Chitolian industry

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Named after the district Tchito in the West African Benin named Tschitolian (also Tshitolien, Tchitolian) is a largely Upper Paleolithic industry ( Later Stone Age or LSA) in the western central Africa , and especially in the Congo Basin to 15,000 BP . In its earliest phase, it initially forms a Lupembo-Tschitolian complex with the previous culture of the Lupemban , from which it emerged and which is about the same as its younger phase. The Tschitolian is largely determined microlithically . (For technical terminology with the distinctions complex, industry and inventory as well as the tool categories (modes) m1 to m5, see prehistoric terminology and systematics .)

Periodization, dating and carriers

Periodization and dating: The transition zone of the Lupembo-Chitolian is the last phase of the Middle Stone Age (MSA) in the Congo Basin and Lake Victoria basin and is considered the earliest phase of the Chitolian, still strongly determined by Lupemban elements, which regionally as ranging from Dundo in Lunda Norte -Provinz Angola can be expected even for African Upper Paleolithic (Later Stone Age), but is very heterogeneous in their regional structure.
Overall, the development of the microlitic m5 industry in Central Africa took place in two differently determined phases:

  1. In the savannah regions such as in Zambia and southern Angola , the microlith industry appeared early on, around 19,000 BP as the so-called Nachikufan I, which arose from the Bambata complex . The Matupi Cave in the extreme northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is considered an important site . The Matupi inventory seems to be up to 40,000 years old and dates back to a time when this cave, unlike today, was located a little outside the equatorial rainforest.
  2. In the second, later phase, the Tschitolian developed from the Lupemban on the southern edge of the rainforest.

However, as previously assumed, there does not seem to be too great a contrast between the Chitolian and its more microlithic “competitors”. Rather, according to Phillipson, here too, as in the case of Lupemban, it is a question of local manifestations of a very widespread technological tradition, which, however, has environmental and material-related variants or inventories.

An earliest dating of this transition phase around 30,000 BP seems appropriate despite great uncertainties in this regard; but there are also more recent inventories, for example in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Kalina Point), where 14,480 BP were measured, whereby there is a correspondence of the device inventory to the finds from Kalambo Falls , which have an age of 27,500 ± 2300 BP. The core area of ​​the actual Chitolian in Angola is between 14,000 BP as the earliest point in time and 5000 BP (3000 BC) as the latest. In Kinshasa with its late phase of the Chitolian, it is dated to the late 4th and early 3rd millennium BC ( radiocarbon dating ). Similar industries extend into post-Christian times and overlap chronologically with the early ceramic cultures there, for example at Congo-Brazzaville around 2000 BC. Chr.

The bearers of this culture, presumably representatives of Homo sapiens sapiens as throughout the late Paleolithic, were not yet familiar with ceramics and probably also with no agriculture. Because there are hardly any hominids found, especially in the rainforest areas , a clear statement can hardly be made here. In particular in the western Congo basin there are no hominid finds (the acidic milieu of the rainforest floor dissolves bones), so that the type of people responsible for the Lupemban and Tschitolian remains unclear. Occasionally it was assumed that the type was closer to today's, particularly dark-skinned inhabitants of West Africa than to the Bushmen ( Khoisan ) of the east and south, although we now know that the genetic differences between the two groups are not that great. The relationship to today's pygmies is also rather unclear; however, they appear to have physical elements from both groups.
It is typical of the people of that time that they now prefer to settle on the valley floor and no longer on the slopes as in the past. It is assumed that this has to do with the decline in evergreen forests and forest galleries along rivers, which may not only have climatic causes, as occurred during the last European, the Würm Ice Age , due to a drier and colder climate, but also became more accessible through human influence and fire. In any case, the typical tool for this period is a microlithic arrowhead with a cross-cutter function , as it is mainly used when hunting small game in the conditions of dense forests.

Distribution and tool inventory

Distribution: The exact geographical extent of the actual Chitolian industry is unknown, also because there is a large range of variation in tool types between relatively close sites. In addition to the Central African core area, in particular the Congo Basin, similar inventories can also be found in East Africa (Orichinga Valley). The expansion area of ​​comparable industries extends over northwest Congo to Gabon and Cameroon . In northern Zaire (since 1997 the Democratic Republic of the Congo) two stages of the Tschitolian that may differ over time can be observed, which may be based on different environmental conditions (open plateau vs. wooded valleys) or are caused by seasonal migration of the population:

  1. Especially at a higher level around valley basins. There were large amounts of leaf-shaped points and arrowheads provided with sharpening spikes as typical tools, as well as a number of larger two-sided points.
  2. The other, especially in more densely forested river valleys, has typical micro-pricks (petits tranchets) and trapezoidal microliths in its inventory.

