On and off the rivers: Changes in clay sourcing and preparation strategies in the Congo Basin throughout the past two millennia

Abstract

Pottery constitute the most prominent find category encountered by archaeologists in Central Africa and is utilized as basis for various regional chrono-historical typologies. The resulting sequences of inter-related pottery styles are often regarded as proxies for the transfer of knowledge within potters’ genealogies of practice, despite little being known about the technical approaches ancient potters’ communities followed. This paper presents, for the first time, chemical and petrographic data aiming at deducing, not only the ’local, intermediate or trans-local nature’ of vessel units, but more importantly clay sourcing and preparation strategies of potters’ communities throughout the past two millennia. The results from the two case studies selected for this analysis inform on distinct strategies for clay sourcing, most importantly the exclusive reliance of potters either of fluvial clays that were used without tempering and occasionally tempered clays of unknown provenance. The former type is only superficially known in sub-Saharan Africa as of jet. A unique fieldwork strategy, specifically river-bound surveys along the main tributaries of the Congo River, shaped the archaeological record of the Congo Basin considerably. This study incorporates finds made some distance away from the rivers, on the terra firma, that show unique characteristics when compared to inventories from nearby sites close to the rivers. These finds, made during paleo-environmental research, are informative over the potential biases earlier river-bound research had.