Bernard Clist

Institut des Mondes Africains (IMAF) Paris France · & Collège de France

Hace más de 40.000 años, las poblaciones de cazadores-colectores utilizando la piedra para sus herramientas se instalan en Guinea Ecuatorial en las provincias continentales de Centro Sur, Kie-Ntem, Litoral y Wele-Nzas. Algunos descubrimientos de piedras talladas en las islas de Bioko, Corisco y Elobey sugieren que también se asentaron allí más tard...

Archaeological research carried out in West-Central Africa shows evidence for multiple, complex material cultures, suggesting various levels of human admixtures in the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene. Though the picture we present here is based on research of heterogeneous quality and irregular geographical coverage in a vast area (roughly equiva...

Pottery traditions reflect the socioeconomic framework of past cultures, while the spatial distribution of pottery indicates exchange patterns and interaction processes. Material and earth sciences are employed here to determine raw material sourcing, selection and processing. The Kongo kingdom, internationally renowned since the late fifteenth cen...

The Appendix lists the 160 archaeological radiocarbon dates from sites within and around the Sangha River Interval

There is a broad agreement that towards the end of the Holocene in Central Africa there was a drier “Late Holocene Forest Crisis” (LHFC) that impacted the Central African rainforest between c. 2500-2000 cal yr BP. The Sangha River Interval or SRI is such a hypothesized rainforest region. This climate-driven LHFC has been thought to have benefited t...

This article reports on new archaeological data obtained in 2018 from the coastal region of the Kongo Central province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The area’s ancient history is virtually unknown but is potentially of paramount importance in the context of the development of early village communities in Central Africa. The article foc...

Le thème de l’identité culturelle et de l’usage de cette identité aux fins de la construction et de la consolidation d’un imaginaire national a été depuis longtemps un sujet d’intérêt mondial. L’archéologie se dévoile par son patrimoine matériel multimillénaire qui permet aux publics de venir visiter les structures de conservation – souvent des mus...

The sequence obtained mainly from the 2012-2015 excavations at Ngongo Mbata (Lower Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo) illustrates the earliest types of locally made clay and stone pipes used throughout the 17th century in the Kongo kingdom. These are also found at the same time in the capital Mbanza Kongo. Using ancient texts, allows us to place...

Between 2012 and 2015, excavations were carried out at the Kindoki, Mbata Kulunsi and Ngongo Mbata sites in Lower Congo (Democratic Republic of Congo), part of the northern provinces of the old Kongo kingdom. In all of them burials were studied, some of them yielding Christian artefacts produced in Europe. All of them are described in this book cha...

Our study presents the new typo-chronological framework for pottery in the northern provinces of the Kongo kingdom, from the 13th to the 19th century. The changes that pottery undergoes during this period seem to reflect, to a certain extent, the social and political evolution of the Kongo kingdom. Even if this still needs to be clarified in both t...

Two fragments of church bells were found during the 2013 and 2014 excavations of the major Ngongo Mbata site in Lower Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo. The larger one was found at the bottom of a large pit whose filling is radiocarbon dated to AD 1613-1667. A fragment of a Portuguese 'garafa' also found in the pit can have its production period...

The paper presents the 3,739 beads found during excavations carried out between 2012 and 2015 in the Lower-Congo region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Most of them are coming from two sites, Kindoki and Ngongo Mbata. We also studied the 273 beads from the 1938 excavations of the Ngongo Mbata 17th century church. All the beads relate to the Ko...

Paul Dubrunfaut, curator at the Royal Army and Military History Museum of Brussels (Belgium), studies two guns found by Bernard Clist during archaeological excavations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and in Gabon. Though thousands of European made guns were exported to Africa since the end of the 15th century, archaeological finds are rar...

Published by Science Advances, 13 May 2021 - Response to the published paper “Seidensticker (D.), Hubau (W.), Verschuren (D.), Fortes-Lima (C.), de Maret (P.), Schlebusch (C.M.) & Bostoen (K.), 2021, Population collapse in Congo rainforest from 400 CE urges reassessment of the Bantu Expansion, Science Advances, Published online: 12 February 2021, V...

Response to the published paper “Seidensticker (D.), Hubau (W.), Verschuren (D.), Fortes-Lima (C.), de Maret (P.), Schlebusch (C.M.) & Bostoen (K.), 2021, Population collapse in Congo rainforest from 400 CE urges reassessment of the Bantu Expansion, Science Advances, Published online: 12 February 2021, Vol. 7, no. 7.” Submitted to Science Advances...

