Kitala Ware: A New Early Iron Age Pottery Group from the Lower Congo Region in Central Africa

Abstract

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.

Early agriculture and crop transitions at Kakapel Rockshelter in the Lake Victoria region of eastern Africa

“…Phase II contexts are the only deposits at Kakapel yielding diagnostic Urewe incised and dimple-based ceramics, which archaeologists often associate with arrivals of Bantu-speaking populations from the west ca 2500 years ago [4,57,58] (electronic supplementary material, figure S7). Phase II at Kakapel contains the earliest directly dated domesticated crop from the site: the legume cowpea (figure 2).…”

Review of Archaeological Research in Angola

“…The beginning of EIA in the Lower Congo area has been dated to the first quarter of the first millennium AD and linked to Bantu expansion's western corridor (Clist et al 2019b;Denbow 1990;Philipson 2005). Thus, the sites in the northern half of Angola (namely Cabolombo, Dundo, and Quibaxe) and their known pottery industries (Martins 1976;Valdeyron and Domingos 2009) have been correlated to the cultural area encompassing the entire lower Congo basin (Clist et al 2019a(Clist et al , 2019b) (Fig. 5).…”

Une archéologie des provinces septentrionales du royaume Kongo

“…Dernièrement, et c'est ce qui fait l'objet de cet ouvrage, il a été possible de mener de 2012 à 2015 de nouvelles et importantes campagnes de recherches archéologiques au Bas-Congo dans le cadre du projet KongoKing relatées dans une série de rapports annuels (Clist et al 2013a;Clist et al 2013b;Clist et al 2014;Kaumba 2014;Matonda et al 2014;Clist et al 2015a;Kaumba 2015), dans plusieurs articles (Bostoen et al 2014;Clist et al 2015b;Clist et al 2015c;Clist et al 2015d;Matonda et al 2015;Clist 2016) et dans des études spécifiques sur les perles en verre importées d'Europe (Verhaeghe et al 2014;Rousaki et al 2016;Coccato et al 2017).…”