UNESCO Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Editor G. Mokhtar)

Ancient Civilizations of Africa
Moreover, the vagueness of these dates detracts considerably from their
value. All we can safely say is that, to within a couple of hundred years,
some of the graves at Sanga go back to between the seventh and ninth
centuries of our era.
The excavations give us an idea of the burial ground itself, and,
through that, a glimpse of ancient Sanga society.
Despite the fact that the three groups of pottery were contemporaneous,
they apparently did not all belong to the same population. The graves
containing Mulongo or red slip ware are almost the only ones to contain
little crosses of copper. These are practically absent from Kisalian graves.
On the other hand, all the graves are equally rich in well-worked iron and
copper objects. It may be supposed that the minority who were buried with
crosses were different from the Kisalian population, and perhaps were the
source of the copper, of which the nearest deposits are about 180 miles
to the south.
Burial rites seem to have been rather complex. Most of the graves
are pointed towards the north or north-east - the Mulongo - red slip
ones, towards the south. The dead person usually lay decubitus dorsal and
was accompanied with objects presumably intended to make things easier
for him in the other world. The pottery shows no signs of wear and the
strong resemblance among certain vessels in a given tomb seem to indicate
that it was made for exclusively funerary purposes. These jars were
probably filled with food and drink. The corpse was adorned with jewels
of copper, iron, ivory. It seems as if premature infants, too, were buried.
In some cases the dead person has a bundle of little crosses in his
hand. There is a clear tendency for the size of the jars to be in proportion
to the age of the dead person.
The general picture one gets of Sanga is of a civilization where
the people attach more importance to hunting and fishing than to
agriculture. However, hoes and bedstones have been found in the graves,
as have remains of goats and fowl.
No grave is rich enough to indicate that it belonged to an important
chief, but the fineness of the grave-goods shows the great skill of the
Sanga craftsmen, who worked in bone, stone and wood, made iron and
copper wire, and practised open-mould casting. Their pottery seems very
original.
As the bones have not been analysed, the only anthropological datum
we possess is an odontological study of some of the human remains.
This study shows in particular the frequency of mutilated teeth. We do not
know the whole extent of the burial ground, which would have given
some idea of the size of the population.
The Sanga civilization, then, seems to have been a brilliant phenomenon,
but, so far as our present knowledge goes, an isolated one. Probably the
discoveries as a whole cover a longer period than that suggested by
the two radio-carbon datings.
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