Off the coast of Cameroon, Bioko Island was populated by the Bubi at an early stage of the Bantu expansion, although surprisingly they did not use iron until the arrival of the Europeans much later. Unfortunately, despite some research having been undertaken, mostly during the Spanish colonial period, the local archaeological sequence remains poorl...

Africa hosts the greatest human genetic diversity globally, but legacies of ancient population interactions and dispersals across the continent remain understudied. Here, we report genome-wide data from 20 ancient sub-Saharan African individuals, including the first reported ancient DNA from the DRC, Uganda, and Botswana. These data demonstrate the...

Cet article présente l’étude archéo-anthropologique des vestiges de Ngongo Mbata (XVII-XVIIIèmes siècles), site majeur de l’ancien royaume de Kongo. Les tombes installées dans l’église ont été fouillées entre 1938 et 1942. La collection Bequaert, constituée d’une partie des individus exhumés en 1938, est aujourd’hui conservée à l’Institut Royal des...

Though Internet began in 1989, it was not until 1993 that the world-wide web started to expand, still limited to research and higher education centers. The publication in 1998 in issue 72 of the Nouvelles de l’archéologie of the first texts promoting the first archaeology contents is recounted, while the situation of the use of Internet in France a...

This article presents the first detailed account of a previously unknown Early Iron Age pottery group from the Kongo Central Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The ceramic group is named Kitala ware, after the site where it was first discovered, and excavated in 2014 and 2015. Dated between cal AD 230 and 524 at Kitala, the ware is also...

The glass bead assemblages recovered during the 2014 excavations of the ruins of Kulumbimbi located in Mbanza Kongo (Angola) were analyzed by means of a multi-analytical minimally invasive methodology, which includes handheld X-ray fluorescence (hXRF), variable pressure scanning electron microscope coupled with energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry...

La séquence obtenue grâce essentiellement aux fouilles de Ngongo Mbata (République Démocratique du Congo) illustre les types les plus anciens de pipes en terre cuite et en pierre qui sont utilisées pendant tout le 17e siècle au royaume de Kongo. Celles-ci sont aussi utilisées au même moment dans la capitale Mbanza Kongo. La confrontation des témoig...

In 2015 the KongoKing research project team excavated the Bu, Kindu and Mantsetsi sites situated in the Kongo-Central Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). All are part of the Kay Ladio Group. This is the first detailed publication on this cultural group, to which no contemporary ones can currently be linked, either from the Atlantic...

Dans ce chapitre nous présentons la synthèse des résultats des recherches archéologiques réalisées au cours du projet KongoKing subdivisée en deux époques : l’Âge du Fer Ancien d’une part et, d’autre part, l’Âge du Fer Récent qui inclut la période historique du royaume Kongo. Nous présentons alors un nouveau bilan du développement du royaume Kongo...

De tous les grands royaumes qui fleurirent en Afrique, le royaume Kongo est l’un des plus célèbres. Il reste une référence historique et culturelle importante pour les Africains et leur diaspora. Entraînés très tôt dans le commerce de traite, les esclaves originaires de la région font que du Brésil à New York, en passant par les Caraïbes, la cultur...

Nous présentons l’étude anthropologique de dix individus provenant d’un cimetière situé sur la colline de Kindoki au Kongo central (RDC). Ils ont été exhumés en 2012 et 2013 dans le cadre du projet KongoKing qui consistait en une approche interdisciplinaire de l’histoire ancienne du royaume Kongo. Ce cimetière contient des inhumations datées du XVI...

Intheframeworkofthe inter-disciplinary KongoKing project, a set of beads from archaeological excavations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was analysed by means of a minimally invasive, multi-analytical approach based on micro-Raman spectroscopy. The full characterization of the materials, including glassy network, opacifiers and colorizers,...

SPACES OF CORRELATION - The Art of Conversion: Christian Visual Culture in the Kingdom of Kongo. By Cécile Fromont. Chapel Hill, NC: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Va. by the University of North Carolina Press, 2014. Pp. xviii + 283. $45, hardback (ISBN 978-1-4696-1871-5). - Volume 57 Issu...

