Hunter-gathere Archeology in Southern Africa

Before Farming 2002/1 (3) 1

1 Introduction

Open any introductory anthropological textbook and

its likely that among the groups exemplifying a

hunter-gatherer lifestyle will be one or other of the

Bushman peoples of southern Africa1. Read further

into the debates surrounding the pristineness of

surviving foragers and once again Bushmen and

their relations with pastoralist and farming

neighbours figure prominently. Survey the literature

dealing with the origins of anatomically modern

humans or the development of modern behaviour

and key southern African sites such as Klasies

River Mouth, Border Cave and Blombos stand forth.

Examine general overviews of rock art, including

that produced by Upper Palaeolithic people in

Europe, and the shamanistic understanding of

southern Africas Bushman paintings and

engravings will be discussed and frequently

applauded for the richness of its insights. These

are but some of the reasons why southern African

hunter-gatherers and their past are of concern to

anthropologists and archaeologists wherever they

work.

The past ten years have seen major political

and economic changes in southern Africa. These

changes are now impacting on how archaeological

research is carried out in the sub-continent.

Meanwhile, hunter-gatherer archaeology has itself

undergone something of a reorientation. New

research questions have come to the fore, some

longstanding projects have been published or

brought to a conclusion and several others initiated.

This paper has two objectives. First, to take stock

of what has happened over the last decade,

assessing the gains made and identifying the

principal directions along which research has

proceeded. Having done this, the paper moves on

to ask where hunter-gatherer archaeology in

southern Africa is, and should be, moving, where,

in other words, can we expect the next ten years

to lead us?

No single paper can do justice to all of the work

that has been, or is being, carried out in southern

Africa, and it is therefore important to establish at

the outset the temporal and geographical limits of

this survey. Chronologically, I take the view that

there is little sign as yet that Earlier Stone Age

Hunter-gatherer archaeology in southern Africa:recent research, future trends

Peter Mitchell

School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 36 Beaumont Street,

Oxford OX1 2PG

[email protected]

Key words

Hunter-gatherers, Southern Africa, Middle Stone Age, Later Stone Age

Abstract

Southern Africa has become a major focus for international hunter-gatherer research, partly because of the

prominence accorded surviving Bushman peoples in the anthropological literature, partly because of recent

advances in understanding the origins of anatomically modern humans and the meaning of Bushman rock

art. This paper surveys the principal developments in hunter-gatherer archaeology within the region over the

past decade and identifies the key themes that have been pursued. It then attempts to indicate the main

directions along which research may grow over the next several years.

2 Before Farming 2002/1 (3)

Hunter-gatherer archaeology in southern Africa: Mitchell

Figure 2 Southern Africa showing archaeological sites mentioned in the text. Site names abbreviated thus: AP Apollo 11

Cave; BB Blombos; BC Border Cave; BOS Bosutswe; BRS Broederstroom; CAC Cold Air Cave; DC Depression Cave;

DFM Dunefield Midden; DK Die Kelders; DKF Diepkloof; DO Dombozanga; EB Elands Bay Cave; EFT Elandsfontein; FL

Florisbad; HNK Honingklip; HRS Hollow Rock Shelter; JB Jakkalsberg; KB Kasteelberg; KRM Klasies River Main Site;

LIK Likoaeng; MAP Mapungubwe; MAQ Maqonqo; NQ Nqoma; PKM Panchos Kitchen Midden; RC Rose Cottage Cave;

SBD Sibudu; SBF Steenbokfontein; STAB Strathalan A and B; TC Tortoise Cave; TDB Tandjesberg; TIE Tienfontein; WPS

White Paintings Shelter

Figure 1

Southern Africa: main

physiographic features.

Rivers are italicised in

plain typeface, mountain

ranges italicised in bold



hominins were undertaking anything like the same

range and complexity of behaviours as recent or

contemporary populations. Nor, it is clear from

the fossil evidence, were they anatomically

modern. The temporal range of the paper is thus

restricted to the Middle and Later Stone Ages, or

approximately the last 200,000 years. Spatially,

there are good reasons - ecological, cultural and

archaeological - for thinking of that part of Africa

south of the Zambezi and Kunene Rivers as a unit.

Its boundaries were clearly not impermeable or

fixed, especially perhaps in the west.

Nevertheless, the distributions of rock art styles,

stone tool industries and even of historically

documented Khoisan-speaking populations fit

broadly within it. The areas covered here are thus

those included within the modern states of

Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa,

Swaziland and Zimbabwe, along with the southern

half of Mozambique (figures 1, 2).

