Periodic Reporting for period 3 - BANTURIVERS (At a Crossroads of Bantu Expansions: Present and Past Riverside Communities in the Congo Basin, from an Integrated Linguistic, Anthropological and Archaeological Perspective)
Período documentado: 2022-01-01 hasta 2023-06-30
The objectives of the project are twofold. First, we investigate the population history of the eastern Congo Basin: who came from where and when? We focus on the different Bantu expansions into the area and the subsequent contacts between the ancestors of present-day Bantu communities. Historical comparative linguistics offers insights into the historical relations between speech communities through language classification and the study of language contact. Archaeological surveys identify past cultural traditions and provide a chrono-cultural framework. Anthropologists record oral histories, namely history as remembered and transferred by a specific community.
The second objective is to investigate the role of rivers in those expansions and in the adaptation of the respective communities to the natural environment. We first document how rivers play a role in the life of present-day communities. Anthropological research involves extensive fieldwork with regard to ethnoecology, trade and/or exchange networks, and sociocultural aspects of life at the riverside. Historical comparative linguistics studies specialized vocabulary to trace the history of river-related techniques, tools and knowledge. Through archaeo-ichthyology, we provide archaeological evidence for past fishing techniques and the importance of fishing for ancient communities.
A second linguistic objective is to unveil past language contact. The project’s PhD student, David Kopa wa Kopa, focuses on one case, namely contact between Mokpá and its neighbouring languages. A first important result is the discovery of a language substrate for the closely related languages Mokpá, Metoko and Enya.
The anthropological and archaeological fieldwork have been hampered by administrative issues and the global COVID-19 pandemic. Still, Shingo Takamura, postdoc in anthropology on the BANTURIVERS project, conducted preliminary fieldwork and collected oral traditions. Together with Laurent Nieblas Ramirez, specialized in archaeo-ichthyology, he continued research in the archives. Their joint research, combined with the mentioned linguistic results, provide new insights into the precolonial history of the lower Lualaba, namely the region between Kisangani and Ubundu, more specifically regarding the relative chronology of migrations into the area and contact between the respective communities. The details will be submitted for publication in Fall 2021.
The BANTURIVERS team also organized the International and Interdisciplinary Conference on African Precolonial History, “Extracting the Past from the Present” (March 1st – 5th, 2021). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference was online. We hosted 71 papers discussed during live sessions to which 189 scholars participated from multiple disciplines and from all corners of the world.
Thanks to the study of language contact, we are the first to propose insights into the history of Bantu languages of the region. The study of specific sounds, namely labial-velars, allows us to identify a language substrate for three closely related languages in the area, thus suggesting intensive contacts between their ancestral community and the substrate communities. These first results are promising, and we expect to find more surprising results in the next years, thus allowing us to understand the linguistic history of the region as well as the history of past communities.
The new routes, combined with the study of language contact phenomena and with oral traditions, already enabled us to propose new insights in the population history of the region between Kisangani and Ubundu, namely to identify the firstcomers and later contacts. We expect to also formulate new insights into the population history of the remainder of the eastern Congo Basin, and we will especially focus on the region West of Kisangani for which we will also add anthropological and archaeological data.
During the second part of the project, we will also fully explore the second research objective. The linguists will start studying the collected cultural vocabulary, allowing for a history of fishing techniques and other river-related activities. Anthropological fieldwork will provide present-day insights that will constitute a framework to interpret the linguistic results. And archaeo-ichthyological research will offer evidence from the past.