late Holocene rainforest crisis or LHRC) (2, 3). Archaeology was only marginally used in this new study by means of a newly compiled radiocarbon database containing 1,202 14C dates from 460 sites in Central Africa covering the past 10,500 y. Those dates must be critically evaluated, as not all of them are relevant for assessing the human factor in the LHRC. Not only the quantity of … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: bernardolivier.clist{at}ugent.be. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1