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Pride, prejudice, plunder and preservation: archaeology and the re-envisioning of ethnogenesis on the Loango coast of the Republic of Congo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

James Denbow
James Denbow*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, College of Liberal Arts, 1 University Station, C3200, Austin, TX 78712, USA; School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, 1 Jan Smuts Avenue, Braamfontein 2000, Johannesburg, South Africa (Email: jdenbow@mail.utexas.edu)
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Extract

This is the first description of the prehistory of the coastal Congo, won by the author and his colleagues against considerable odds: war, exploitation by big business and, above all, by the entrenched assumption that this part of the world had no history to save. Here is a first glimpse of that history: 3300 years of prehistoric settlement, movement and change chronicled by radiocarbon dating and a new ceramic typology.

Keywords

AfricaCongoBantuLate Stone AgeIron AgeEuropean contactsalt-workingceramics
Type
Research article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 86 , Issue 332 , June 2012 , pp. 383 - 408
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2012

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