The most recent overview of hunter-gatherer

archaeology across this wide region is that of HJ

Deacon & J Deacon (1999). More detailed

syntheses cover areas south of the Limpopo River:

A Thackeray (1992) for the Middle Stone Age

(MSA), Wadley (1993) for the Pleistocene Later

Stone Age (LSA) and Mitchell (1997) for the

Holocene LSA until c 2000 BP. Botswana is well-

served by papers in Lane et al (1998). Walker &

Thorp (1995a) summarise work in Zimbabwe and

Kinahan (1991) and Vogelsang (1996) provide

overviews of LSA and MSA archaeology in

Namibia.

2 Hunter-gatherer archaeology in southern

Africa: the past decade

In attempting to summarise where research has

concentrated since 1990 and what it has achieved

several approaches are possible. That chosen

here emphasises some of the themes that

researchers have pursued, rather than particular

geographical locales or even more narrowly

conceived temporal divisions. Rock art is not

discussed in detail as it forms the subject matter

of a forthcoming article in this journal.

2.1 Anatomically and behaviourally modern humans

The past decade has seen major advances in our

understanding of the origins and spread of

anatomically modern humans. In southern Africa

three interrelated developments are important:

clarification of the status and publication of key

fossil specimens; a tighter chronology; and the

expansion of research to new sites. Excavation of

surviving deposits at the complex of interconnected

shelters at Klasies River Main Site (figure 3) has

made the largest contribution to the first two of

these developments. Reassessment of the whole

Klasies fossil assemblage shows that it falls within

the range of variation typical of modern humans

(Rightmire & Deacon 1991; Bruer et al 1992), even

if some specimens are surprisingly robust

(Churchill et al 1996), suggesting a mosaic

evolutionary pattern in which cranial and postcranial

elements evolved at different rates. Although

individual finds occur later in the Klasies sequence,

most are tightly dated using uranium-series, ESR

and amino-acid racemisation to c 90,000 BP (HJ

Deacon & Schuurman 1992). Two upper jaw

fragments from an older occupation c 120,000 BP

are among the oldest firmly dated anatomically

modern specimens known (HJ Deacon 1995).

Figure 3 Klasies River Main Site, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

At the same time studies of bone diagenesis

have suggested that the infant skeleton and adult

mandible from Border Cave (figure 4) are intrusive

into the MSA levels in which they were found (Sillen

& Morris 1996), although this conclusion has

recently been contested by Grn & Beaumont



(2001). Since other human material from this site

has been found out of its original context, Border

Caves relevance to debates on anatomically

modern human origins is thus considerably

reduced. On the other hand, renewed excavations

at Die Kelders (Grine et al 1991; Grine 1998) and

investigations of a new and very important site at

Blombos (Grine et al 2000) have produced several

teeth, which share most of their attributes with

modern African populations. ESR and

luminescence determinations suggest ages for

these specimens of 60-80,000 and around 100,000

years ago respectively. Finally, the clearly more

archaic cranium from Florisbad has had its age

pushed substantially back, again using ESR, to

around 260,000 BP (Grn et al 1996). It thus takes

its place alongside other southern African Middle

Pleistocene fossils (Kabwe, Elandsfontein, etc), as

one of several sub-Saharan examples of long term

morphological continuity between H ergaster and H

sapiens, a continuity much more difficult to sustain

in other regions of the Old World (Rightmire 2001).

Figure 4 View west from the Lubombo Escarpment near Border Cave

into Swaziland (courtesy, Peter Beaumont)

Together, these specimens and their

accompanying dates provide an increasing body

of data that supports the case for a recent sub-

Saharan origin for modern humans, a case

independently argued from a variety of genetic

evidence (Kittles & Keita 1999). Recent estimates

for the origin of mitochondrial DNA diversity in

modern humans point to the period 100-200,000

years ago (Erlich et al 1995; Goldstein et al 1995;

Ruvolo 1996), the same time range within which

anatomically modern humans first appear in the

sub-Saharan fossil record. Whether behavioural

patterns recognisably the same as those found in

recent and present day human societies emerged

concurrently with, or followed, these changes

remains a matter of debate (most recently reviewed

by McBrearty & Brooks 2000).

And this is a debate to which southern African

evidence is again increasingly contributing. The

dating techniques already mentioned are beginning

to provide the much tighter chronological framework

for the MSA that is a sine qua non for meaningful

inter- and intra-site comparisons. Though some

remain experimental and they do not always

produce congruent results, a glance at table 1

shows the impact that they have had over the past

ten years. In particular, the consensus of dates

from Border Cave, Klasies River and Diepkloof

points to the distinctive Howiesons Poort

assemblages, with their many backed pieces and

tendency to use finer-grained rocks, falling firmly

within the period 60-70,000 BP; younger

radiocarbon dates almost certainly reflect

contamination (J Deacon 1995). The Howiesons

Poort has long attracted attention because of its

superficial similarities to the Wilton industry of the

middle and later Holocene, as well as for what was

once thought to be its intrusion into a longer, more

static MSA sequence (Singer & Wymer 1982).

