Ngongo Mbata, the main and most affluent center of the Kongo kingdom's Mbata province in the seventeenth century, is well known from the historical sources, but Int

In this article we give the first detailed account of a previously unknown Early Iron Age pottery group from the Kongo Central Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo, i.e. Kitala ware, called after the site where it was discovered in 2014 and further excavated in 2015. Dated between calAD 230-524 and attested as survey finds in six other sites south of the Congo River, its chronology partly overlaps with the previously known Kay Ladio ware dated between calAD 30 and 475. Both Early Iron Age (EIA) pottery groups share many common features and are clearly distinct from the province's earliest pottery group i.e. Ngovo ware, which precedes the arrival of iron metallurgy and is dated between 420 calBC and calAD130. The producers of Kitala ware mastered iron metallurgy and lived in a natural environment of open deciduous woods with access to tree species characteristic of wooded savannahs, such as Bridelia spp., and gallery forests, such as Elaeis guineensis. A thorough study of the clay properties, the shapes and the decoration patterns of its vessels presented in this article shows that Kitala ware derived in all likelihood from Kay Ladio ware. While it is completely unrelated to EIA pottery traditions attested in the Atlantic Coast region of the Congo Republic to the north, it does share specific features with certain EIA pottery types in the vicinity of Kinshasa. During the EIA the Lower Congo region of Central Africa had more regional variation in ceramic production than known before.

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