Central Africa is generally considered to encompass ten countries (Cameroon, south-Chad, Central African Republic (CAR), Equatorial Guinea, Republic of the Congo, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Burundi, Angola [1] ) which amounts to more than six million square kilometers or roughly the size of the United States west of the Mississippi River. Despite its large size, very little archaeological research has been done in the region.
Archaeological research has been scarce in Central Africa. One reason is that half of Central Africa is covered by rainforest. Because of this many archaeologists believed prehistoric occupation was improbable and, if there had been, preservation would be low. Because of the rainforest and the poverty in the area, infrastructure is underdeveloped, which makes traveling to possible sites difficult. Central Africa has also had high outbreaks of deadly diseases such as AIDS and Ebola fever, and has also experienced numerous “coups d’etat, prolonged civil wars, and even genocide.” [1] The first archaeological research was completed in the early 1900s. Modern studies began in the 1960s, and more systematic studies were completed from 1980-1990. The most recent research has focused on creating regional chronologies. [2]
Archaeologists questioned if humans could survive only on forest resources before the emergence of agriculture. Research done by Els Cornelissen et al suggests that occupation was possible before agriculture and may have actually been very hospitable. Because of the ecodiversity of the area, the people inhabiting the area would have had access to a variety of resources, making it a more stable environment to live in. [3]
Evidence of some of the earliest inhabitants was found in 1982 and 1983 by J. Preuss at Bikoro in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Preuss found a number of stone artifacts including projectile points, “segments, cores, flakes, and unmodified waste”. [4] These artifacts would have been used by hunter-gatherers and are estimated to have been made during the Late Stone Age between 12,000-3,000 years BP.
More research in the 1980s found picks, choppers and, hand-axes representative of the Middle Stone Age. Clist argues that these tools could be 40,000 years old, meaning humans have been occupying the area for at least 40,000 years. [5]
James Denbow recently excavated and dated sites on the Loango Coast between Gabon and Cabinda. He dated sites only as early as approximately 3250 BP- 2050 BP. These 10 sites "produced only lithic debris... were very small and contained concentrations of chert flakes and fragments." [6]
Gray Sand is a pre-ceramic Later Stone Age (LSA) site that is located 10 kilometers north of the mouth of the Kouilou River. This site dates to approximately 3342-2888 BP. This site was a non-ceramic LSA site where archaeologists recovered "42 chert and 265 quartzite flakes and fragments [but] no formal stone tools..." The quartzite could be locally found but the chert could have only been found approximately 50 kilometers east in the Mayombe Mountains. Chert made up almost 14 percent of lithics found at the site which indicates that people living at Gray Sand had interactions or territories as far as the Mayombe Mountains. Later lithic material, from approximately 2461-2147 BP, was found in the stratigraphy above the LSA lithics which showed a preference for local quartzite. [6]
The Late Stone age in Central Africa ended approximately 3,500 years ago. By 3500 - 3000 years BP, the climate and the environment had changed as well as the peoples and practices of peoples inhabiting the region. A shift from rainforest to savanna created an opportune environment for farming. [2]
Oslisly et al suggest that by approximately 3500 BP the hunter gatherers living in Central Africa were pushed out by agricultural migrants from the north. These early agriculturalists are differentiated by dug garbage pits which differs from waste practices of earlier inhabitants. During the Neolithic phase, 3500–2000 years BP, “new technologies such as pottery and stone polishing” [2]
A debate has emerged as to whether the vegetation change occurring at the time was due to climate change or agricultural practices. Because the vegetation change was contemporaneous with the Bantu Expansion, or "the migration of Bantu-speaking farmers across Central Africa," the chronology could be correct. [7]
Akonétye is a small village in Southern Cameroon where, beginning in 2004, Conny Meister and Manfred Eggert excavated sites. There are two sites, one to the north of the modern city of Akonétye, called the northern site, and one to the south of the modern city, called the southern site. At the southern site, Meister and Eggert believe they have found the oldest graves containing iron in Central Africa. [8]
