The first excavations in Ndufu have been conducted by Commandant Lenfant, a french colonial officer, on his way to Kukawa at the beginning of this century. He calls the town the "capitale de pays sao". Indeed, oral tradition holds that Ndufu once played a role as a political and religious center in the area.
Today the political importance of Ndufu is minimal. It is the seat of a small kingdom, as there are many in the area, with surrounding dependent villages. Regarding the traditional government, Ndufu is independent from Ngala and is considered to be "older by 1000 years" according to the oral tradition. Surprisingly, our excavations in the abandoned part of the mound support this "traditional hypothesis". Judging from the archaeological evidence at hand, Ndufu is indeed older as Ngala - it is even more surprising that the layers outdate Ngala by about 1000 years.
The excavations have brought forward a number of surprising features:
Previously, it seemed that the deceased were interred in an irregular pattern within the settlements throughout Neolithic and Early Iron Age times. Only with the development of more complex societies, burial grounds developed. The Ndufu example shows, that in some instances, already at the birth of Christ burials were concentrated in a limited area within the settlement.
Does this demonstrate a more complex organization of the groups ?
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