Despite the global Covid-19 pandemic, Sifra Van Acker carried out linguistic fieldwork in and around Idiofa (Kwilu Province, DRC) in February 2021 as part of her PhD research project which focuses on the historical-comparative linguistic study of subsistence-related plant vocabulary in West-Coastal Bantu (WCB), a major branch of the Bantu language family. During her one-month fieldwork mission, she collected new plant vocabulary in Nzadi B865, Lwel B862, Ngwi B861 and Ding B86, four languages forming the first paraphyletic grade to split from the ancestral WCB node (Pacchiarotti et al. 2019), as well as in Mbuun B87 as spoken in Idiofa (WCB, KLC extended) Besides the specialized plant vocabulary collected by Koni Muluwa (2010) in Nsong B85d, Ngong B864, Mpiin B863, Mbuun Imbongo B87 and Hungan H42, this kind of vocabulary is usually poorly documented in the available sources. The description of plant names in the existing literature on these little described languages is poor (cf. Mertens 1939; Mula 1977; Khang Levy 1979; Niendéka & Djedje 1986; Nsumuki 1993; Crane et al. 2011).
To collect this specialized vocabulary, Sifra designed a survey containing useful plants occuring in the region. For each plant, she included pictures, a description as well as its noun in the surrounding WCB languages to help the consultant recognize the plant in question. Beside this survey, she also collected plant terminology by taking walks in the garden and forest, but this method proved difficult, as the consultants did not find many additional plants. Finally, she also collected the names of the medicinal plants collected by Emiel De Meyer and the tropical trees observed by Prof. Joris Van Acker during their joint fieldwork trip to Idiofa.
In September and October 2020, Igor Matonda (Kinshasa University) carried out a BantuFirst archaeological fieldwork mission along the Lower-Kasai River between its confluence with the Kwilu River and the city of Panu. He was accompanied by Suzanne Bigohe Mugisha (Kinshasa University), Clément Mambu (Institut des Musées Nationaux du Congo) and Isidore Nkanu, our driver and archaeological fieldwork assistant since many years. The goal of their expedition was to find traces of the first human settlements in what the linguists of our team had identified as the West-Coastal Bantu homeland, a region that is hardly known archaeologically. The strategy was to stop at the accessible banks and villages located mostly on the left bank of Lower-Kasai. The fieldwork combined interviewing villagers, examining erosion surfaces (concessions inside the village, paths and fields, river banks) and small-scall excavations (80x120m, 1x2m or 1x1m). In the villages, they collected information on the production and circulation of pottery and on ancient settlements. They focused primarily on potsherds with shapes and / or designs to the detriment of less diagnostic ones and artifacts considered to be recent, such as fragments of glass, pearls and imported porcelain.
Sifra Van Acker has obtained a grant from the Leopold III-foundation for nature research and conservation to do fieldwork on names of useful plants in West-Coastal Bantu languages spoken in the vicinity of Idiofa (Kwilu Province, DRC). This fieldwork will contribute to her historical-linguistic research on subsistence in pre-colonial West-Coastal Bantu speech communities.
From August 10 to September 11 2019, Sara Pacchiarotti and Koen Bostoen conducted, together with Prof. Léon Mundeke (Kinshasa University), Prof. Igor Matonda (Kinshasa University) and Isidore Nkanu Ntsasa, linguistic, archaeological, and genetic fieldwork in the DRC. The fieldwork’s main objective was to explore the area of the new WCB homeland, which Pacchiarotti et al. (2019) located somewhere in between the Kamtsha and Kasai Rivers in the current DRC province of the Kwilu (roughly -3.50, 19-20).
Geographical location of excavated and surveyed archaeological sites.
The initial goal was to reach the small towns of Panu (-3.79, 19.11) and Mangai (-4.02, 19.53), both located on the left bank of the Kasai River, approximately 600 kms northeast of Kinshasa (-4.32, 15.31). On our way to Panu, we stayed two days in Kikwit (-5.04, 18.81), where we started collecting genetic samples among university students at the Institut Supérieur Pédagogique in collaboration with Prof. Joseph Koni Muluwa. We then stopped in Idiofa (-4.96, 19.59) to split up the long journey. Our attempt to reach Panu and Mangai from Idiofa failed due to extremely poor road conditions and the impossibility to travel through hundreds of endless sandbanks with the vehicle we were using. As a consequence, the fieldwork team settled in Idiofa for approximately three weeks and conducted archaeological, linguistic and genetic fieldwork from this location.
