Archaeology of Rwanda
[3] The significance of the Urewe culture is that it provided the oldest evidence of an Early Iron Age (EIA) civilization south of the equator.
The Urewe peoples are considered to be a mix of hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists.There is a lack of “faunal remains of hunting and fishing” at EIA sites in Rwanda.
[3] in Late Iron Age (LIA) sites in Rwanda (Akameru and Cyinkomane) dating to the ninth century AD, “bones of wild game were mixed with those of domestic animals and roulette-decorated pots.”[3] The hilly areas of Rwanda and Burundi were appealing for agricultural settlement by Urewe peoples.
Similarly, finger millet pollen was present in Kabuye III and II; all three of these sites span from the third to the seventh centuries AD.
[3] Research was conducted on an Early Iron Age burial site in Kabusanze, Rwanda, that contained the skeletal remains of two people.
The burial site also contained “Urewe ceramics, iron adornments and an exotic artefact, which have been radiocarbon dated by association with wood charcoal to c. 400 AD.”[4] Archaeobotanical analyses conducted at the burial pits found “wild and domesticated charred seed remains.”[4] Traces of sorghum, cowpea, and pearl millet were found in the two pits.
[4] As Giblin and colleagues explain, “The results of the metallographic investigation carried out on the two objects suggest that a significant amount of time and technical skill was used to form and manipulate the shapes of these objects.”[4] It was well understood by archaeologists that much iron was being produced in southern Rwanda and the Great Lakes region in general.
However, due to the rarity of cowrie in the Great Lakes region in this time period in general, it can only be assumed that the exchanges for these materials were done amongst individuals and not intensive trading networks.
[2] Roulette-decorated users are estimated to be from 1100 AD based on stratigraphical analyses of archaeological deposits found in four cave sites in northern Rwanda.
The arrival of farming in the Great Lakes region of Africa coincides with the first appearances of Classic Urewe ceramics.
[2] The roulette-decorated ceramics period is associated with “growing subsistence complexity, including the development of specialised pastoralism, agriculture, increasing socio-political centralization”[2] as well as the establishment of kingdoms in ancient Rwanda and surrounding areas.
[2] Pearl millet interestingly spread from West Africa to the Great Lakes region, and eventually made its way to Southern India; this likely indicates some sort of trade happening between the continents in ancient times.
The discovery of domesticated plant remains in Kabusanze indicate that Classic Urewe users were agricultural and farmed “sorghum, pearl millet, and cowpea”.
[2] Linguistic studies suggest that Central/Eastern Sudanic speakers brought pearl millet and sorghum into ancient Rwanda.
Both of these crops were introduced in Rwanda from different regions in Africa; the evidence collected shows that “they had been integrated in east-central African agricultural by at least the mid-first millennium AD”.
[2] Additionally, finger millet cultivation in the late first millennium AD has been identified in accordance with transitional Urewe ceramics found at a site in Karama, Rwanda.
[1] Colonial and post-colonial conceptions of Twa, Tutsi, and Hutu were seen as “ethnoracial identities with associated, well-defined, immutable, specialised subsistence orientations”.
Second millennium AD archaeological sites in Rwanda are “usually found on hilltops or hillsides and more rarely in caves or beside lakes and rivers.”[1] Sites are “commonly identified by the surface occurrence of roulette-decorated ceramics, which display twisted cord, knotted-strip, and possible cord-wrapped stick rouletting and evidence of iron production, such as furnace pits, tuyeres, and iron slag”.
The rulers whose bodies and grave goods were excavated are: Cyirima Rujugira, Kigeri Rwabugiri, and Reine-mere Kanjogera.
Cyirima's “burial revealed a wealth of grave goods including, among other things, objects associated with hunting, pastoralism, agriculture, and metal work”.
[1] These burial items reveal that Nyiginya Kingdom highly valued the aforementioned economic activities and that they were symbolically related to ones status.
Due to this, people in Rwanda could all speak the same language Kinyarwanda, “were able to intermarry, and to enjoy a high degree of social mobility”.
[5] The official narrative depicts that these three subsistence groups lived in harmony until the arrival of the Europeans in the late 19th century.
[5] The Tutsi were seen to be the descendants of a Hamitic race from the Nile Valley and Ethiopia that had conquered the Bantu Hutus and Pygmy Twas.
The Belgians were blamed for polarizing the fluid social system of Rwanda into one based on race hierarchies: The Belgian colonial administration enacted this polarization via the official census of 1933–1934, which gave every Rwandan an official identity card, detailing, among other things, their specific ethnie, which equated to physical (racial) difference identified through the measurement of particular anatomical features, alongside subsistence practice.”[1] According to Belgian colonial ideologies, the Tutsi were seen as “racially superior Hamitic colonisers from the northeast”[1] who conquered the inferior Hutus, who themselves had conquered the most inferior Twa.
According to this myth, the Hamites were a “Caucasoid people”[1] who migrated from the Middle East to into Africa and are the true reason for any civilization present.
To explain the lack of white people in Rwanda, Belgian authorities claimed that the “Hamites had been corrupted and assimilated with the indigenous Negroid race as they migrated southward”.
[1] In order to explain why complex societies existed in Africa, such as those found in Rwanda, the Belgian colonialists claimed that Hamite influence was clearly present in these lands.
Past archaeological research in Rwanda before the genocide may have helped to reinforce some notions of colonially constructed “ethnoracial thinking.”[5] As Giblin explains, "This involved the one-to-one association of ‘pygmoid Twa’, ‘Hamitic Tutsi’, and “Bantu Hutu’ identities with human remains based on physiology, archaeological ceramics based on a presumed migratory sequence and subsistence remains based on ethnographic assumptions.”[5] Today, archaeological works may be considered to be controversial by the Rwandan government if they provide any indication that, for example, the migration patterns, ceramic works, burial practices etc.
[5] The identification of human remains for archaeological study in Rwanda can also be a problematic process, if physical features are analyzed and attributed to one of the three ethnic identities.
