Le présent article fait la synthèse pour l'Afrique centrale des recherches archéo-logiques, et plus particulièrement des datations absolues, effectuées ces quatre dernières années. Comme les autres articles de cette série, seuls sont pris en considération les travaux se rapportant à la fin de l'âge de la pierre et à l'âge du fer. Eu égard à l'immensité de l'aire envisagée, l'archéologie apparaît, en dehors de quelques zones limitées, comme encore fort peu développée. Certains résultats récents méritent cependant d'être notés.

Au Cameroun on dispose maintenant de dates qui permettent pour la première fois de situer les débuts de la production de nourriture ainsi que l'apparition de la céramique dans la frange nord de la forêt équatoriale. Plus au sud, à Kinshasa, il a finalement été possible de dater l'âge du fer ancien. Vers l'est, au Rwanda, de nouvelles dates pourraient confirmer que l'âge du fer a débuté dans la région interlacustre un ou deux siècles plus tôt que ce que l'on admet généralement. Dans ce pays et au Burundi l'étude systématique des anciens fourneaux de fonte du fer a été poursuivie. L'apparition des vestiges caractérisant la seconde période de l'âge du fer doit également être reculée dans le temps. Au sud-est, à Lubumbashi, une date conduit à vieillir encore le début de la fonte du cuivre. Dans la dépression de l'Upemba la fouille de plusieurs sites et de nombreuses nouvelles datations permettent de suivre avec précision pendant près de deux millénaires l'évolution sociale, politique, économique et technique de cette important zone de peuplement. Un éclairage nouveau est ainsi porté sur l'origine de l'Etat luba. Différentes recherches en rapport avec les traditions orales et l'histoire récente ont aussi été effectuées au centre du Zaïre, en Angola, au Cameroun au Rwanda et au Tchad.

Some 170 references to drought and disease along the south-western coast of Central Africa between 1550 and 1830 suggest that climatic and epidemiological factors motivated the farmers and herders of West-Central Africa in historically significant ways. Nearly all references come from documentary sources and so bear primarily on conditions in the drier and less fertile areas near Luanda and to the south, where African reactions would have been strongest.

While minor shortages of rain occurred too frequently to receive much explicit attention in the documents, longer droughts spread more widely every decade or so and attracted notice. Major periods of dryness, extending for seven years or more and touching all parts of the region, occurred perhaps once each century and produced comments throughout the documentation.

Localized minor droughts hardly disrupted the lives of Africans, who had presumably devised agricultural and pastoral strategies to take account of such ordinary climatic variation. Two-or three-year rainfall shortages produced banditry and warfare that often attracted Portuguese military retaliation. Major droughts disrupted polities and societies and hence coincided with major turning points in West-Central African history in the late sixteenth and late eighteenth centuries. In the earlier case, agricultural failures produced the famed ‘Jaga’ or Imbangala warriors, who elevated pillage to a way of life and who joined the Portuguese in establishing the Angolan slave trade. The later, protracted drought from 1784 to 1793 coincided with the historic peak of slave exports from West-Central Africa.

Recent archaeological excavations have revealed two distinct pottery traditions in the Birim Valley, southern Ghana. These have been classified as the ‘Earthworks Ware’ and the ‘Atwea Ware’. In certain archaeological contexts, the ‘Atwea Ware’ succeeds ‘Earthworks Ware’, and it also continues into present-day ethnography. The discontinuity between these two pottery traditions suggests a change in population. It is therefore suggested here that the population of ‘Earthworks Ware’ makers was one of the early victims of the Atlantic slave trade from about the mid-sixteenth century and that they were replaced in this area of the Birim Valley around a.d. 1700 by the Atweafo, a Twi-speaking group, whose descendants live there to this day. From the eighteenth century until close to the end of the nineteenth century a number of Denkyira, Asini and Asante migrants also moved into this valley. During this time the militarily weak Atweafo lived at the mercy of four major powers – the Asante, Akim Abuakwa, Akim Kotoku and the Akwamu. However, the Atweafo found means to survive under what seems to have been a highly volatile political environment by shifting their loyalty amongst these powers as situations dictated.

During the Second World War the British West African colonies supplied raw materials and manpower for the war effort. The small peacetime army of the Gold Coast increased to nearly 70,000 men, including technical and service corps, and was used in overseas campaigns. Most soldiers were drawn from the supposed martial peoples of the Northern Territories but recruiting was extended to Asante and the south in mid-1940. Although formal conscription was only applied to drivers and artisans, a large number of recruits were forcibly enlisted through a system of official quotas imposed on districts and through chiefs. Opposition to military service, especially for overseas compaigns, was widespread and is indicated by the attempts to evade recruiting parties and also the large number of desertions. In order to release labour for the military and also conserve scarce supplies of raw materials, some gold mines were closed. Wartime shortages, inflation and the lack of jobs after the war led to discontent in the Gold Coast but there is little evidence to indicate that this resulted in a significant number of ex-servicemen being drawn into political activity.