Stefanie Kahlheber

Pits, Graves and Grains: Archaeological and Archaeobotanical Research in Southern Cameroun

Since 2003, a joint research project of the universities of Frankfurt and Tubingen (Germany) has explored the changing interrelationship of environment and culture in the forest-savanna regions of West and Central Africa. This paper provides the first archaeological and archaeobotanical results of three field seasons in the rainforest of southern Cameroun. Excavations were carried out at Bwambe Hill in the vicinity of Kribi at the Atlantic coast as well as at Akonetye, Minyin and Abang Minko’o, all located in the hinterland near Ambam. At all sites a number of pit structures, which contained mostly ceramics, were excavated. In addition, at Akonetye two graves with rich ceramic and iron offerings were unearthed. They seem to be the oldest graves with iron objects yet known in Central Africa.A large body of archaeobotanical material was retrieved from the structures excavated (charcoal fragments, charred fruits and seeds, phytolith and starch samples). Of high importance is the presence of pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) at Bwambe Hill and Abang Minko’o in archaeological contexts dated to about 2200 bp. Charcoal and pollen data indicate that the ancient settlements were situated in a closed rainforest which was, however, massively disturbed and partly substituted by pioneer plant formations.

Early Plant Cultivation in the Central African Rain Forest: First Millennium BC Pearl Millet from South Cameroon

The Bantu expansion, a major topic in African archaeology and history, is widely assumed to correlate with the spread of farming, but archaeological data on the subsistence of these putative early Bantu speakers are very sparse. However, finds of domesticated pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) in southern Cameroonian archaeological sites, dated between 400 and 200 BC, open new perspectives on the history of agriculture in the Central African rain forest.Linguistic evidence suggests that pearl millet was part of early agricultural traditions of Bantu speakers, and has to a great extent been distributed during the course of their expansion over large parts of western Bantu-speaking Africa, possibly even originally from their homeland in the Nigerian-Cameroonian borderland.In combining archaeobotanical, palaeoenvironmental and linguistic data, we put forward the hypothesis that an agricultural system with pearl millet was brought into the rain forest during the first millennium BC, and that its spread across Central Africa coincided with the dispersal of certain Bantu language subgroups.

Indications for Agroforestry

Archaeobotanical remains of a settlement mound in the Sahel zone of Burkina Faso have been investigated. The remains are charred, date to c. 1000 BP. and have provided information on the subsistence strategy of the medieval population and their impact on the environment. Apart from cultivated crops, such as Pennisetum americanum, the main staple, and pulses, the seeds and fruits of woody plants were gathered and used on a large scale. The results are interpreted as evidence for agroforestry and demonstrate the antiquity of this type of sustainable land management system.