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Hello everyone and welcome to the AfricaMuseum podcast, the podcast channel for the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium. My name is Gabrielle Fenton and for this series I've been walking around the museum's labs, offices and archives to meet with scientists who work here. Each scientist had to choose one object that is somehow related to their research. It could be an object that they have worked on, or with, or an object that simply carries a bit of their passion for their field. Some of these objects are on display in the museum, others belong to the nitty-gritty of everyday research. All of these objects have an interesting story and that is what we are out to find out. So how do archaeologists make sense of a grave and of the objects that they find inside it? What sort of bias traps do archaeologists have to avoid when they are interpreting what they see? But also, what can they learn from what they don't see? These are the sort of questions we will be looking at in this episode with Alexandre Livingstone-Smith, by exploring the story behind the grave of a Central African Tutankhamun which is 700 to a thousand years old and was found in what is now Congo.
So we are very lucky today, to be talking with Alexander Livingstone-Smith, who is an archaeologist here at the museum and so you've just come back from field work in...? In Maniema, in Kasongo (Eastern Congo). In Eastern Congo. So how are you today? I'm very good, a little hotter here than in Congo actually. So the object that you've chosen to talk to us about is one of the tombs that is on display here at the museum. So we were just having a look at it in the museum and now we're sitting in an office to talk about it and to find out its story.
So in the tomb there's a human skeleton which has quite a lot of bracelets on its wrists, on its ankles, it also has a sort of, well it has lots of jewelry and bits of metal and then there's lots of pottery around the skeleton. Is there anything major that I'm missing out, that's in the tomb? No, that's about it. Could you start by just telling us when this tomb is dated back to and also whose skeleton is it? The tomb is dated back to a period or an archaeological culture as we call it, which is called the Kisalian. The Kisalian culture was thriving in Katanga in Southeastern Congo around the 10th, maybe between the the 8th and the 13th century, and there's two periods in there. There is one which was called the Old Kisalian and then there is a period called the Classic Kisalian, and the classic Kisalian is really where that grave... Is from. Yes. The period which it's attributed to. And whose skeleton might it be? So the skeleton, the first thing we have to say is that the skeleton in the display is not a real skeleton.
You could in fact ask: Why is there a skeleton? Because graves are not always displayed with a skeleton in it, but we used that setting for an exhibition previously and I saw a lot of children were having a lot of fun with that. They were in horror saying: 'Wow look there's a skeleton', and all that. There's a big whoa effect for children and I like that. So even though there was a question of outlining the deceased or showing just an image or even no image of the deceased himself, or herself, we discussed that, and in fact in the end we decided to have this skeleton, which is a very good imitation, we had it painted but it's a plastic one.
So we're not sure whether it's a her or a he? No. Then there's the real skeleton which is poorly preserved, and so it's very hard for us to know exactly if it's a boy or a girl. What we can say from what is left of the skeleton; We can say it was probably a young adult, between 18 and 24, something like that but we don't know if it's a boy or a girl.
Although as we were re-examining the skeleton before the exhibition we found that some of the teeth were very well preserved and we hope to run a DNA-test on it so we'll know a lot more about that person. That's exciting. So who found this grave? Who excavated this grave first and also where exactly was it found? So it was found near a lake which is called Lake Kisale, which gave its name to the Kisalian, in the Upemba Depression, north of Lubumbashi when you are in Katanga, northeast of Kolwezi. It was excavated during the 50's and now it's special because, those were colonial times and it was excavated by a Belgian guy, a very good archaeologist actually, called Nenquin. But funnily enough at that time, when he excavated, there was no radiocarbon dating so at that time it was very difficult to obtain a real date for this. But in the end, later on, Pierre Demaret did a lot of work in this area again, re-excavated many sites and did his Phd. Pierre Demaret became a professor in archaeology and rector at the University of Brussels.
He made his Phd on this area and was able to outline a chrono-cultural sequence, by which we knew the different periods. So was the first date by, -I forgot the names, what was it- was his first sort of approximation more or less right or was it completely out...? No, he was not so far off, but even today we'd still have problems with this chronology so it's just that it's difficult let's say. Could you help us picture the scenery of where this grave is? And also, give us a bit more information about the archaeological site itself, like what sort of other... Were there any buildings found there? Or was it lots of other graves? What sort of place is it? So I wasn't there on the excavation, but from what was explained and from the pictures you can see that the graveyard actually, because this grave belongs to a big graveyard, was just on the edge of lake Kisale. And what you have to imagine is that at that time there were no ground probing techniques to find things underground without having to excavate.