Raman spectroscopy and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis are commonly applied to archaeological objects as a fast and nondestructive way to characterize the materials. Here, micro-Raman spectroscopy and chemometrics on handheld XRF results were used to completely characterize beads found during archaeological excavations in the Congo. Metallic obje...

We present results, analyses, and an in-depth historical contextualization of the fieldwork undertaken in 2012 and 2013 at the Kindoki site in the Lower Congo (DRC). This site is linked to Mbanza Nsundi, one of the Kongo Kingdom’s provincial capitals, which turns out to be archaeologically ‘elusive’. Pinpointing its location proved to be particular...

Nous présentons ici les résultats des fouilles archéologiques entreprises à Kindoki (Bas-Congo/RDC) en 2012-2013. Ce site est associé à Mbanza Nsundi, l’une des capitales provinciales du royaume Kongo. Localiser ses vestiges archéologiques s’est avéré être un vrai défi. Pour ce faire, nous avons développé une méthodologie de fouilles qui s’inspire...

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 virtually unexplored in archaeological publications. Ngongo Mbata is unique in that it hosted a monumental stone building about which the historical record remains silent. This makes it par...

This article reviews evidence from biogeography, palynology, geology, historical linguistics, and archaeology and presents a new synthesis of the paleoclimatic context in which the early Bantu expansion took place. Paleoenvironmental data indicate that a climate crisis affected the Central African forest block during the Holocene, first on its peri...

The ancient Kingdom of Kongo originated in Central Africa in the 14th century. In the 15th century, the Portuguese organized tight contacts with the Bakongo. From then on European goods gained new significance in the local culture and even found their way into funerary rites. Among the most important grave goods in the Kingdom of Kongo were shell a...

In order to understand the links between copper exploitation and the origins of the Kongo and Teke kingdoms, the areas around Mindouli and Mbé in the Republic of Congo have been surveyed. Several sites with remains of copper metallurgy have been found in the vicinity of Mindouli. Two of them have been test excavated. These results and the prelimina...

Analysis of charcoal from an archaeological assemblage near the Lukula community located at the southernmost boundary of the Mayombe forest (Bas-Congo, DRC) yielded 30 taxa used as firewood between 1,200 and 700 cal. b.p. Local people mentioned 71 taxa preferred for use nowadays. The identified taxa belong either to mature rainforest, pioneer fores...

In order to understand the origins of the Kongo kingdom, the KongoKing research group conducted a first survey in the area usually regarded as the former kingdom’s provincial capital sites of Mbanza Nsundi and Mbanza Mbata in the Lower Congo Province of the DRC during the summer of 2012. Several test excavations and radiocarbon dates are starting t...

This paper reviews the 14C dates associated with early iron smelting in Central Africa before 1900 BP. All of the archaeological sites from which these early dates have been obtained are critically examined. For example, each dated sample is checked for its stratigraphic integrity, its degree of association with dated artefacts, and its associated...

In order to understand the links between copper exploitation and the origins of the Kongo and Teke kingdoms, the areas around Mindouli and Mbé in the Republic of Congo have been surveyed. Several sites with remains of copper metallurgy have been found in the vicinity of Mindouli. Two of them have been test excavated. These results and the prelimina...

Bayon et al. (Reports, 9 March 2012, p. 1219) interpreted unusually high aluminum-potassium ratio values in an Atlantic sediment core as indicating anthropogenic deforestation around 2500 years before the present (B.P.). We argue that there is no terrestrial evidence for forest destruction by humans and that the third millennium B.P. rainforest cri...

A synthesis of archaeological research in and around the Kongo kingdom is outlined. It is shown that publications dealing with the Late Iron Age are few in number for a time segment which saw the birth and development of such social complexity as the Kongo kingdom. A general picture of Late Iron Age ceramic groups in Lower-Congo is drawn. One of th...

E. Zangato’s 2007 book on the Oboui archaeological site in the Central African Republic has been read and commented. This contextualised reading leads to questioning some of the data published in the Journal of African Archaeology in 2010. At that time a very old date for the earliest iron smelting south of the Sahara was suggested. However, a deta...

On devine dans ce premier volume des Cahiers scientifiques et techniques du Centre culturel français - Halle de la Gombé, la présence en R.D. du Congo de populations de chasseurs-collecteurs dès -200.000 ans. Une dynamique est à l'oeuvre, illustrée par l'évolution constante des industries préhistoriques sur pierre taillée. Vers -2.500 ans, un premi...