Restudy of assemblages from Klasies River Main

Site (A Thackeray 1989; Wurz 1999), and work

elsewhere (Kaplan 1990; Harper 1997), show

instead that it cannot be separated from the rest of

the MSA stoneworking tradition. Nor is it the only

example of time-restricted patterning within the

MSA. Indeed, at Die Kelders the 60-70,000 BP



assemblages contain only informally retouched,

mostly denticulated pieces, rather than Howiesons

Poort type backed artefacts (A Thackeray 2000).

Unless the two toolkits reflect differences in activity,

we may be looking at genuine regional variations

in material culture that may be stylistic in origin.

Evidence of distinctive chronological patterning

within the MSA also comes from excavations at

Blombos, a cave site near Stillbay on South Africas

Indian Ocean coast, that has provided several

exciting new finds during the past decade. The MSA

sequence here is divisible into three phases, the

uppermost marked by pressure-flaked foliate

Stillbay points, found here for the first time in

stratigraphic context. Equally startling was the

recovery of well over 20 worked bone tools, including

points indistinguishable technologically from those

made during the Holocene. These concentrate in

the middle phase at Blombos, in which Stillbay

points are rare, and are preceded by a further phase

with typical MSA flakes and blades and few

retouched artefacts (Henshilwood & Sealy 1997;

Henshilwood et al 2000). The Stillbay levels

probably have a minimal age of 70,000 BP and

also produced an intentionally engraved fragment

of bone (dErrico et al 2001). Along with engraved

pieces of ochre from the same site, others from

Hollow Rock Shelter in the Cederberg Mountains

(Evans 1994) and AMS-dated fragments of incised

ostrich eggshell from Diepkloof (one at least of

which dates to > 40,000 BP; Parkington 1999),

this find raises the possibility that southern Africa

witnessed the deliberate investment of symbolic

meaning in material culture substantially earlier

than anything seen in Upper Palaeolithic Europe,

the traditional yardstick for such finds. Watts (1998)

assessment of MSA ochre use, showing a sharp

jump in frequency after 127,000 BP and evidence

for colour selection, makes the same point.

Other archaeologists have sought modern

cognitive capacities in the organisation of space

within occupation sites and in the exploitation of

plant and animal resources. Neither strategy,

however, has met with great success, perhaps

Table 1 Summary of dating evidence for the southern African Middle Stone Age before 40,000 BP

(excluding radiocarbon determinations)

Division Site Context Technique1 Age Referencekyr BP

Howiesons Border Cave 3BS, 3WA and AAR 106 + 11 - 69 + 7 G Miller et al 1993Poort 1RGBS ESR 75 + 5 - 45 + 5 Grn et al. 1990a

? Die Kelders Layers 4-15 ESR, TL 80 - 60 G Avery et al 1997;(HP affiliation unclear) Feathers & Bush 2000;

Schwarcz & Rink 2000

Howiesons Diepkloof Orange Black TL 70.6 8.1 Parkington 1999Poort Series 70.9 8.9

AMS > 40

Howiesons Klasies River Upper Member ESR 60 - 40 Grn et al 1990bPoort Main Site PAL + 70 HJ Deacon 1989

MSA 2 Blombos Uppermost TL 103 9.8 Vogel et al 1999MSA occupation

MSA 2 Border Cave 4BS, 4WA and AAR = 106 + 11 G Miller et al 19935BS ESR 141 + 14 - 62 + 6 Grn et al 1990a

MSA 2 Florisbad Unit F ESR 121 6 Grn et al 1996Units G-M ESR 157 21

MSA 2 Klasies River SAS Member AAR 90 - 110 Bada & Deems 1975Main Site SAS Member ESR 94 + 10, 88 + 8 Grn et al 1990b

LBS Member OIA OIS 5e Shackleton 1982LBS Member Th/U < 110 HJ Deacon et al 1988

MSA 1 Florisbad Units N-P ESR = 279 47 Grn et al 1996

Note

AAR = Amino-acid racemisation; AMS Radiocarbon accelerator; ESR Electron spin resonance;

OIA Oxygen isotope analysis; PAL palaeoenvironmental data; Th/U = Thorium-Uranium dating.



because with this kind of evidence it is much more

difficult to establish how modern cognitive abilities

might be displayed. Consistencies in hearth

positioning and shellfish dumping in MSA levels at

Klasies River (Henderson 1992; HJ Deacon 1995)

may, for example, reflect no more than purely

functional considerations, as may the patterns of

stoneworking and butchery from the much larger

excavations at the Florisbad open-air site (Brink &

Henderson 2001). Modification of living sites, as

found at Mumbwa, Zambia (Barham 2000), has also

yet to be convincingly demonstrated south of the

Zambezi. On the other hand, there is now

increasingly solid evidence (pace Klein & Cruz-

Uribe 1996) that MSA people sometimes caught

fish, both on the coast at Blombos (Henshilwood

& Sealy 1997) and inland at White Paintings

Shelter, northern Botswana (Robbins et al 1994).