So Pierre Demaret and Nenquin before, basically at the beginning they followed what the villagers told them. The villagers were seeing things when they plowed the fields or when they were on the riverbanks - they would see a grave collapsing on the bank of the lake -. And so that's how they were told of the existence of graveyards there, and that the pottery didn't fit with what was known by the local people. And so what they did was they started by making trenches, long trenches, and they started hitting graves a bit by luck. Now the interesting thing is that, when they excavated, they discovered there were a lot of differences in these graves. And for instance children's grave were shallow and contained small materials, small vessels, small things; and more important and older people had graves which were dug deeper and with adult size offerings. In some cases one wonders if the offerings in the graves were not really made for the deceased, for the event of the grave. Not as things that were there in daily life. So let's talk a bit more then about the objects that are in the grave.
So as I understand you're quite an expert in pottery. As a person that has no knowledge whatsoever, if I'm looking at the pottery in that grave, what should I be looking at on the pots? What details should I be paying attention to? The trick is basically that, not being a specialist, you can just look at them and the best analytical tool of humans is their brain, their eyes. Very often I tell students that what they should do is look carefully. So you can let your eyes be guided and later on the trick of the expert or the scientist is that, once you've looked at things and you've let your mind work on things, then you will go back to that to rationalize it, to discuss it with colleagues or to explain it to students. But if you look at these vessels, what you should do first is look at them for your own sake, you look at them with your own eyes and you might very well see things that nobody has seen before. It happens! In this case I'm going to give you a hint though, but such hints are a bit difficult because you need to know other things as well.
But the trick with these vessels, is that they're really specific and the way their rims are made is almost unique. You could see that there's a little angle in the rim, the neck of the vessel is not straight, it's not open, it makes a sort of little angle. Also they have a nice salmon color and the decorations on them are very very small, they used very small tools. They like to make the decoration on a very small part of the vessel, not covering. You have to imagine that vessels can be decorated and there's no limit to the imagination, so the way they were doing it is very specific. And it's typical for these people from that period. There's only one area in Africa where you'll find something similar. Which is? Upper up on the Congo river, there is an older style that looks the same and the trouble is that it's almost two thousand kilometers away and I haven't got the missing link between them.
But I'm sure there's a connection, maybe it's where these people were coming from. So what you just said is that these vessels were most probably made for the occasion of the funeral, right? So what could have been the idea behind needing vessels in a grave? That's a question that comes back all the time, there's the the notion of afterlife and that the deceased will take things with him. Now those are very very general concepts and I'm always a bit afraid, it works to explain things like this to people, but at the same time it's so general that it blurs the fact that there are a lot of different approaches to death. In this case we'll probably never know what they had in mind.
Now we can play the game and see that the vessels that are there, are a range of things that could be used in daily life. So it's not just about taking one or two as examples, in that grave there is a very large panel of objects. The interesting thing is that some of these objects may have been used to pour beer richly. They have a special little spout that goes under the rim, it could have been used for that.
There are large vessels, smaller vessels that could be used for cooking or for serving food. And also there are objects in these graves that for instance speak of things that could have been very important for the people. For instance, in some of these graves you can find braseros, which are in fact vessels in which you made fire to cook something. Like a barbecue. The trick of these braseros is that they could be used in a canoe, so if you are on the river you can cook yourself something. So it's interesting that an object like that talks about the river and relates the people with the river.
In the same way, one of the very important graves in terms of political items of power and all that... (of the Kisalian time), contained some fish hooks. And one could say that maybe the deceased loved fishing, but there are a lot of indications that relate these graves with fishing, with the river. And so one may speculate, if the fishing was rather important economically than as leisure. So that are some of the things you can discuss when you look at the material engraved. So what else would you say, by you looking at this particular grave, what do you learn about Kisalian culture? The thing we learn from this grave is that first, the Kisalian culture was hierarchized probably, because you have very wealthy graves and you have very poor graves and that one is an incredibly wealthy grave. In fact - that's why it's there - it serves as a good example for people to understand history in Central-Africa. I will come back to that later probably, but here this specific grave teaches us that very wealthy, but young people were buried, that didn't possess items of political power.
So there was political power, we have graves where we see that people had objects that we can relate to important political power. Like parade axes or special objects like that. But this grave doesn't have that, this is a very very wealthy grave but with no apparent items of political power. The trouble is of course that if you look in other parts of the room, the history room, you will see that there are objects of power of the Luba Kingdom, which are on display. And all these objects which are related to kings and chiefs, are made of wood and wood decays very fast, it's eaten by termites.
So in this grave it could be that there were items of power, of political power, but those have been eaten away. And what's left is just the rest. So it's a skeleton in more than one way. So is there any particular reason why wood was used for items of political power? I mean, because in my sort of imagination you'd be using gold. So why wood? That's a double question here. The first is; it's difficult to know why people select one item over the other as the most important, the most valuable or the most the lovely material. But for instance you could, I know that in some cases (and I do not know for the objects of Luba power); but I know other instances where, for instance a certain type of wood was selected because the wood under which circumcision is organized.
