Genetic and Archaeological Evidence for the Bantu Dispersal Through Nigeria: A Critical Synthesis

The Bantu dispersal, one of the most significant demographic and cultural transformations in human prehistory, is conventionally associated with the spread of food-producing, iron-working populations from a homeland in the Nigeria-Cameroon borderlands across much of sub-Saharan Africa over the past four thousand years. Despite Nigeria's presumed centrality to this dispersal, the integration of genetic and archaeological evidence for it within Nigeria's borders remains partial, contested, and theoretically underdeveloped. This dissertation develops a critical synthesis of genetic and archaeological evidence for the Bantu dispersal through Nigeria, engaging with the full range of available ancient and modern population genomic data alongside a comprehensive reassessment of the Nigerian archaeological record for markers of agricultural spread, iron technology diffusion, and ceramic tradition change. The theoretical framework develops an original model of mosaic dispersal that challenges the traditional wave-of-advance model, arguing that the material and genetic signatures attributed to Bantu dispersal in Nigeria reflect multiple overlapping episodes of population movement, technology transmission, and cultural borrowing rather than a single directional expansion front. Genomic evidence from recent published ancient DNA studies is evaluated against predictions derived from competing dispersal models, and the archaeological ceramic and subsistence records for twenty-eight Nigerian sites are reassessed for their interpretability as dispersal markers. The synthesis identifies significant contradictions between the genetic and archaeological evidence that are resolvable under the mosaic dispersal model but not under conventional wave-of-advance interpretations, providing a theoretically productive basis for designing future targeted research. Keywords: Bantu dispersal, archaeogenomics, Nigeria, mosaic dispersal model, agricultural spread.