ABSTRACT
As a synthesis of the new archaeological and palaeoclimatic data collected as part of the BantuFirst project over the course of five field seasons resulting in the identification of 152 new sites, this chapter endeavours to shed light on the longue durée socio-environmental history of the Kwilu-Kasai region since ~43 kya. It explores technological, cultural, and demographic continuities and discontinuities from the Late Pleistocene until the Late Holocene. It examines the gradual technological shift from Middle to Late Stone Age lithic tools, the early emergence of pottery around 2400 BCE among local hunter-gatherers at Luani and the first iron production at Nkar around 146 BCE. The association of the region's earliest pottery with indigenous people preceding the arrival of Bantu speakers challenges ceramics as a diagnostic proxy for the Bantu Expansion. Then again, the persistence of flaked stone tools alongside pottery and iron during the Early Iron Age possibly reflects long-term contact between autochthonous hunter-gatherers and incoming Bantu-speaking populations. The chapter also addresses a significant hiatus in population activity from around 750 CE to 1450 CE and the subsequent reoccupation of the region by new populations during the Late Iron Age and the development of better integrated exchange networks than during the Early Iron Age.