Radiocarbon dates place the excavated pits in the southern site to the “first half of the first millennium AD.” [8] At the southern site, Meister and Eggert found what is believed to be the oldest graves containing iron in Central Africa. In feature AKO 05/6 no skeletal material was found, but the “content as well as the content’s arrangement suggested that they are graves. This interpretation is supported by the discovery of bone residue during the preparation and conservation of the iron bracelets.” Feature AKO 05/2, yielded “three almost complete ceramic vessels, several iron bracelets and two socketed iron hoes, both of which [were] decorated.” No skeletal remains were found at this feature either, however, decomposed bone material was again found. Meister and Eggert also believe that this was a grave. The third and final grave was discovered in feature AKO 05/6. This grave was marked by “intentionally deposited, party worked stones” and inside three pots and iron offerings, including an iron spoon, double- diamond shaped iron objects, were found. Also found were iron bracelets, and an iron axe and hoe. [8]
There is a gap in the archaeological record between the Early Iron Age and the Later Iron Age, from about 1050 - 850 years BP. The time after the Early Iron Age can be broken into “two broad categories based on vessel shape, decoration, and the presence or absence of European trade groups.” [6] The first of the two categories will be referred to as Phase 1 Later Iron Age which dates from approximately 850 - 450 years BP. The second of the two categories will be referred to as Phase 2 Later Iron Age: The Historic Period, which dates from about 450 - 50 years BP. [6]
Very few sites could be definitely dated to Phase 1 of the Later Iron Age. Denbow suggests that this could be due to population patterns shifting from “dispersed, small settlements during the Early Iron Age to a more centralized pattern in which small villages coalesced into larger towns.” [6]
Loubanzi is a large Phase 1 Later Iron Age site that has dated to approximately 535 - 317 years BP, the date was supported by the fact that no European trade goods were found at the site. One possible scenario, suggested by Denbow, is that Loubanzi “was an early ward or precinct on the outskirts of the larger settlement of Bouali (Bwali), the capital of the Loango kingdom described in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.” [6] Ceramics shaped like chamber pots, as well quartzite and chert, oyster shells and fragments of iron were recovered from the site. [6]
Very few actual excavations have been done on Phase 2 Later Iron Age Sites, mostly only surface reconnaissance. Indigenous ceramics with woven motifs were found in association with European porcelain and earthenware. Historical records from Peter Van den Broecke, a Dutch cloth trader, and Andrew Battell, “a long-term resident of Loango,” both describe the capital city of Bwali. [6] Van den Broecke described Bwali as “lying close to the show and surrounded by a wall.” [6] Battell describes Bwali as having a “royal compound separated from the rest of the town, a royal court where war and other matters of national import were deliberated, and a great market.” [6]
A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric cultures that have become extinct. Archaeologists often study such prehistoric societies, and refer to the study of stone tools as lithic analysis. Ethnoarchaeology has been a valuable research field in order to further the understanding and cultural implications of stone tool use and manufacture.
The prehistory of North Africa spans the period of earliest human presence in the region to gradual onset of historicity in the Maghreb (Berber:Tamazgha) during classical antiquity. Early anatomically modern humans are known to have been present at Jebel Irhoud, in what is now Morocco, approximately 300,000 years ago. The Nile Valley region, via ancient Egypt, contributed to the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age periods of the Old World, along with the ancient Near East.
A manuport is a natural object that has been deliberately taken from its original environment and relocated without further modification. Typically moved by human hand, some manuports are the result of other hominins. Common manuports include stones, seashells and fossils, which has led archaeologists and anthropologists to conclude they must have been chosen for their beauty. This recognition of an object’s aesthetic character suggests that certain manuports represent some of the earliest examples of art.
Blombos Cave is an archaeological site located in Blombos Private Nature Reserve, about 300 km east of Cape Town on the Southern Cape coastline, South Africa. The cave contains Middle Stone Age (MSA) deposits currently dated at between c. 100,000 and 70,000 years Before Present (BP), and a Late Stone Age sequence dated at between 2000 and 300 years BP. The cave site was first excavated in 1991 and field work has been conducted there on a regular basis since 1997, and is ongoing.
