Archaeological charcoals as archives for firewood preferences and vegetation composition during the late Holocene in the southern Mayumbe, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

Hubau, Wannes; Bulcke, Jan Van den; Bostoen, Koen; Clist, Bernard-Olivier; Smith, Alexandre Livingstone; Defoirdt, Nele; Mees, Florias; Nsenga, Laurent; Acker, Joris Van; Beeckman, Hans

doi:10.1007/s00334-013-0415-1

Cited by 11 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…Likewise, the steep and densely forested slopes might have discouraged early migrants. Also, settlers prefer cutting soft pioneer trees instead of the denser and harder mature rainforest trees (Neumann et al ., ,b; Hubau et al ., ). Therefore, they were probably more attracted by fragmented areas with a high abundance of regenerating forest such as forest edges.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Examples are the Atlantic coastal savannas in the Republic of Congo such as the Tchissanga, Loubanzi and Madingo-Kayes sites (Denbow, 2012) and the savanna area of the Lower Congo South of the Congo River such as the Sakusi and Ngovo sites (de Maret, 1990). The only archaeological sites located in the southern Mayumbe forest are Lukula (Hubau et al, 2014), La mare du Flec (de Foresta, 1990;Schwartz et al, 1990) and the Sumbi site (Clist, 2012). For maps and a more thorough discussion, see Clist, (2012) or Hubau et al (2014).…”

Section: Role Of Human Activitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The only archaeological sites located in the southern Mayumbe forest are Lukula (Hubau et al, 2014), La mare du Flec (de Foresta, 1990;Schwartz et al, 1990) and the Sumbi site (Clist, 2012). For maps and a more thorough discussion, see Clist, (2012) or Hubau et al (2014).…”

Section: Role Of Human Activitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Charcoal‐inferred Holocene fire and vegetation history linked to drought periods in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Hubau

Bulcke

Acker

et al. 2015

Global Change Biology

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The impact of Holocene drought events on the presumably stable Central African rainforest remains largely unexplored, in particular the significance of fire. High-quality sedimentary archives are scarce, and palynological records mostly integrate over large regional scales subject to different fire regimes. Here, we demonstrate a direct temporal link between Holocene droughts, palaeofire and vegetation change within present-day Central African rainforest, using records of identified charcoal fragments extracted from soil in the southern Mayumbe forest (Democratic Republic of Congo). We find three distinct periods of local palaeofire occurrence: 7.8-6.8 ka BP, 2.3-1.5 ka BP, 0.8 ka BP - present. These periods are linked to well-known Holocene drought anomalies: the 8.2 ka BP event, the 3rd millennium BP rainforest crisis and the Mediaeval Climate Anomaly. During and after these Holocene droughts, the Central African rainforest landscape was characterized by a fragmented pattern with fire-prone open patches. Some fires occurred during the drought anomalies although most fires seem to lag behind them, which suggests that the open patches remained fire-prone after the actual climate anomalies. Charcoal identifications indicate that mature rainforest patches did persist through the Early to Mid-Holocene climatic transition, the subsequent Holocene thermal optimum and the third millennium BP rainforest crisis, until 0.8 ka BP. However, disturbance and fragmentation were probably more prominent near the boundary of the southern Mayumbe forest. Furthermore, the dominance of pioneer and woodland savanna taxa in younger charcoal assemblages indicates that rainforest regeneration was hampered by increasingly severe drought conditions after 0.8 ka BP. These results support the notion of a dynamic forest ecosystem at multicentury time scales across the Central African rainforest.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Role Of Human Activitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Charcoal‐inferred Holocene fire and vegetation history linked to drought periods in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Hubau

