Ceramic tradition in the African forest: Characterisation analysis of ancient and modern pottery from Ituri, D.R.Congo

This paper aims to explain the major characteristics of pottery making in t he Ituri rainforest during the last millennium AD by identifying and compar ing technological aspects of archaeological and ethnographic assemblages wi th the primary goal of relating some present features of ceramic production to those of the past. Such comparison has been undertaken by archaeometric characterisation: mineralogical phase analysis, structure identification, and processing behaviour. This study points out that interaction between farmers and hunter-gatherers homogenised the technological repertoires throughout the diverse cultural settings of the N.E. Congo Basin. Recent ceramic assemblages share with anc ient ones a consistent distribution and manufacture of pottery across a mul tiethnic setting in which pottery is used by ethnically diverse slash and b urn farmers and bow/net hunter-gatherers. The degree of technological conti nuity inherent to these assemblages is measurable by empirical means, the r esults suggesting that ancient and modern traditions have shared, now as th en, the five components that make the Ituri pottery tradition insofar as ra w material extraction, preparation of clays, modelling, drying, and firing are concerned.