The Tsodilo Hills are a UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS), consisting of rock art, rock shelters, depressions, and caves in southern Africa. It gained its WHS listing in 2001 because of its unique religious and spiritual significance to local peoples, as well as its unique record of human settlement over many millennia. UNESCO estimates there are over 4500 rock paintings at the site. The site consists of a few main hills known as the Child Hill, Female Hill, and Male Hill.
The Later Stone Age (LSA) is a period in African prehistory that follows the Middle Stone Age.
Enkapune Ya Muto, also known as Twilight Cave, is a site spanning the late Middle Stone Age to the Late Stone Age on the Mau Escarpment of Kenya. This time span has allowed for further study of the transition from the Middle Stone Age to the Late Stone Age. In particular, the changes in lithic and pottery industries can be tracked over these time periods as well as transitions from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a herding lifestyle. Beads made of perforated ostrich egg shells found at the site have been dated to 40,000 years ago. The beads found at the site represent the early human use of personal ornaments. Inferences pertaining to climate and environment changes during the pre-holocene and holocene period have been made based from faunal remains based in this site.
The archaeological site of Shum Laka is the most prominent rockshelter site in the Grasslands region of the Laka Valley, northwest Cameroon. Occupations at this rockshelter date to the Later Stone Age. This region is important to investigations of the development and subsequent diffusion of Bantu-speaking peoples. The site of Shum Laka is located approximately 15 kilometers from the town of Bamenda, and it resides on the inner wall of the Bafochu Mbu caldera. The deposits at Shum Laka include each phase of cultural development in the Grasslands.
Border Cave is an archaeological site located in the western Lebombo Mountains in Kwazulu-Natal. The rock shelter has one of the longest archaeological records in southern Africa, which spans from the Middle Stone Age to the Iron Age.
Broken Mammoth, Alaska is an archeological site located in the Tanana River Valley, Alaska, in the United States. The site was occupied approximately 11,000 B.P. to 12,000 B.P. making this one of the oldest known sites in Alaska. Charles E. Holmes discovered the site in 1989 and investigation of the site began in 1990 and excavations are ongoing to this day.
Buur Heybe, which translates to "The Hill of the Potter's Sand", is a late Pleistocene and Holocene archaeological complex located in the largest granite inselberg in the inter-riverine region of the southern Bay province of Somalia approximately 180 km northwest of the capital Mogadishu. Buur Heybe has a longstanding history of archaeological research dating back to the 1930s when Paolo Graziosi carried out the first professional archaeological excavation in Somalia in the rockshelter site of Gogoshiis Qabe in Buur Heybe. Further excavations by J. Desmond Clark in the 1950s and later by the Buur Ecological and Archaeological Project (BEAP) led by Steven Brandt in the 1980s have made Buur Heybe one of the best dated and closely studied archaeological sites in Somalia.
The Swan Point Archeological Site is located in eastern central Alaska, in the Tanana River watershed. It is one of a collection of sites in the area that have yielded the oldest evidence of human habitation in the state, in addition to megafauna no longer found in Alaska, such as wapiti (elk), bison, and woolly mammoth. Finds co-located with human artifacts at the site have given radiocarbon dates of 14,000 years, indicating the site was occupied around 12,000 BCE. Swan Point is the oldest archaeological site in the Americas whose age is certain.
Minori Cave is part of the Callao limestone formation, located in Barangay Quibal, Municipality of Peñablanca, Cagayan Province in Northern Luzon. The said cave has two openings. One, designated as Mouth B, is located at 17° 43' 17" N latitude and 121° 49' 42" E longitude. The other opening, Mouth A is located 17° 43' 21" N latitude and 121° 49' 44" E longitude. The cave has an average elevation of about 200 m (656.2 ft) above sea level, and length and width of 147 m (482.3 ft) and 7 to 11 m, respectively. The cave is divided into four chambers with mouth A as chamber A and mouth B as chamber D. Chambers B and C are in between the two mouths.