La thèse porte sur la mise au jour d'une séquence culturelle continue dans le nord-ouest du Gabon, sur le territoire de la Province de l'Estuaire. Cette séquence démarre avec les traces des derniers chasseurs-collecteurs datées avant 4.000 bp, se poursuit avec la présence des premiers villages avant 2.600 bp, se développe avec l'arrivée des premièr...

La thèse porte sur la mise au jour d'une séquence culturelle continue dans le nord-ouest du Gabon, sur le territoire de la Province de l'Estuaire. Cette séquence démarre avec les traces des derniers chasseurs-collecteurs datées avant 4.000 bp, se poursuit avec la présence des premiers villages avant 2.600 bp, se développe avec l'arrivée des premièr...

La thèse porte sur la mise au jour d'une séquence culturelle continue dans le nord-ouest du Gabon, sur le territoire de la Province de l'Estuaire. Cette séquence démarre avec les traces des derniers chasseurs-collecteurs datées avant 4.000 bp, se poursuit avec la présence des premiers villages avant 2.600 bp, se développe avec l'arrivée des premièr...

La thèse porte sur la mise au jour d'une séquence culturelle continue dans le nord-ouest du Gabon, sur le territoire de la Province de l'Estuaire. Cette séquence démarre avec les traces des derniers chasseurs-collecteurs datées avant 4.000 bp, se poursuit avec la présence des premiers villages avant 2.600 bp, se développe avec l'arrivée des premièr...

Research carried out during the last 10 years in Gabon has shown hunter-gatherers were living in the country since at least 100,000 years ago. Since then, all the areas of Gabon were settled, though probably in small numbers not exceeding 2,000 people during the Middle Stone Age and 26,000 people during the Late Stone Age. Hunter-gatherer groups kn...

Our archaeological knowledge of Bioko island shows settlements with pottery from c.AD 560 to the XIXth century. On the other hand the Littoral Province has seen scant research. From 1968 until 1985 research was impossible in the country. Today the existence of Iron Age villages c.AD 1200 on the continent starts to unveil. The southern villages are...

Our archaeological knowledge of Bioko Island shows settlements with pottery from c. AD 560 to the 19th century. On the other hand, the Littoral province has seen scant research. From 1968 to 1985, research was impossible in the country. Today the existence of Iron Age villages c. AD 1200 on the continent starts to unveil. The southern villages are...

The Okala archaeological site with its large surface excavated and its series of 16 radiocarbon dates is the best studied site in Gabon. It is the reference site for the main Late Neolithic tradition in the country. called the Okala Group. Data from this site enables one to consider the environmental exploitation and land use between 760 BC and AD...

In September 1993, a survey was made of the immediate hinterland of the small town of Sambava on the north-eastern coast of Madagascar. Extensive field walking was carried out in between the first hills overlooking the coastal sand cordons to the east where the Andamoty and Andohabe lakes lie near to the Indian Ocean and the Soavinandriana to Ankal...

First book using archaeological data to explain the past 100,000 years of the history of Gabon, Central Africa.

Booklet associated to a poster exhibition and a book to give History teachers of all the high schools in Gabon a new tool to teach ancient history and archaeology whatever the education system: Public, Catholic, or Protestant.

Cet ouvrage est une synthèse effectuée pour l'exposition régionale "Aux origines de l'Afrique centrale". L'exposition fut présentée dans toutes les capitales d'Afrique centrale de 1991 à 1992, et plus tard dans quelques-une d'Afrique occidentale. Après une présentation du cadre naturel et des paléoenvironnements, les données archéologiques de chaqu...

The Oveng archaeological site is 12km north-east of Libreville, Gabon. The analysis of the artefacts and of the stratigraphy permit one to show it was a single-component site dated to c1700 BP. The artefacts comprise potsherds, iron slag, tewels, abundant marine shells, shell pearls, daga fragments, burned nuts, fish, mammal and repile bones. Fauna...

The Oveng archaeological site is 12km north-east of Libreville, Gabon. The analysis of the artefacts and of the stratigraphy permit one to show it was a single-component site dated to c. 1,700 B.P. The artefacts comprise potsherds, iron slag, tewels, abundant marine shells, shell pearls, daga fragments, burned nuts, fish, mammal and reptile bones....