From November 4 to 8 the 2024 World Neolithic Congress in Şanlıurfa (Türkiye) united specialists from around the world to discuss diverse Neolithic formations that took place across different geographical locations in different time-frames following diverse cultural and socio-economic trajectories. BantUGent was also present. Koen Bostoen was invited to talk on the Bantu Expansion in a panel titled “Foraging to Food Production and The Consequences: A Global Review” organized by Peter Bellwood and Hsiao-Chun Hung. He presented a joint talk with Peter Coutros & Jessamy Doman on the “The Bantu Expansion and low-level food production in Central Africa“, which combined a review of existent research with recent insights from the BantuFirst project in the Kwilu-Kasai area of the DRC.
Koen Bostoen (BantUGent), Peter Coutros (BantUGent), Jessamy Doman (BantUGent), Cesar Fortes-Lima (Johns Hopkins University), Sara Pacchiarotti (BantUGent) and Carina Schlebusch (Uppsala University) presented BantuFirst research on “Climate change, population collapse and early settlement of Bantu speakers south of the Congo Forest” at the “The Language of Extreme Events” conference at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena (April 22-23, 2024). The entire program is available here. The book of abstracts can be consulted here.
Op 7 februari 2024 rapporteert het Nederlandstalig Belgisch tijdschrift Knack in zijn rubriek “Planeet Draulans” over de Nature paper met betrekking tot de verspreiding van de Bantoetalen waaraan het BantuFirst-team bijdroeg.
In a new interdisciplinary study published in Nature, an international group of scientists confirms that the spread of the Bantu language family, which started in West Africa about 5,000 years ago, was mainly driven by human migration. Migrating Bantu speakers spread their languages and new ways of life throughout central, eastern and southern Africa. In the process, they established intensive contacts with populations speaking other languages who already lived in those regions, such as hunter-gatherers in the Congo rainforest and the Kalahari Desert. Most contemporary Bantu speakers have distant ancestors originating from West Africa, while a minority are descended from local populations. The expansion of Bantu languages and their speakers dramatically transformed the linguistic, cultural and biological landscape of Africa.
This new study is based primarily on modern genetic data from 1763 individuals, including 1526 Bantu speakers from 147 different language communities in 14 different African countries, as well as ancient genetic data (aDNA) from 12 individuals from the Late Iron Age. More than one-third of the new data comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), previously underrepresented in evolutionary genetic studies. Together with their Congolese partners, the Ghent research teams of Prof. Koen Bostoen (BantUGent, Department of Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy) and Prof. Joris Delanghe (Department of Diagnostic Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences) collected modern genetic data. These genetic data were analyzed at the University of Uppsala (Sweden) under the direction of Prof. Carina Schlebusch.
The full study can be consulted at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06770-6
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.
Igor Matonda, Peter Coutros, Jessamy Doman & Koen Bostoen, Mapping the Archaeological Landscape of the Kwilu-Kasaï River Network, DRC;
Koen Bostoen, Peter Coutros & Carina Schlebusch, Interdisciplinary Approach to the Origins of the Niger-Congo Phylum: Genes, Languages, and Stuff;
Sara Pacchiarotti, Peter Coutros, Jessamy Doman, Guy Kouarata, Igor Matonda, & Koen Bostoen Were they really the first Bantu speakers south of the Congo rainforest?
Igor Matonda presenting at the BantuFirst workshop (March 30, 2023)Igor Matonda, Els Cornelissen and Guy Kouarata at the BantuFirst workshop (March 29, 2023)
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
participate in BantuFirst workshopAn Archaeology of the Bantu Expansion: early settlers south of the Congo rainforest (March 29-30, 2023),
prepare the forthcoming joint volume An Archaeology of the Bantu Expansion: Early Settlers South of the Congo Rainforest (Routledge) of which he is co-editor;
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.
A ceremony led by the village elders at Mashita Mbanza prior to excavations.
Prof. Matonda [center] overseeing the second year of excavations at Kikundi along the Kwilu River.
The team and community members at Bagata Mukea standing over trench 1 after excavations.
Team member Arnold Mabuaka [Institut des Museés Nationaux de Congo] taking depth measurements during excavations at the village of Mfubakwan.
