The project’s aims and first results have been presented at the 15th Congress of the PanAfrican Archaeological Association for Prehistory and Related Studies in Rabat (Morocco) on September 12, 2018. Bernard Clist discussed “The first villages of Central Africa before 1500 BP” while Dirk Seidensticker presented “New archaeological research on the earliest villages south of the Central-African rainforest”. The two presentations were part of a special session organized by Bernard Clist, Pierre de Maret and Thomas Huffman covering “Early villages and farming through African humid forests, from Central Africa southwards”.
The presentation of Bernard Clist gave an overview of Pre- and Early Iron Age groups in the western parts of Central Africa, especially in Gabon and the coastal areas of the two Congo states. The presentation included a detailed discussion of the known remains of past subsistence strategies. Dirk Seidensticker presented the first results of the project’s 2018 archaeological fieldwork campaign by himself and Katharina Jungnickel, including the first excavation of the site of Mukila since 1952 and the first-ever survey along the road from Kinshasa to Bandundu. Due to the virtually total lack of archaeological research within the Mai-Ndombe, Kwango and Kwilu provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, these new findings will be pivotal for establishing the basis for future research.