However, the differences seem to be more environmental and material-related than to represent different populations. In both areas there were finely crafted hatchets and axes from the Lupemban tradition in nuclear technology , although they are smaller than their predecessors. From this distribution of finds one concludes that in the gallery forests of the valleys mainly big game such as hippopotamus and elephant were hunted, especially since the hunting camps there were also larger, while the seasonal antelope hunt took place on the plateaus. Chitolian inventories in the form of a late Lupembo-Chitolian can be found mainly in the area of Kinshasa . They are similar to those of the Dundo region and are dated to the 8th millennium BC. Geometric microliths are missing here, but they do appear in simultaneous inventories, for example at Lake Leopold .

Tool inventory: Already during the Lupembo-Tschitolian there was a general downsizing as well as a refinement and variety of tools, for example with ax axes and points, especially with toothed pieces. At the same time, you can see a shift in the production of chips from radially symmetrical cores to blades with parallel edges.
The most important device form is a relatively small blade tip . There are also small scratches and mostly triangular, often laterally truncated, trapezoidal (so-called petits tranchets) or crescent-shaped microliths . New chisel forms emerge, consisting chipped deductions were made and well as sheeter served -Pfeilspitzen, as are side scrapers and laterally truncated discounts. The Levallois technique of core preparation is now always used in the manufacture of chips and blades . Core axes and lanceolates, however, continue to be trimmed by machining thicker fragments on both sides. Pyramid-shaped and bilateral conical blade cores increase. There are also very small picks (pointed axes for woodworking) and chopper like a fist . The development of these tools appears to have been a gradual process that began 14,000 to 12,000 BP ago. In the later Chitolian stages there are also ax-like devices made of rock.
The further development of the Chitolian tools, especially in the Dundo area, cannot be clarified with certainty, but it seems to have continued in their developed forms long after the start of ceramic production , possibly as a late Chitolian under the influence of the bearers of the beginning Iron Age until the turn of the century , whereby the bearers of the late Chitolian Neolithic techniques are likely to have already adopted in the pre-Iron Age. In the final phase, in which one also finds a clear relationship to the inventories in Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea , one sees more and more Neolithic devices in the find complexes in the lower Congo area, which obviously shows how, moreover, soil findings with typical agricultural sludge deposits and signs of erosion caused by massive clearing, is connected with early agriculture, which with Chitolian-typical inventories continued well into the first millennium after Christianity, sometimes as the "Leopoldian Neolithic" (after Leopold II of Belgium ) into the 19th century. Again, this phenomenon does not occur in northeastern Angola. On the other hand, persistent hunter-gatherer populations, especially in South Africa and in Central and East Africa ( San , Khoikhoi , Pygmies, etc.) used tools of the Upper Palaeolithic Lupembo-Chitolian type until recently.

The Acheuléen / Sangoan-Lupemban-Tschitolian complex

John Desmond Clark identified two complexes of the Early / Middle and Late Stone Age in his "Cambridge History of Africa" ​​published together with John Donnelly Fage : a Sangoan-Lupemban and a Lupembo-Tschitolian . In Sub-Saharan Africa , the Sangoan, together with the subsequent Lupemban and the subsequent Chitolian, forms a cultural sequence Acheuléen / Sangoan - Lupemban - Tschitolian , because both Sangoan and Lupemban as well as Lupemban and Chitolian partially overlap and thus result in two interlocking complexes that are combine to form the overall complex Sangoan-Lupemban-Tschitolian.
See Sangoan and the individual main articles on the Sangoan-Lupemban and Lupembo-Tschitolian complex.

Literature and Sources

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Phillipson, p. 121.
  2. ↑ The Stone Age period in Africa differs greatly from that of Europe. See cultural historical periodics .
  3. ↑ Phillipson, pp. 109, 120 f.
  4. ↑ Phillipson, p. 121.
  5. ↑ p. 121.
  6. ↑ Clark, Vol. 1, p. 290.
  7. ↑ Fage, p. 65.
  8. ↑ Clark, Vol. 1, p. 469.
  9. ↑ Baumann, p. 32.
  10. ↑ Clark, Vol. 1, pp. 471 f.
  11. ↑ Clark, Vol. 1, pp. 423 f.
  12. ↑ Clark, Vol. 1, pp. 205, 293f, 423-427; Fage, pp. 62 f., 65.
  13. ↑ Phillipson, p. 121.
  14. ^ Fiedler, p. 294.
  15. ↑ Fiedler, p. 372; Brockhaus, Vol. 22, p. 449; Clark, Vol. 1, pp. 290, 423 ff .; Phillipson, p. 121.
  16. ↑ Clark, Vol. 1, pp. 427, 790 f .; Fage, p. 66 f.
  17. ↑ Clark, Vol. 1, pp. 186, 204, 213 ff., 241, 246, 290, 317, 423, 426.
  18. ↑ Clark, Vol. 1, pp. 205, 317, 423-427, Vol. 2, pp. 62-62, 65.