An Archaeology of the Bantu Expansion: Early Settlers South of the Congo Rainforest

The Bantu Expansion is one of the most intriguing issues in African history. Based on extensive fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and laboratory analysis, this book provides the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and multi-proxy account of the first Bantu speakers south of the Congo rainforest.

This volume begins with state-of-the-art reviews of the archaeological, palaeoenvironmental, genetic, linguistic, and oral historical contexts of the Bantu Expansion and includes evidence from over 150 previously unknown archaeological sites with extensive analyses of pottery, lithics, soil stable isotopes, phytoliths, charcoal, and human remains. Seven appendices contain the full metadata, radiometric, and geographical data for each site and comparative language data. The volume concludes with a sweeping interdisciplinary reconstruction of the first Bantu-speaking settlers in the Kwilu-Kasai region and rethinks how farming, climate change, and contact with Central African hunter-gatherers and Ubangi speakers impacted their lifeworld.

This book is indispensable for scholars and students of Africa from a wide variety of fields such as archaeology, palaeoecology, linguistics, population genetics, history, and anthropology, and of considerable interest to scientists active in other parts of the world. All who think African history matters will find it a valuable source.

Peter R. Coutros is an anthropological archaeologist specializing in West and Central Africa. He received his PhD in 2017 from Yale University based on the research he directed at the Late Stone Age site of Diallowali in northern Senegal. He has extensive field experience in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Currently, he is a post-doctoral researcher at Gent University directing research in DRC and CAR.

Igor Matonda Sakala is an Associate Professor at the University of Kinshasa, Department of Historical Sciences. He received a joint PhD in African Languages and Cultures from Ghent University and History, Art History and Archaeology from Brussels University (ULB), based on his historical, archaeological and linguistic research of the Inkisi Valley during the Kongo Kingdom. His research and teaching focuses on African precolonial and colonial history.

Jessamy H. Doman received her PhD from the Department of Anthropology, Yale University, in 2017. She is an osteological and palaeoenvironmental specialist, whose work has spanned the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, Miocene-Pliocene hominin evolution, and Pleistocene-Holocene socio-environmental change in West and Central Africa. She has led several expeditions in Kenya, conducted fieldwork in Senegal, and worked as a forensic anthropologist at the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

Koen Bostoen is a Professor of African Linguistics and Swahili at UGent. His research pertains to the past and present of Bantu languages and interdisciplinary approaches to Africa’s ancient history with a special focus on the Bantu Expansion and the Kongo Kingdom. He obtained ERC Starting and Consolidator Grants for the KongoKing (2012-2016) and BantuFirst (2018-2023) projects respectively.