Taforalt, or Grotte des Pigeons, is a cave in the province of Berkane, Aït Iznasen region, Morocco, possibly the oldest cemetery in North Africa. It contained at least 34 Iberomaurusian adolescent and adult human skeletons, as well as younger ones, from the Upper Palaeolithic between 15,100 and 14,000 calendar years ago. There is archaeological evidence for Iberomaurusian occupation at the site between 23,200 and 12,600 calendar years ago, as well as evidence for Aterian occupation as old as 85,000 years.
Melkhoutboom Cave is an archaeological site dating to the Later Stone Age, located in the Zuurberg Mountains, Cape Folded Mountain Belt, Sarah Baartman District Municipality in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa.
Matupi Cave is a cave in the Mount Hoyo massif of the Ituri Rainforest, Democratic Republic of the Congo, where archaeologists have found evidence for Late Stone Age human occupation spanning over 40,000 years. The cave has some of the earliest evidence in the world for microlithic tool technologies.
Rose Cottage Cave (RCC) is an archaeological site in the Free State, South Africa, situated only a few kilometers away from Ladybrand, close to the Caledon River, on the northern slopes of the Platberg. RCC is an important site because of its long cultural sequence, its roots in modern human behavior, and the movement of early modern humans out of Africa. Rose Cottage is the only site from the Middle Stone Age that can tell us about the behavioral variability of hunter-gatherers during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. Berry D. Malan excavated the site between 1943 and 1946, shortly followed by Peter B. Beaumont in the early 1960s, and the most recent excavations occurred from 1987 to 1997 by Lyn Wadley and Philip Harper in 1989 under Wadley's supervision. Humans have inhabited Rose Cottage for over 100,000 years throughout the Middle and Later Stone Ages. Site formation and sediment formation processes at Rose Cottage appear to be primarily anthropogenic. Archaeological research focuses primarily on blade technology and tool forms from the Middle Stone Age and the implications of modern human behavior. Structurally, the cave measures more than 6 meters deep and about 20 by 10 meters. A boulder encloses the front, protecting the cave, but allowing a small opening for a skylight and narrow entrances on both the east and west sides.
Panga ya Saidi is an archaeological cave site located in Kilifi County, southeastern Kenya, about 15 km from the Indian Ocean in the Dzitsoni limestone hills. The cave site has rich archaeological deposits dating to the Middle Stone Age, Later Stone Age, and Iron Age. Excavated deposits preserve an unusually long record of human activities, from around 78,000 years ago until around 400 years ago, a chronology supported by radiocarbon dating and optically stimulated luminescence dating. This sequence puts Panga ya Saidi alongside other key sites such as Enkapune ya Muto, Mumba Rockshelter, and Nasera Rockshelter that are important for understanding the Late Pleistocene and the Middle to Later Stone Age transition in eastern Africa.
The Groswater culture was a Paleo-Eskimo culture that existed in Newfoundland and Labrador from 800 BC to 200 BC. The culture was of Arctic origin, and migrated south after the decline of the Maritime Archaic people following the 900 BC Iron Age Cold Epoch. It is believed to have been replaced by or developed into the Dorset culture around 2000 BP. It is named after Groswater Bay, a bay in central Labrador.
The Mlambalasi Rock Shelter is a historic site located in Iringa District of Iringa Region in southern Tanzania, 50 km away from Iringa City. Excavations in 2006 and 2010 by the Iringa Region Archaeological Project uncovered artifactual deposits from the Later Stone Age (LSA), the Iron Age, and the historic periods, as well as external artifacts from the Middle Stone Age (MSA). Direct dating on Achatina shell and ostrich eggshell beads indicates that the oldest human burials at Mlambalasi are from the terminal Pleistocene. Mlambalasi is characterized by interment LSA and Iron Age periods, as well as by cycles of use and abandonment.