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Sanga: New Excavations, More Data, and Some Related Problems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Pierre de Maret
Pierre de Maret
Affiliation:
M.R.A.C., Tervuren, and Université Libre, Brussels
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Extract

Le site de Sanga, très important aussi bien du point de vue archéologique que linguistique, historique ou géographique, avait fait l'objet de fouilles en 1957 et 1958. Ces travaux avaient montré l'existence de trois ‘cultures’: Kisalienne, Mulongo et Red Slip, successives ou partiellement contemporaines et datées du VIII–IXe siècle. De nouvelles fouilles en 1974. ont permis d'établir la chronologie du cimetière dont l'utilisation s'étend au moins du VIII au XVIIIe siècle, avec une tradition kisalienne ancienne du VIII au Xe siècle, une tradition kisalienne classique du XI au XIVe siècle et une tradition Kabambienne (Mulongo+Red Slip) du XV au XVIIIe siècle; séquence confirmée par la datation du proche cimetière de Katongo. En 1974 la fouille de trois nouveaux sites, Kamilamba, Kikulu et Malemba Nkulu, a permis de mettre en évidence un âge du fer plus ancien que le kisalien ancien et permettra d'établir la séquence générale de l'âge du fer dans la région; une carte de répartition de plus de quarante sites a pu être dressée. Ces travaux reposent le problème de la localisation du noyau protobantou secondaire qu'une nouvelle et très intéressante théorie linguistique de Coupez, Evrard Ct Vansina fait s'étendre du nord de la zone interlacustre vers le sud. Cette théorie semble compatible avec nos connaissances actuelles pour l'archéologie et l'anthropologie. La nouvelle chronologie archéologique établie pour Sanga doit aussi étre mise en rapport avec les données de l'ethnohistoire relatives à l'origine de la royauté luba, origine que l'on faisait remonter à la période 1500–1600, mais qui pourrait être antérieure au XIIIe siècle. Différentes corrélations seraient alors possibles, mais il est jugé préférable d'attendre la fin des recherches en cours pour se prononcer plus avant.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , July 1977 , pp. 321 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

1 Apart from Sanga, only two other sites from the Iron Age have been excavated, Katoto in 1959 and Kingabwa in 1949; Hiernaux, J., Maquet, E. and De Buyst, J., ‘Le cimetière protohistorique de Katoto (vallée du Lualaba, Congo—Kinshasa)’ in Hugo, H. J. (ed.), Sixième congrès panafricain de préhistoire, Dakar 1967 (Chambéry, 1972), 148–58Google Scholar; van Moorsel, H., Atlas de préhistoire de la plaine de Kinshasa (Kinshasa, 1968), 224–77.Google Scholar

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10 These ingots were probably used very soon as ‘money’; see Bisson, M. S., ‘Copper currency in central Africa: the archaeological evidence’, World Archaeology, vi, 3 (1975), 276–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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15 Some other vessels found in the graves were also ascribed to this type (IIa), by Nenquin, , Sanga, 28Google Scholar (Grave 2, pottery 8), 85 (Grave 26, pottery 2), as well as by Hiernaux, , Fouilles, 11Google Scholar (Grave 106, pottery 8), even though they do not have the same characteristics; this comes from some inconsistency in the types of pottery defined by Nenquin in Nenquin, J., ‘Une collection de céramique kisalienne au Musée royal du Congo beige’, Bulletin de la Société Royale Belge d'Anthropologie et de Préhistoire, lxix (1958), 151–210.Google Scholar

16 Nenquin, , Sanga, 63.Google Scholar

17 See n. i.

18 The full excavation report will be published soon by the Musée Royal de l'Afrique Centrale at Tervuren. I acknowledge a special debt to the Institut des Musées Nationaux du Zaïre and especially the staff of the Musée de Lubumbashi, whose help has been invaluable.

19 The new nomenclature comes from Lake Kabamba on the shores of which lies Mulongo, just as the Kisalian comes from Lake Kisale. There was a certain incoherence in naming the three traditions, one after a lake, the other after a village called Mulongo, and the third after a technique (red slip); a technique which appears also on the Mulongo pottery, although worn away on the Kisalian pottery, as Hiernaux, already observed, Fouilles, 7Google Scholar; the Mulongo and Red Slip pottery are found, moreover, rather frequently in association in the graves. This modification in the terminology is in keeping with the recommendations made in 1965 by the Wenner-Grensymposium: ‘Systematic Investigation of the African Later Tertiary and Quaternary’ in Bishop, W. W. and Clark, J. D. (eds.). Background to Evolution in Africa (Chicago, 1967), 879–901.Google Scholar

20 These dates are provided according to the usual conventions and the presentation as proposed in Antiquity, xlvi, 184 (Dec. 1972), 265Google Scholar. The tables and curves of dendro-chronological corrections becoming more and more numerous, these eight dates alone would have provided enough discussion to write a complete article! We have limited ourselves to the corrected calendar dates calculated by the laboratory, which appear in the extreme right column.

21 The other grave dated by a sample of charcoal (Hv 6610) is Grave 153, the level 95–105 of the trench II Wi of Katongo was also dated by charcoal; all the other dates were determined by the collagen corning from the skeleton.

22 We will use this terminology inspired by Nenquin and Hiernaux (Ancient Kisalian+Classic = Nenquin's Kisalian; Kabambian = Mulongo + Nenquin's Red Slip) until the full study is completed when we may propose a subdivision for the Iron Age in the depression of Upemba, which will be divided into industries, phases and aspects in keeping with the resolutions of the Wenner-Gren Symposium of 1965; cf. n. 19.

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25 Hiernaux, et al. , ‘Katoto’.Google Scholar

26 See above, p. 321.

27 Coupez, A., Evrard, E. and Vansina, J., ‘Classification d'un échantillon de langues bantoues d'après la lexicostatistique’, Africana Linguistica, vi (Tervuren, 1975), 131–58.Google Scholar

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29 These languages correspond to the ‘ngombe’ and ‘kongo’ groups of Coupez, Evrard and Vansina; even though they are not included in the study of Coupez et al., it is probable that the Zone A and the rest of the Zone B come directly from Proto-Bantu 1, as Dalby concluded (see reference cited in n. 5).

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31 If this is the case, it appears paradoxical that there are no longer any Bantu-speaking populations in these savannas; the border between these languages and the non-Bantu languages corresponds closely, in this part of the continent, to the limit between the savanna and the forest. One can obviously hypothesize that the nucleus of Bantu, at the time it was circling the forest, did not give birth to the Bantu languages in this region or that if it did, these Bantu-speaking populations were all pushed further back into the forest by the arrival later on of new populations.

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34 It is, moreover, noteworthy that the regions where a ‘neolithic’ was supposed to be (Lower Zaïre, Ubangui, Uele, Kenya) correspond to the zones that, according to the hypothesis of Coupez et al., must have been occupied by the first waves of migration.

35 This new hypothesis contains numerous contradictions and uncertainties which we will not attempt to discuss here in detail, our goal being to present an alternative to the classic theory of Guthrie, which is also not exempt from contradiction; see, for example, Van Noten, F. L., Cahen, D. and de Maret, P., ‘L'Afrique centrale’ in Histoire générale de l'Afrique (UNESCO), vol. 2, forthcoming.Google Scholar

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42 Cf. Phillipson, , ‘Iron Age History and Archaeology in Zambia’, 9, 24.Google Scholar

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44 Personal inspection by the author.

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