Original multidisciplinary research hereby clarifies the complex geodomestication pathways that generated the vast range of banana cultivars (cvs). Genetic analyses identify the wild ancestors of modern-day cvs and elucidate several key stages of domestication for different cv groups. Archaeology and linguistics shed light on the historical roles of people in the movement and cultivation of bananas from New Guinea to West Africa during the Holocene. The historical reconstruction of domestication processes is essential for breeding programs seeking to diversify and improve banana cvs for the future.plant genetics | historical linguistics | archaeobotany | diploid banana cultivars | triploid banana cultivars N ew multidisciplinary findings from archaeology, genetics, and linguistics clarify the complex geodomestication pathways-the geographical configurations of hybridization and dispersalthat generated the range of modern banana cultivars (cvs). Although recent molecular research, combined with the outcomes of previous genetic studies, elucidates major stages of banana domestication, such as the generation of edible diploids and triploids, it sheds only partial light on the historical and sociospatial contexts of domestication. The geographic distributions of genotypes involved in banana domestication require human translocations of plants, most likely under vegetative forms of cultivation, across vast regions. Linguistic analyses of (traditional) local terms for bananas reveal several striking regional-scale correspondences between genetic and linguistic patterns. These multidisciplinary findings enable the relative dating of the principal events in banana geodomestication and situate banana cultivation within broader sociospatial contexts. Archaeological findings provide a timeline to anchor and calibrate the relative chronology.

Phytoliths record late Quaternary vegetation at three archaeological sites in the Ituri rain forest. The oldest deposits, dated to ca. 19,000 to 10,000 14C yr B.P., contain abundant phytoliths of grasses but also enough arboreal forms to show that the landscape was forested. The late-glacial forests may have had a more open canopy than today's. Younger phytolith assemblages show that the northeast Congo basin was densely forested throughout the Holocene. Archaeological materials among the phytoliths show that people lived in this region during the Pleistocene. Therefore, Pleistocene and Holocene prehistoric foragers probably inhabited tropical forests of the northeast Congo basin many millennia before farming appeared in the region.

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Résumé La recherche archéologique relative à l'Age du Fer Ancien au Rwanda et au Burundi a mis en évidence l'existence d'une» technique de fonte assez élaborée qui s'est répandue de façon certaine dans la région des collines entre le 7e siècle avant Jésus-Christ et le 7e siècle de notre ère. Au vestige de cette activité métallurgique se trouve associée une céramique de tradition «Ure we» qui s'inscrit dans l'ensemble interlacustre défini par R. S oper. Au Rwanda et au Burundi, les populations de l'Age du Fer Ancien se sont installées dans les savanes du Plateau central, propices au développement de leurs activités. Réparties en petites communautés sur les collines, elles pratiquaient l'élevage et connaissaient vraisemblablement l'agriculture. Dans les régions de Butare (Rwanda) et de Gitega (Burundi) l'occupation maximale du milieu se situe entrç c. 200 A.D. et 400 A.D. Au vu de la grande ancienneté de certaines datations, les hypothèses émises quant à la diffusion de la technologie du fer en Afrique interlacustre mériteraient d'être reconsidérées.