DIBAC: Radiocarbon dates catalogs for Central Africa
DIBAC stands for "Datations absolues, Inventaires archéologiques et Bibliographies en Afrique Centrale", a project accepted by the French Institut de Recherches pour le Développement (IRD), 2006: DIBAC.
> General information (list of laboratories, calibration method, list of the material dated, notion of tiers).
> 1. Radiocarbon dates from southern Cameroon
> 2. Radiocarbon dates from the Central African Republic (CAR)
> 3. Radiocarbon dates from Gabon
> 4. Radiocarbon dates from Equatorial Guinea
> 5. Radiocarbon dates from Congo
> 6. Radiocarbon dates from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
> 7. Radiocarbon dates from Angola
History of the database:
The early days consisted in the 14C dates published in several papers by the Journal of African History (JAH) (de Maret et al. 1977; de Maret 1982, 1985) and listed in 1982 (Van Noten 1982). A more critical attitude towards the interpretation of radiocarbon dates was advocated, especially a need for more careful study of the context from which the samples were collected (de Maret 1982: 11).
In 1983-1984, a study of the Urewe Tradition radiocarbon dates was conducted from Brussels and later published (Clist 1987). The focus was on their context and degree of association (DCA) between the organic material dated and the artefacts, checking the relevant publications available from the library of the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Belgium) (Clist 1987). Some call this today carrying out "chronometric hygiene".
Meanwhile, alongside the JAH papers, several reports were published (e.g. Lanfranchi and Manima Moubouha 1984), one, the exhaustive catalog of 14C dates on Congo (Kouyoumontzakis et al. 1985).
From 1985 to 1992, B. Clist and R. Lanfranchi worked on a new database, entitled "Cibadates" (Sarrazin 1987), part of the developing CICIBA's documentation data bank (Béville 1987), and a first listing of the recorded dates extracted from the consulted bibliography during their summer holydays in Europe (Paris, France for Lanfranchi; Tervuren, Belgium for Clist) was made available (Clist and Lanfranchi 1990).
Making use of the regional network they had set up, colleagues were asked to contribute by sending back information about their new radiocarbon dates filling in a paper form inserted in the new Nsi regional bulletin (see the 1987 form here; no Internet back then).
"Cibadates" rapidly developed into a 35 data fields register (paper file here). Because of its initial contacts with the United States-based "International Radiocarbon Data Base" set up at Arizona University, Tucson (Kra 1988), the Ashton-Tate dBaseIII+ program was chosen for compatibility reasons.
The French authorities strongly supported the International Centre (e.g., the 1991 book and associated regional exhibition which travelled in Central and West Africa, "Aux origines de l'Afrique Centrale" (Lanfranchi & Clist 1991), the up to 58% of the Archaeology Department budget, the first book about the archaeology of Gabon (Clist 1995), the strong support of the Centre's Documentation Center, without forgetting the salaries of the four experts assigned to the Centre: G. Béville and O.Sarrazin at the Data Bank, R. Lanfranchi at the Archaeology Department and A. Wagner at the Traditional Medicine Department).
From 1987 onwards, funds from the French "Crédits FAC" (Fonds d'Aide à la Coopération) let the archaeology department edit from 1987 to 1992 the Nsi bulletin, set up a fund to pay for radiocarbon dates in favor of colleagues from Angola (3 dates), Congo (37 dates), Equatorial Guinea (6 dates) and Gabon (64 dates), and create an archaeological reserve to house collections obtained via fieldwork paid by the International Centre and by deposits from the Paléogab project. Sadly all these collections were mixed up some time after 1996 following one of the CICIBA's successive relocations.
It must be highlighted the CICIBA's regional radiocarbon dating fund of the 1980s and 1990s is very similar to what the Society of Africanist Archaeologists (SAFA) started thirty years later in 2022, the "African Chronometric Dating Fund".
Though a copy of Cibadates was left in Gabon on floppy disks, another was thankfully brought to Europe in 1996 when B. Clist left Africa. He developed with Michèle Delneuf a new research program accepted in 2004 by the Institut de Recherches pour le Développement (IRD), "Préhistoire des systèmes lagunaires et côtiers du Golfe de Guinée", and presented in 2005 his PhD at Brussels University. M. Delneuf and B. Clist had the DIBAC project accepted by the IRD, which was a completely modernized radiocarbon database scheme, which has not been implemented since.
It was designed to link together four separate databases with a cartographic tool. Alongside the IRD, the Tervuren Museum in Belgium and the Tübingen University in Germany were involved.
The development at IRD of archaeology in favor of Central Africa fell through with the death of M. Delneuf on June 24, 2006, in Canada during the SAFA's 18th Biennial meeeting.