Bulcke

Acker

et al. 2015

Global Change Biology

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“…Thus, while oil-palm pollen is a good indicator of changing land-cover composition, it is not a good indicator of the cause of that change. Recent studies suggest that anthracological analysis would be a less ambiguous recorder of land use and anthropogenic influence in the area (Eichhorn and Neumann 2014;Höhn 2007;Höhn andNeumann 2012, 2016;Hubau et al 2014;Huysecom, Ozainne, Lespez, Garnier et al 2015;Morin-Rivat 2017;Morin-Rivat, Biwole et al 2016;Morin-Rivat, Fayolle et al 2014;Vleminckx et al 2014). While detailed archaeological research has been conducted on the effects of farming and firewood harvesting on specific landscapes (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Diversification, Intensification and Specialization: Changing Land Use in Western Africa from 1800 BC to AD 1500

et al. 2019

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Many societal and environmental changes occurred between the 2nd millennium BC and the middle of the 2nd millennium AD in western Africa. Key amongst these were changes in land use due to the spread and development of agricultural strategies, which may have had widespread consequences for the climate, hydrology, biodiversity, and ecosystem services of the region. Quantification of these land-use influences and potential feedbacks between human and natural systems is controversial, however, in part because the archaeological and historical record is highly fragmented in time and space. To improve our understanding of how humans contributed to the development of African landscapes, we developed an atlas of landuse practices in western Africa for nine time-windows over the period 1800 BC-AD 1500. The maps are based on a broad synthesis of archaeological, archaeobotanical, archaeozoological, historical, linguistic, genetic, and ethnographic data, and present land use in 12 basic categories. The main differences between categories is the relative reliance on, and variety of, domesticated plant and animal species utilized, and the energy invested in cultivating or keeping them. The maps highlight the irregular and frequently non-linear trajectory of land-use change in the prehistory of western Africa. Representing an original attempt to produce rigorous spatial synthesis from diverse sources, the atlas will be useful for a range of studies of human-environment interactions in the past, and highlight major spatial and temporal gaps in data that may guide future field studies.

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“…Other nuts have been found in archaeological deposits around 2000 BP in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, like Antrocaryon micraster, Chytranthus macrobotrys, Coula edulis (African walnut), Panda oleosa (Clist 2005). Recently, scholars working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo succeeded for the first time to recover Musanga cecropioides diaspores (Kahlheber et al 2014) and charred wood remains (Hubau et al 2014) from archaeological deposits.…”

Section: Reviewing the Evidence For The Bantu Expansion As A Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Chapter 10. Were the first Bantu speakers south of the rainforest farmers?

Bostoen¹,

Muluwa²

2017

Language Dispersal Beyond Farming

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Popular belief has it that the Bantu Expansion was a farming/language dispersal. However, there is neither conclusive archaeological nor linguistic evidence to substantiate this hypothesis, especially not for the initial spread in West-Central Africa. In this chapter we consider lexical reconstructions for both domesticated and wild plants in Proto-West-Coastal Bantu associated with the first Bantu speech communities south of the rainforest about 2500 years ago. The possibility to reconstruct terms for five different crops, i.e. pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), okra (Hibiscus/Abelmoschus esculentus), cowpea (Vigna unguiculata), Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea) and plantain (Musa spp.), indicates that by that time Bantu speakers did know how to cultivate plants. At the same time, they still strongly depended on the plant resources that could be collected in their natural environment, as is evidenced by a preliminary assessment of reconstructible names for wild plants. Agriculture in Central Africa was indeed "a slow revolution", as the late Jan Vansina once proposed, and certainly not the principal motor behind the early Bantu Expansion.

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Archaeological charcoals as archives for firewood preferences and vegetation composition during the late Holocene in the southern Mayumbe, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

Cited by 11 publications

References 42 publications

Charcoal‐inferred Holocene fire and vegetation history linked to drought periods in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Charcoal‐inferred Holocene fire and vegetation history linked to drought periods in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Diversification, Intensification and Specialization: Changing Land Use in Western Africa from 1800 BC to AD 1500

Chapter 10. Were the first Bantu speakers south of the rainforest farmers?

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