The spread of pottery-producing communities into the Congo rainforest is 7 commonly linked
to demic diffusion, driven by the so-called 'Bantu Expansion'. It is 8 considered the primary
linguistic, cultural, and demographic process in Holocene sub-9 Saharan Africa. A key
region in reconstructions of this process is the western Congo 10 Basin. This paper
presents, for the first time, a coherent picture of the archaeological 11 settlement history in
the western and northern Congo Basin, uncovered by fieldwork 12 of the late 1980s along …

The spread of pottery-producing communities into the Congo rainforest is commonly linked
to demic diffusion, driven by the so-called “Bantu Expansion.” It is considered the primary
linguistic, cultural, and demographic process in Holocene sub-Saharan Africa. A key region
in the reconstruction of this process is the western Congo Basin. This paper presents, for the
first time, a coherent picture of the archaeological settlement history in the western and
northern Congo Basin, uncovered by fieldwork of the late 1980s along the rivers Ngoko …