An elusive record further exposed: additional excavations and chronometric data on human settlement in the northern Congo Basin rain forest, southern Central African Republic

Abstract

ABSTRACTRecently, Lupo et al. (2015, 2018) reported novel data on the nature and timing of late Holocene human settlement and iron production in the northern Congo Basin rain forest, southern Central African Republic. This paper expands those data by presenting new archaeological and chronological information discovered in field investigations conducted in 2017–2018. Twenty-five archaeological sites were identified and radiocarbon dates from 14 signal human habitation over some 1900 years. Together with the previously reported investigations a diverse suite of sites has been identified, including slag mounds, ceramic scatters, habitation sites and the only documented series of iron ore quarries in the Central African forest. Cumulatively, the results of radiocarbon assay of charcoal samples from 32 sites indicate nearly continuous human activity in the Lobaye River Basin over the past 2300 years. Among others, these data: 1) indicate, for the first time, an Early Iron Age interval in the region with evidence of iron production; 2) include multiple calibrated age estimates on sites/components dating within the c. 1400–800 BP hiatus in human occupations reported elsewhere in Central Africa forests; and 3) afford a number of additional radiocarbon age estimates that fall during the Late Iron Age increase in human use of the forest reported in neighbouring contexts.