DIBAC, which had been updated from Cibadates times to be integrated by the French Institute, was thus put on hold.
It was taken out of its holding archive in 2018 when B. Clist was contacted to contribute to a study which became a paper in 2021 (Seidensticker et al. 2021). After a short contribution, and following another publication on a very similar topic (de Saulieu et al. 2021), it was decided to once again update DIBAC, and develop something not considered by the two other publications of 2021: how coherent and representative was the corpus of radiocarbon dates from Central Africa before considering any new regional story.
D. Denbow and R. Lanfranchi accepted the challenge, and with their joint experience of excavations in all the contries of the region since the late 1970s (except for Sao Thomé and Principe), they tested the reliability of the radiocarbon dates.
The result is a paper published in late 2023 (Clist et al. 2023). Its major conclusions are:
i) the number of radiocarbon dates in Central Africa is more an indicator of the effort archaeologists have put into understanding a settlement than it is of ancient demographics,
ii) a majority of radiocarbon-dated sites located west of the Congo River makes any regional conclusion doubtful, and
iii) any suggestion of past historical dynamics must consider and discuss the 24 research biases identified.
The national catalogs are made freely available on this page (see top of page).
Since 2023, they are kept updated on a regular basis whenever new dates are published and made available.
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References:
- Béville (G.), 1987, La banque de données bibliographiques du CICIBA, Nsi, 1, pp. 37-38.
- Clist (B.), 1987, A critical reappraisal of the chronological framework of Urewe Early Iron Age Industry,
...Muntu, 6, pp.35-62.
- Clist (B.), 1995, Gabon : 100.000 ans d'Histoire, Centre Culturel français Saint-Exupéry / Sépia, Paris.
- Clist (B.), Denbow (J.) & Lanfranchi (R.), 2023, Using the radiocarbon dates of Central Africa for studying
...long-term demographic trends of the last 50,000 years: potential and pitfalls, Azania: Archaeological
...Research in Africa, 28(2), pp. 235-293.
- Clist (B.) & Lanfranchi (R.), 1990, Datations absolues archéologiques des Etats-Membres du Centre
...International des Civilisations Bantu (CICIBA) et du sud-Cameroun: datations radiocarbones et
...thermoluminescences, série Documents du Département d'Archéologie, 1, CICIBA, Libreville.
- de Maret (P.), 1982, New survey of archaeological research and dates from West-Central and
...North-Central Africa, Journal of African History, 23, pp.1-15.
- de Maret (P.), 1985, Recent archaeological research and dates from Central Africa, Journal of African History,
...26, 2-3, pp.129-148.
- de Maret (P.), Van Noten (F.) & Cahen (D.), 1977, Radiocarbon dates from West Central Africa : a synthesis,
...Journal of African History, 18, 4, pp.481-505.
- de Saulieu (G.), Garcin (Y.), Sebag (D.), Nlend Nlend (P.R.), Zeytlin (D.), Deschamps (D.), Menot (G.),
...di Carlo (P.) & Oslisly (R.), 2021, Archaeological Evidence for Population Rise and Collapse between ~2500
...and ~500 cal. yr BP in Western Central Africa, Afrique: Archéologie et Arts, 17, pp. 11-32.
- Kouyoumontzakis (G.), Lanfranchi (R.) & Giresse (P.), 1985. Les datations radiométriques de la République
...Populaire du Congo, Cahiers Congolais d'Anthropologie et d'Histoire 10, pp. 11-31.
- Kra (R.), 1988, The first American Workshop on the International Radiocarbon Data Base, Radiocarbon, 30(2),
...pp. 259-260.
- Lanfranchi (R.) & Clist (B.) eds., 1991, Aux origines de l'Afrique Centrale, Ministère de la Coopération et du
...Développement / Centre Culturel français de Libreville / Sépia Editions, Paris.
- Lanfranchi (R.) & Manima Moubouha (A.), 1984, Première datation 14C d'un bas fourneau de fonte de
...cuivre en R.P. du Congo, Cahiers Congolais d'Anthropologie et d'Histoire 9,
...pp. 7-12.
- Sarrazin, O. 1987, Cibadate: fichier des datations absolues, Nsi 1, pp. 39-41.
- Seidensticker (D.), Hubau (W.), Verschuren (D.), Fortes-Lima (C.), de Maret (P.), Schlebusch (C.M.)
...& Bostoen (K.), 2021, Population collapse in Congo rainforest from 400 CE urges reassessment of the
...Bantu Expansion, Science Advances, 7, 7.
- Van Noten (F.), 1982, The archaeology of Central Africa, Akademische Drück- und Verlagsantstalt, Graz,
...pp. 145-149.
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