The earliest iron-producing communities in the Lower Congo region of Central Africa: new insights from the Bu, Kindu and Mantsetsi sites

ABSTRACT

In 2015 the KongoKing research project team excavated the Bu, Kindu and Mantsetsi sites situated in the Kongo-Central Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). All are part of the Kay Ladio Group. This is the first detailed publication on this cultural group, to which no contemporary ones can currently be linked, either from the Atlantic coast of Congo-Brazzaville or from along the Congo River and its tributaries upstream of Kinshasa. Dated to between cal. AD 30 and 475, these settlements mark the presence of what are so far the oldest known iron-producing communities south of the Central African equatorial forest. Evidence for metallurgy is associated with remants of polished stone axes, which were perhaps being used for ritual purposes by this point in time. The charcoal remains found at the sites indicate a savanna environment that was more wooded in Kindu and Mantsetsi than in Bu.

RÉSUMÉ

L’équipe du projet de recherches KongoKing a fouillé en 2015 les sites de Bu, Kindu et Mantsetsi situés dans la Province du Kongo-Central de la République Démocratique du Congo (RDC). Tous représentent la culture dite ‘Kay Ladio’. Le présent article est la première étude détaillée publiée sur cet ensemble culturel auquel ne peut être relié aucun des groupes culturels contemporains connus à ce jour sur le littoral Atlantique du Congo ou en RDC en amont de Kinshasa autour du fleuve Congo et de ses affluents. Datés entre cal. 30 et 475 ap. J.-C., ces anciens villages marquent la présence des plus anciennes communautés métallurgistes au sud de la forêt équatoriale de l’Afrique Centrale. Les preuves pour la métallurgie y sont associées aux restes de haches polies, peut-être utilisées pour des raisons rituelles à cette époque. L’identification des charbons de bois trouvés dans ces sites indique un milieu de savane qui était plus boisé à Kindu et Mantsetsi qu’à Bu.

KEYWORDS:

• Kay Ladio
• Early Iron Age
• Central Africa
• Democratic Republic of Congo
• ceramology
• archaeobotany
• anthracology
• palaeoenvironment
• palaeoeconomy

Acknowledgements

Our most grateful thanks go to the staff of the Heritage Studies Service of the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, for their help since 1980 in accessing the Maurits Bequaert archives. In recent years, Ms Nadine Devleeschouwer, responsible for the management of the library and archives, has been the main facilitator of this access.

For help in the field we thank the group leader of Mbanza Manteke for facilitating work on the Bu 3 site, the pastor of the Protestant mission at Kinkenge for lodging us there during the Mantsetsi and Kindu excavations and the head of the village of Mbanza Mpangu for welcoming us during the Kitala excavations. Igor Matonda Sakala (Kinshasa University), in collaboration with Roger Kidebua of the Institut des Musées Nationaux du Congo, supervised part of the Kindu excavations and some test trenches in the Bu and Kazu areas. For their logistical and adminstrative support we thank the staff of the Procure Sainte-Anne in Kinshasa and the former Director of the Institute of National Museums of the Congo in Kinshasa, Joseph Imbongo, and his staff. We are grateful to the reviewers and to Kevin MacDonald and Thomas Huffman for comments that helped to improve the paper, although the usual disclaimers apply.

All of the pottery from Sakuzi is in the temporary collection of the Royal Museum for Central Africa, while all the other sites collections are curated at the Institut des Musées Nationaux du Congo in Kinshasa, DRC.

Notes on contributors

Bernard Clist obtained his MA (1982) and PhD (2005) at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) and has carried out and led archaeological research in several Central African countries, including the DRC where he directed historical archaeological research on the Kongo kingdom between 2012 and 2016. His main research interest lies in the earliest villages of Central Africa, their social and economic dynamics and the analysis of their pottery. He is currently a member of the BantuFirst project team at Ghent University.

Wannes Hubau finished his studies in bioengineering (with a focus on forest management) at Ghent University in 2008. Until 2013 he undertook research on Holocene fire and vegetation dynamics in Central Africa, using charcoal as a natural archive in rainforest soils. His postdoctoral research focuses on the carbon cycle in Central African forests, looking at the past (last decades), present and future. He is currently a member of the BantuFirst project team.

John Mukendi Tshibamba finished his Masters at the University of Kisangani in 2010. In the course of his PhD, he unravelled the history and origin of present-day Central African forest types, with a focus on the flagship timber species Pericopsis elata, using the identification of soil charcoal fragments. He is currently a professor at the University of Mbuji-Maji (DRC), where his research focuses on sustainable forest management.

Hans Beeckman graduated as an agronomical and forestry engineer at Ghent University (1982), working in the fields of plant ecology and wood technology before obtaining a PhD, also from Ghent University, on the numerical analysis of dendrochronological data. Since 1991 he has worked at the Royal Museum for Central Africa and he is now a senior researcher in the domain of wood biology and curator of the Tervuren xylarium, undertaking research in forest ecology and management, mainly in the rainforests of the Congo Basin.

Koen Bostoen obtained his PhD (2004) at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) and was previously a post-doctoral researcher at the Linguistics Department of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren (2004–2011) and from 2005 also taught African linguistics at both the Free University of Brussels (ULB) and Ghent University, where since 2011 he has been Professor of African Linguistics and Swahili. His research has focused throughout on Bantu languages and interdisciplinary approaches to the African past, including the co-ordination of the ERC-funded KongoKing (2012–2016) and BantuFirst (2018–2022) projects.

Notes

1 The KongoKing project was funded through a Starting Grant (n° 284126) from the European Research Council (ERC) (http://kongoking.net). The follow-up BantuFirst project (2018–2022) is funded by an ERC Consolidator’s Grant (n° 724275) (http://www.bantufirst.ugent.be). Both grants were awarded to K. Bostoen.