It's a special wood in the savannah, no one will cut it (special species), it's a special tree and it serves in the case of circumcision. For the ritual, the young circumcised gather under that tree and have all the rituals under that tree and if you go in the bush to cut a tree for firewood, you never touch these trees. Do you have a name? No, I don't remember it now because it was a long time ago. What you have to know is that simply that would make it a wood that you cannot burn for fire, but you could use it for an item of power, maybe. So it's just that there are symbols which are hidden between, behind a lot of things. Vegetation objects and that... So it's not easy for someone new to understand that there is a use for a symbol. So in this case you have to see these objects of power, they are absolutely gorgeous and beautiful, as it is in wood, so why make them in any other way? Also there might be reasons for them to be that way because they're light in transport, they have a use.
For instance a lot of items of power are in fact objects of daily life. Example: a spear is used for hunting, so you would say: 'why not make a golden spear', but if you hunt an elephant with a golden spear, you're going to be dead quickly. So you could imagine that some of them are paddles, they are given to chiefs who are, who hold important river crossings for instance, and their staff of office will be in the shape of a paddle. An extremely ornate and beautiful paddle but the natural material for paddles was wood, so maybe there's simply a material connection with these things.
That doesn't prevent that it's easy in other societies to make such objects of gold, but you have to know that in Central Africa gold was never interesting. So that's one of the main things with this grave, is that it allows people to understand that in the past (be it in Europe, America, South America or Africa) people lived differently and had different beliefs, sometimes. And so for instance while a lot of people think gold is the universal measure of wealth, it's not the case. And for Central Africa, the two metals which were seen as the most important were iron and copper.
And this grave is full of iron and copper. So your job as an archaeologist is to look just as much at what is there and what might not be there. That's the frustrating part, is that you always have to bear in mind that what you see is what's left and so even though you can't spin tails on what is not there, you can still tell stories bearing in mind that it could be only part of the story. And that's important. Why is it important for you to have this grave displayed in the museum? Well I thought it was crucial for two reasons. One was the fact that (as I told you) children loved it and I thought, I was looking for things to please people, so that was one thing. The other thing was that I wanted to give an answer to people. And one of these answers, one of the questions that always comes back is: is there anything to find in Central Africa? And so that was a good way of showing, on display, a rich grave.
Now the trouble is that in the past, someone told me (once) that this was probably a very poor grave because there was no gold in it. And so I thought, I have to show this one because it's a good example of how you can be misled or mistaken. For this particular grave they said: 'Oh that must be a really poor grave' Exactly Whereas it's a young adult, which is covered with iron rings and copper. You have to imagine for instance that we have an example from the 1950's of a ritual where an old man is buying a hereditary title into a society.
He's going to have that title for himself and all his descendants. Imagine he's going to be a duke or a count in Europe, and all his descendants are going to be dukes and counts as well, and in the basket in front of him there are seven iron rings. In this grave, there are tens and tens of them, plus bracelets, plus, plus, plus! So in fact you have to see this grave not as a poor grave but as a Central African Tutankhamun. It's a massively wealthy grave of a young adult, it's completely different. So I thought it would be nice to show that to people. Just to understand better, how much effort goes into making a bracelet? Like those bracelets, just to compare it with something that we would buy today. A ring that we would buy today or... In fact it's not expensive. In truth, iron smithing, the making of iron objects in Central Africa had reached a really important technical level, so they were really great specialists. But it's not that, that's the issue with this.
It's because iron is connected to a divine, magical power and it's this connection that people crave for when they use or display iron objects. It's because there's a certain magic in turning earth into shiny cutting objects. I witnessed it once, the smelting of iron, and it's awesome. And it's true that when you see the result, it's difficult not to think of magic, you know. So it's a good magical thing, it's a good thing to speak about and to make symbols about, that's for sure.
But when people were using iron and why are they connected to the wealth (you can't really say that it costs a lot to have an iron ring) it's more the important symbolic importance of iron that's in play. As a last question, a bit of a random one, if you could actually have a one question conversation with the skeleton inside this grave if you could ask him one question (him or her), what would you ask them? I would have to think about it carefully because my initial question would probably be: who are you? Hoping that he will start a discussion, because if I only hear his surname then I'll be a bit short.
What were you doing in life? What made you so important? But I think that......and also it'd be interesting to know if he's a boy or a girl! More simply. Which you might be finding out soon, so we'll be looking out for that. Thank you very much, Alexandre, that was super interesting. You're welcome, bye. Thank you for listening to the AfricaMuseum podcast. When does heavy international trade become detrimental to a tree species? In the next episode we'll go into the Congolese rainforest with forest management expert Nils Bourland, to find out about sustainable forest management and afrormosia which is a particularly sought after tree species. This series is brought to you by the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium which is a museum and a cross-disciplinary scientific institution, with over 80 scientists from biology, earth sciences, and social sciences conducting research on Africa and its heritage around the world..
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