On 4 June at 12:30 CET, Peter Coutros will be presenting his talk 'Ubangui Communities in the Congo Basin' at l'Institut de Paléontologie Humaine, Pairs.
The talk will be available online with the following link:
https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/318592750486305?p=cTsHsSvRkc3znrixEj
Abstract
Since 2024, the interdisciplinary CongUbangi project has been conducting archaeological, linguistic, genetic, and ethnographic research across the Central African Republic (CAR) and northern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This work has revealed a rich archaeological landscape of rockshelters, metallurgical sites, burials, megalithic monuments, and occupation sites stretching between the 2nd millennium BC through the 17th century AD. This talk will focus on the results of our work at the >100 newly identified archaeological sites investigated by our team. These archaeological results will also be combined with ethnographic and oral historical data collected from across the region. Based on these interdisciplinary results, I argue for a continuity of Ubangi-speaking groups in the region going back at least through the early Iron Age. Furthermore, I challenge the dominant, Bantu-centric view of early village communities in Central Africa, and suggest that Ubangi-speaking groups also spread southward through the rainforest – possibly as far south as the Kwilu-Kasai region of DRC.