Tazunu: Megalithic Monuments of Central Africa

Abstract

This article describes the excavation of two tumuli incorporating megalithic structures of a type found in the western Central African Republic and part of eastern highland Cameroon. The author examines the question of their construction and offers an interpretation of their cultural and historical significance. Dr. David is an Associate Professor of Archaeology in the University of Calgary. Excavations at two major megalithic monuments in the Central African Republic allow reconstruction of their plans and the sequence of construction. In one case the sources of the raw materials are restricted and comparative evidence suggests that this, and by extension all other tazunu, could have been built by a village of Later Stone Age food producers in a single season. The few small finds found within the monuments are indicative of a Neolithic technological level and the sites are radiocarbon dated to the first millennium BC The stratigraphy and dating of tazunu previously excavated in the Bouar locality by P. Vidal are reassessed in the light of the new work, confirming a first millennium dating for the complex and demonstrating that tazunu, although varying in size and other features, are all expressions of a single flexible concept. Their numbers and densities within the Bouar region are such as to suggest an association with individual or family status, and it is inferred that their function is funerary. The monuments can also be placed within a regional sequence, succeeding an earlier LSA hunter-gatherer phase and preceding the earlier Iron Age phase represented at the Nana-Modé village site. Finally, historical linguistic evidence is invoked to show that the builders' cultural affinities lie with one or the other branch of the Adamawa-Ubangian subfamily of Niger-Congo.