Linguists and archaeologists offer complementary viewpoints on human behaviour and culture in past African communities. While historical-comparative linguistics commonly deals with the immaterial traces of the past in Africa’s present-day languages, archaeology unearths the material vestiges of ancient cultures. Even if both sciences share similar core concepts, their methods, data and interpretive frameworks are profoundly different. Explaining some basic principles of historical-comparative linguistics as applied to the Bantu languages and debunking some common misconceptions are the central aims of this contribution.