From July 13 until July 27, 2023, Prof. Igor Matonda (UNIKIN, Kinshasa), Dr. Isis Mesfin (Museum of Natural History in Paris), Isidore Nkanu (UNIKIN, Kinshasa), and Ilo Ondel Holy (IMNC, Kinshasa) carried out a short fieldwork mission focussing on the Stone Age archaeology of the Bagata and Luani sites in the Kwilu Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The BantuFirst project presented several papers at the 26th Biennial Meeting of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists which took place at Rice University (Houston), June 1-6, 2023.
Sara Pacchiarotti, Peter Coutros, Jessamy Doman, Guy Kouarata, Igor Matonda, & Koen Bostoen Were they really the first Bantu speakers south of the Congo rainforest?
From April 4 until June 30, 2023, Prof. Jean-Pierre Donzo (ISP-Gombe, Kinshasa) is on a BantuFirst-funded research leave at Ghent University to
From March 24 until June 27 Prof. Igor Matonda (UNIKIN) is on a BantuFirst-funded research leave at Ghent University. Apart from consulting and exchanging with colleagues at the Department , the main goals of his stay are to
This book is about reconstructing the grammar of Proto-Bantu, the ancestral language at the origin of current-day Bantu languages. While Bantu is a low-level branch of Niger-Congo, the world’s biggest phylum, it is still Africa’s biggest language family. This edited volume attempts to retrieve the phonology, morphology and syntax used by the earliest Bantu speakers to communicate with each other, discusses methods to do so, and looks at issues raised by these academic endeavours. It is a collective effort involving a fine mix of junior and senior scholars representing several generations of expert historical-comparative Bantu research. It is the first systematic approach to Proto-Bantu grammar since Meeussen’sBantu Grammatical Reconstructions (1967). Based on new bodies of evidence from the last five decades, most notably from northwestern Bantu languages, this book considerably transforms our understanding of Proto-Bantu grammar and offers new methodological approaches to Bantu grammatical reconstruction.
https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/373
On March 5-6, 2023 the closing workshop of the ILCAA-BantUGent Joint Research Project “The Past and Present of Bantu Languages: Integrating Micro-Typology, Historical-Comparative Linguistics and Lexicography” was held at the Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Sara Pacchiarotti and Koen Bostoen presented three talks pertaining to linguistic and interdisciplinary research within the BantuFirst project.
Koen Bostoen (BantUGent): “A historical-comparative exploration of causative/inchoative verb alternations in Bantu”
Sara Pacchiarotti (BantUGent) & Heidi Goes (BantUGent): “The reconstruction of Proto-WCB independent and possessive pronouns for speech act participants: does morphological evidence align with lexicon-based phylogenetic groupings?”
Koen Bostoen (BantUGent) “The Bantu Expansion or how West Africans transformed Africaʼs linguistic, cultural and biological landscapes”
For more info, check here.
Where? Simon Stevin Room, Plateau-Rozier, Jozef Plateaustraat 22 (Day 1); Faculty Council Room, Blandijnberg 2 (Day 2)
When? March 29-30, 2023, 12pm-6pm
Between 2018 and 2022 the BantuFirst archaeology team conducted seven field seasons across Kinshasa, Kwilu, Mai-Ndombe, and Kongo-Central provinces. Through a combination of large-scale survey and targeted excavations, the project has identified 176 new sites ranging in age from the Middle Stone Age (~300ka BP) through the colonial period. Excavations at 26 of these locations has produced voluminous new information on the changing material culture, subsistence practices, and settlement patterns of the communities south of the Congo rainforest, as well as the evolving palaeoenvironmental conditions in which they lived. This data also includes c. 100 new carbon-14 dates, extending from 30ka – 400 BP, with which these processes have been radiometrically anchored. This BantuFirst workshop is meant to prepare an edited book volume that will publish, contextualize and valorize this wealth of new and varied datasets. It will develop from these original data new insights on early settlement south of the Congo rainforest over the last three millennia, and challenge settled truths about the Bantu Expansion. In order to expand the scope and perspectives, multiple subject experts unaffiliated with the BantuFirst project have been included as contributors to the workshop and the volume.
Prof P. Kapagama & Prof G. Mvumbi Lelo in charge of international partnerships at Kinshasa University visited Ghent University for a meet and greet at Het Pand on Thursday 20 October 2022 from 14h-16h30. Peter Coutros, Guy Kouarata, and Koen Bostoen briefly presented ongoing BantuFirst research in the DRC in close collaboration with Prof. Igor Matonda from Kinshasa University (UNIKIN).
BantuFirst team member Peter Coutros has just returned from an archaeological field mission in the DRC. Between August 16 and September 29, Dr. Coutros and Prof. Igor Matonda Sakala (UniKin & BantUgent associate) returned with their team to the Kwilu and Kasai Rivers for continued research and community outreach. This year, they were conducting survey of new areas as well as returning for more intensive investigations at locations identified during the 2021 mission. More than 50 new sites were identified – dating from the Middle Stone Age through the Early Iron Age – and excavations were conducted at numerous sites along the two rivers.
From September 13 until October 4, 2022, Prof. Jean-Pierre Donzo (ISP-Gombe, Kinshasa & BantUGent) & Marie-Faustine Beloko (ISP-Gombe, Kinshasa) carry out a BantuFirst fieldwork mission amongst several Batwa or Pygmy communities in the Lomela territory of DRC’s Sankuru Province. They aim at inventorizing and mapping the different Batwa languages in that part of the DRC and collecting audo recordings of basic lexical and grammatical data in those Bantu languages. It is an exploratory mission to prepare a more in-depth documentation project.
