ABSTRACT
Archaeologists have sometimes been criticized for excavating the graves of the dead, an aspect of their research in which the views of the living have to be given sympathetic consideration. Such investigations are necessary because of the important information about past periods that can be obtained from the study of human remains and of the objects often buried with them. This is particularly the case in areas where settlement or other activity sites yield only limited information. Such an area is the Upemba Depression, in south-east Democratic Congo, where most sites of the last 1500 years have only shallow deposits that have been heavily disturbed by subsequent human activity but where there are large numbers of burials of the same period clustered in cemeteries. Over 300 graves have been excavated in six different sites. They have provided most of the evidence for this period of human occupation in the area. It is apparent that during this time considerable economic, technological, social and political developments took place in this part of central Africa, relatively remote from influences from outside the continent. These developments culminated in the emergence of the Luba state, on whose origins before recent centuries both written sources and oral traditions are silent. Thus the investigation of the dead has provided important information about life in the Upemba Depression during a crucial period of its human history.
