The “Bantu Expansion”, a research theme within the precolonial history of Central Africa, unites scholars of different
disciplines. Much research is focused on the initial expansions of Bantu subgroups, which are explained as farmers ever looking for new
lands and therefore avoiding the rainforest, also in the recent research on the “Savannah Corridor”. We want to study a
crossroads of different Bantu expansions in the very heart of the Central-African rainforest, namely the eastern part of the Congo Basin
(the Congo River and its tributaries up- and downstream of Kisangani until Bumba and Kindu). The region hosts multiple language
groups from Bantu and other origin, complex ethnic identities and people practicing complementary subsistence strategies.
Considering that farming is complicated in a rainforest environment, we will investigate the role of rivers in the settlement of these
speech communities into the area, both as ways into the forest and as abundant source of animal protein (fish).

The project is
multidisciplinary and will apply an integrated linguistic, anthropological and archaeological approach to study both present and past
riverside communities in the Congo Basin. Historical comparative linguistics will offer insights into the historical relations
between speech communities through language classification and the study of language contact, and will study specialized vocabulary to
trace the history of river-related techniques, tools and knowledge. Anthropological research involves extensive fieldwork
concerning ethnoecology, trade and/or exchange networks, sociocultural aspects of life at the riverside, and ethnohistory. Archaeologists
will conduct surveys in the region of focus to provide a chrono-cultural framework.