Getting stuck on the way to Panu.Getting stuck again on the way to Panu.Getting stuck on the way back to Kinshasa.
The archaeological fieldwork aimed at surveying and excavating in an area where excavations had never been conducted before in order to find datable traces of the first settlers and to start establishing a pottery-based cultural sequence. With the help of Isidore Nkanu Nsasa and local workers, Prof. Igor Matonda surveyed in Ingung Ateng (-4.89, 19.56), Impanga Mopila (-4.89, 19.65), Elom Idiofa (-4.96, 19.59), and Inswem Mbel (‑5.04, 19.51). He excavated in Ingung Kapia (-4.86, 19.56), Nkar (-4.98, 19.59), and Musanga (‑4.99, 19.58). He and his team excavated pottery from different time periods (both Early and Late Iron Age) in association with charcoal and iron slag. They also collected soil samples for future paleo-environmental research. In close connection to the archaeological fieldwork, an ethnographic survey was carried out on current-day pottery making in the village of Ingung Kapia. Prof. Léon Mundeke and Koen Bostoen videorecorded the entire chaîne opératoire and collected the specialized vocabulary related to the fashioning of pottery in Mbuun B87, the main Bantu language spoken in the area around Idiofa.
Present-day potters in Ingung KapiaIsidore Nkanu Tsasa during excavations in Okwon (Idiofa)Igor Matonda Sakala and Isidore Nkanu Tsasa take inventory of the archaeological finds.
The linguistic fieldwork by Sara Pacchiarotti and Koen Bostoen primarily intended to collect data on Ngwi B861, a nearly undocumented and undescribed WCB variety spoken in several villages on the left bank of the Kasai River. Secondarily, we wanted to gather more lexical data on Lwel B862, spoken close to Ngwi B861, and on Mpe B821 and Nunu B822, two virtually unknown WCB languages spoken north of the Kwa River around the city of Mushie (-3.01, 16.92) and Nioki (-2.72, 17.69) in the Mai Ndombe Province. For Ngwi, we worked extensively with two consultants originally from Mangai but currently living in Idiofa, i.e. Mr. Fréderic Impenge Itobola and Mr. Eugene Marako Wosama. On the side, we also collected some lexical data on Lwel B862. Although we could not travel to Mushie or Nioki, once back in Kinshasa from Idiofa, we collected data on the noun class systems of Mpe and Nunu as well as novelty lexical data on these two unknown WCB varieties. Finally, we elicited extra data on the Teke variety Bwala B70z to fill in some gaps in the data that Flore Bollaert collected during her fieldwork in 2018 as part of her MA research.
Sara Pacchiarotti getting Ngwi nominal tone classes right with Freddy Impenge Itobola in Idiofa.Joseph Koni Muluwa, Koen Bostoen and Léon Mundeke explaining the importance of genetics in uncovering the ancestral past of Congolese Bantu-speaking peoples (Kikwit).Saliva sampling in Kikwit.
The genetic fieldwork aimed at collecting DNA samples from as many ethnolinguistic groups around the WCB homeland area as possible for further analysis at the Department of Organismal Biology at Uppsala University, under the supervision of Prof. Carina Schlebusch. The main goal is to get a better understanding of the population dynamics of the region’s ancestral Bantu-speaking populations and to detect possible admixture with autochthonous hunter-gatherers. We were able to collect 260 saliva samples from several different ethnolinguistic groups, mostly West-Coastal Bantu but also some Central Western and South Western Bantu. Prof. Léon Mundeke, Koen Bostoen and Sara Pacchiarotti conducted saliva sampling in Kikwit, Idiofa, Mangai, and Kinshasa.
Subsequent to preliminary contacts with the National Center for Scientific Research of Equatorial Guinea (CICTE : Centro de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnologicas), Prof. Bernard Clist carried out in Malabo a one-week exploratory mission funded by the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs (26 November-2 December). The aim of this visit was to develop the Center’s interest in starting Iron Age archaeological research in conjunction with historical linguistic research, on Bioko Island in a first phase and later on on the mainland. The research project aims to uncover the very poorly understood cultural sequence of Bioko island which may have started off around 4,000-3,000 bp. This sequence is in direct relationship with the earliest expansion of Bantu speech communities and villages through Central Africa which the BantuFirst project is trying to identify south of the rainforest in the Democratic Republic of Congo around 2500 bp. In addition to fruitful meetings with the CICTE board of directors, Bernard Clist gave two conferences about our archaeological knowledge of the history of Equatorial Guinea, one at the French school, the other at the National University (see picture).
