An Ancient and Common Tradition: Funerary Rituals and Society in Equatorial Guinea (First–Twelfth Centuries ad)

West-Central African Diversity from the Stone Age to the Iron Age, Continuities and Transitions during the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene

“…Whole pots occurred in burials without iron implements, while 15 burials with metal lacked pots. In the remaining seven burials, the pots number from one to five (Gonzalez-Ruibal et al, 2013;Sánchez-Elipe Lorente 2015, and our Figure 3.15, n°3). The cemeteries in Cameroon consisted of primary burials in oval-shaped pits, while on Corisco there were secondary burials in circular pits, though two elongated pits were also documented.…”

“…Several of them were radiocarbon-dated (Gonzalez-Ruibal et al, 2011). Analysis of the 2011 excavations (Gonzalez-Ruibal et al, 2013;Sánchez-Elipe Lorente 2015) revealed interesting burial practices of the Oveng (Figure 3.15, n°3) and Nandá groups that are similar, but different from contemporaneous burials in southern Cameroon (Meister 2008(Meister , 2010Meister and Eggert 2008;Eggert and Seidensticker 2016). The iron artefacts from 22 Oveng burials comprise axes, bikuele (traditional iron currency used in the LIA with exactly the same shape), bracelets, knives, necklaces, rings and spoons.…”

“…They number from zero (4 burials) to nine per feature; exceptionally one had 14 and another 27. One iron necklace from burial n°20 had a bone fragment preserved by the decomposed metal; other pieces of human bone were also found in another three deposits (Gonzalez-Ruibal et al, 2013;Sánchez-Elipe Lorente 2015). Whole pots occurred in burials without iron implements, while 15 burials with metal lacked pots.…”

Mortuary behaviour and cultural practices in pre-colonial West Central Africa: new data from the Iroungou burial cave, Gabon

“…While a number of Late Iron Age burials have been described in West Central Africa (e.g. de Maret 1977;González-Ruibal et al 2013), including some containing abundant iron artefacts, they mostly consist of deposits in burial pits located at open-air sites. The accumulation of bones of many individuals in a cave, associated with hundreds of metallic artefacts, has no known equivalent in the archaeological record of this region.…”

Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism

“…The region was occupied by segmentary societies between the first millennium BC (at least) and the nineteenth century. We have discovered several burial areas in the largest of the Muni islands, Corisco, which offer us a glimpse into notions of power during the Iron Age (González-Ruibal et al 2013).…”