The Early Iron Age and "Hiatus" Occupations: Archaeological and Chronometric Data on Holocene Human Settlement in the Northern Congo Basin, Southern Central African Republic

Summary

This is an abstract from the "African Archaeology throughout the Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Recently, Lupo and colleagues (2018) reported data on the nature and timing of late Holocene human occupation in the northern Congo Basin rain forest, southern Central African Republic and this paper presents new archaeological and chronometric information. Field reconnaissance identified 25 new archaeological sites, including additional iron smelting features, and 19 radiocarbon dates from 14 of these mark human habitation across some 1900 years. Together with the previously reported investigations a diverse suite of sites have been identified, including the only documented iron ore mines in the Central African forest, and radiocarbon assay of nearly 50 charcoal samples have returned dates for 32 sites that signal nearly contiguous occupation of the lower Lobaye River basin over the past 2300 years. Among others, these data 1) provide, for the first time, an Early Iron Age date on charcoal from a northern Congo Basin rain forest site containing evidence of iron production; 2) include calibrated age estimates on multiple sites dating to the alleged hiatus in regional human occupations ca. 1300-800 BP; and 3) afford a number of additional dated contexts that fall during the Late Iron Age increase in sites reported in other forested regions of Central Africa.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• African Archaeology throughout the Holocene   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23330