Location of the 4 study areas of the September-November 2018 fieldwork in the Kongo Central (formerly Bas-Congo) province of the DRC
In close cooperation with the Institut des Musées Nationaux du Congo (IMNC), archaeological and paleo-environmental fieldwork was carried out from September 20 to November 24, 2018 in the Kongo-Central province of the DRC. The mission was carried out by Prof. Bernard Clist (mission leader, Ghent University), Clément Mambu Nsangathi (IMNC), Isidore Nkanu Nsasa (driver), and Suzanne Bigohe Mugisha (student from Kinshasa University).
The objectives of the mission were: (i) to gather more information from the Neolithic and Early Iron Age archaeological sites excavated in 1951, 1984 and 2015 by M. Bequaert, P. de Maret and B. Clist, respectively; (ii) to investigate possible ancient shell middens along the Atlantic Ocean coast and in the ‘Parc Marin des Mangroves’ along the Congolese banks of the Congo river; (iii) to carry out surveys to locate new sites to be excavated; (iv) to sample a maximum of ancient village pits to identify crops by carrying out flotations; and (v) to extract soil samples from as deep as possible to understand past vegetation changes. All of these objectives aim at a better understanding of the social and economic dynamics of the earliest villages settling the Kongo-Central province between the Atlantic coast and Kinshasa.
During the fieldwork period, we traveled 3,267 km, identified and documented 64 new archaeological sites dating from the Middle Stone Age to the Late Iron Age in the 4 selected study zones (Figure 1), and excavated 10 ancient hunter-gatherer, village and iron working sites. We were oriented to 4 sites by previous research (M. Bequaert, P. de Maret, B. Clist). However, new large-scale surveys around Kinkenge, Muanda and Nduizi (formerly Kongo dia Vanga) enabled us to excavate 6 new settlements. The surveys were strengthened by systematically interviewing farmers we met while walking through the fields and villages, after we showed them samples of broken pottery. These interviews sometimes led to the identification of promising sites, e.g. Muanda 6 on the coast.
Small scale archaeological excavations were carried out at Sakuzi (zone 1), Kindu and Mantsetsi (zone 2), Nduizi, Nguemba 1, Mbanza 2A, and Mbanza 2B (zone 3), and Boma1, Katala, Muanda 6, and Muanda 13 (zone 4). Soil sampling was conducted at the Kindu, Mantsetsi, Mbanza 2, and Muanda 6 sites, and pit sampling at the Kitala, Mbanza 2, Nduizi, Nguemba 1, and Sakuzi sites.
Feature n°6 at the Sakuzi site, completely eroded pit with potsherd concentration at its base.Soil sampling at the Kindu site for paleo-environmental studies.Mbanza 2 site, finding both nice mushrooms for supper and intact Early Iron Age Kay Ladio pots to study.Nguemba 1 site, iron processing feature excavated under the rain.Excavation in the Nduizi village, mainly Early Iron Age material.
Stone Age: Very interesting data related to the Stone Age was collected at Boma 1. It consists mainly of quartz flakes, blades and cores found at -6.20 meters in a large borrow pit by the Boma-Muanda road. Stone artefacts, probably younger, were found stratified at Kindu and Mantsetsi down to -2 meters. Charcoals collected in situ, Carbon-13 (13C) analysis of soils, and the study of artefacts will give new insights on this epoch.
Neolithic and Ancient Iron Age: Most of the finds relate to this period due to the orientation of the BantuFirst project, roughly between 2,400 and 1,500 BP. Excavations at Kindu, Mantsetsi, Nduizi, and Sakuzi aimed at obtaining new data after prior excavations dating back to 1951 and 1984. Crucially, new pottery styles were identified in several pits at Nduizi and Sakuzi. Their study will certainly expand our preliminary understanding of the first villages to have settled the Kongo-Central Province.Apart from a poorly documented archaeological mission by the IMNC in 1986, we were the first to survey and excavate the area near the coast, west of Matadi, specifically between Boma and Muanda. At Muanda 6, systematic dry sieving yielded fish and small mammal bones associated to shell beads. Preliminary on-site analysis suggests that the Muanda style pottery is the oldest found in the lower level of Katala, at Muanda 6, and near the border to Cabinda at Muanda 8. It is followed by the Katala style of pottery found stratified under the present-day village and above the Muanda style level. We are now waiting for Carbon-14 (14C) dates to understand where the Muanda and Katala styles stand within the pottery cultural sequence of the Kongo-Central province.
Late Iron Age: The analysis of surface-collected pottery in the four surveyed areas will enable us to develop local cultural sequences. Such sequences will be informative in isolating interesting Ancient Iron Age sites to be excavated in 2019.
Joseph Emboto and Flore Bollaert (Mbankana, DRC)Linguistic fieldwork in the little town of Mbankana (DRC)Collecting Bwala data with Joseph Maba (Mbankana, DRC)
Flore Bollaert (MA African Studies, UGent) carried out linguistic fieldwork in the region of Kinshasa (DRC) in August 2018 as part of her MA research. She is carrying out a comparative study of the noun class systems of the Nzebi (B50), Mbete (B60) and Teke (B70) languages of West-Coastal/ West-Western Bantu. The objective of her fieldwork was to collect new data on some Teke languages, since these are underrepresented in the existing literature. She collected the bulk of her data in Mbankana, a small town approximately 150 km east ofKinshasa. She primarily worked with Joseph Emboto, who was her main consultant, but she also met and spoke to several other people. In Mbankana, Flore collected data on Bwala, an undescribed and undocumented Teke variety. Additionally, she collected in Kinshasa some data on Wumbu (B78), another Teke variety, in collaboration with native speaker Edouard Mbabu.
The first archaeological field mission, carried out by Dirk Seidensticker and Katharina Jungnickel, in close collaboration with Clement Mambu, Jeanine Yogolelo and Roger Kidebua (IMNC) during the summer of 2018, covered the western half of the former Bandundu province (current Kwango, Kwilu and Mai-Ndombe provinces) of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, an area largely unexplored by archaeologists. The aim of this mission was to conduct an initial survey between the Congo, Kwango and Kasai Rivers.
Excavation at the school in Mukila.
To compensate for the lack of any systematic and well-documented research in the area, the fieldwork was preceded by a perusal of the archives at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, which highlighted the rich potential of one specific site: Mukila (Kwango province). Maurice Bequaert excavated this site located some 250 km to the east of Kinshasa on the southern margins of the Bateke plateau in the early 1950s. There, he uncovered both stone tools and ceramics, possibly pointing towards the coexistence of hunter-gatherers and early sedentary communities. As Bequaert’s excavation was only poorly documented (multiple sketches and some photographs) and not published in any detail, we chose Mukila as our first priority target. Thanks to the available photos from the early 1950s and with the help of locals, we relocated two of Bequaert’s trenches. Our first test trench had to determine the quality of finds as well as the visibility and occurrence of features. We subsequently test-cored the site and opened a second 1.5 by 4.5 m large trench on a spot close to Bequaert’s richest excavation where we found promising finds during the coring as well. We excavated it up to 3.6 m, using 75x75x20 cm units. In total 126 units were systematically dry-sieved for small finds. Finds consisted of a rich mixture of pottery and stone tools. At the bottom of the profile we added another 3 m by extracting two additional cores resulting in a 6.6 m deep sequence. We systematically sampled the cores and the profile for paleo-environmental remains.
Recovery of a thin layer of lithic flakes and chips close to Bandundu.Survey on agricultural fields within the area of Bandundu.
After our excavations at Mukila we conducted a detailed and first-ever survey along the dirt roads between the towns of Mongata, Masia-Mbio and Bandundu, a 300 km long stretch between the Congo and Kwango rivers. We surveyed 62 distinct areas corresponding to roughly 11 hectares in total. Besides surveying areas currently used for agriculture, mainly the cultivation of manioc, we also looked at borrow pits created for the construction of the dirt roads. These borrow pits were of special importance as they allowed us to review existing profiles and thus uncover cultural layers invisible to surface surveying only. Two very large borrow pits in the vicinity of Bandundu town yielded a vast collection of stone tools both on the surface and in the extant profile. A variety of half-finished and elaborately done bifacial points as well as large amounts of flakes and chips were scattered within the pits, sometimes forming small concentrations. At the second pit some potsherds were scattered on the surface as well. We extracted botanical samples for paleo-environmental research from the extant profiles of both pits and retrieved charred remains through flotation. While doing so, we discovered a thin layer of lithic flakes and chips, which might be the remains of one single knapping event.
Finally, we identified several fields rich in pottery finds close to the town of Bandundu. These ceramics represent quite some stylistic and technological diversity, possibly of both local and external origin.