Milos (1998) reanalysis of the Klasies River fauna

has also confirmed that MSA people actively hunted

the full range of bovids, including giant buffalo

(Pelorovis antiquus), implying a sophisticated

knowledge of animal behaviour. But fuller

understanding of MSA subsistence strategies and

the degree to which MSA people employed material

culture symbolically remains constrained by the

low density of well-excavated sites with good

organic preservation and by the historic emphasis

on the southern littoral of the Cape Fold Mountain

Belt. Excavation of new sites is necessary, nowhere

more so than in Namibia, where only recently has

earlier fieldwork been published (Vogelsang 1996),

and Zimbabwe, where well-excavated MSA

sequences are virtually lacking (Larsson 1996). It

is thus appropriate to end this section by drawing

attention to several recently initiated projects:

excavation and survey of new MSA sites on South

Africas Atlantic coast (Conard et al 1999; Klein

1999; Parkington 1999; University of Tbingen

2001); the reinvestigation of Howiesons Poort levels

at Diepkloof, Western Cape (figure 5; University of

Bordeaux 2001); exploration of additional open-air

sites in the Free State (Churchill et al 2000; Brink

& Henderson 2001); and the excavation of Sibudu

Shelter, KwaZulu-Natal, where an extensive

sequence of deposits with well preserved charcoals,

macroplants and bone may reach back 200,000

years (University of the Witwatersrand 2001).

2.2 Exploring social relations

If the Middle Stone Age has attracted considerable

attention over the past ten years, this is less true

for the remainder of the Pleistocene.

Figure 5 Diepkloof Shelter, Western Cape Province, South Africa

The transition from MSA to LSA technologies

in particular remains little studied, although the

earlier notion of quite informal microlithic

assemblages (the so-called Early Later Stone Age

or ELSA; Beaumont 1978) extending back to 40,000

years ago now seems implausible (Wadley 1991).

Instead, MSA stoneworking techniques continued

in use until at least 25,000 BP, if not slightly later,

across much of southern Africa (Mitchell 1994; HJ

Deacon 1995; Wadley 1997a). A multiplicity of

pathways may have led into the adoption of the

earliest LSA traditions, which perhaps appeared

rather earlier in northern Botswana (Robbins 1999).

A more contextual approach to understanding these

changes is necessary, one not handicapped by a

simple, dualistic typological straitjacket (Mitchell

1994; Clark 1999). The study of chanes

opratoires, something recently pioneered for

Howiesons Poort and other MSA assemblages

(eg, Wurz 1999), and more detailed considerations

of how technologies were organised and employed

may prove helpful. But what seems already clear

is that the MSA/LSA transition was primarily an

issue of lithic technology. It does not equate with

the shift from Middle to Upper Palaeolithic in western



Eurasia. The well-known painted slabs from Apollo

11 Cave, found with a terminal MSA assemblage

dating c 27,000 BP (Wendt 1976), make this point,

while jewellery occurs in still older contexts: ostrich

eggshell beads, for example, are present at Border

Cave by 38,000 BP (Beaumont 1978; Vogel et al

1986) and, along with containers of the same

material, are directly dated to 26-32,000 years ago

at White Paintings Shelter (Robbins 1999).

Based more on re-evaluating earlier work than

upon new data as such, southern African

archaeologists are now downplaying contrasts in

settlement-subsistence strategies between late

Pleistocene and Holocene LSA populations. Both

may have been largely patch-bound foragers

primarily dependent upon plant foods, though

undoubtedly integrating specific resources in

individual ways (HJ Deacon 1995), ways that will

also have varied from one environment and

landscape to another (Mitchell in press). What is

less clear is the degree to which continuities in

social relations can be traced back from the

ethnographic present beyond the Pleistocene-

Holocene transition and, indeed, into the MSA. This

question is all the more pressing as hunter-gatherer

archaeology in southern Africa has, over the last

15 years, come to emphasise social and

ideological, rather than predominantly ecological,

themes.

Addressing this issue, Wadley (1993) and J

Deacon (1990) comment that the small number of

bone points (= arrows ?) and ostrich eggshell

beads, both popular gift exchange items among

Kalahari Bushmen today, may mean that this

practice was only weakly developed before 12,000

BP. Since gift exchange, frequently referred to by

its !Kung Bushman term as hxaro, is a central pillar

structuring the social relations of many Kalahari

foragers, the implication is that social relations were

quite different before and after 12,000 years ago.

But we should be careful here. Only in a few regions

of southern Africa, such as much of Lesotho and

KwaZulu-Natal, can we be reasonably certain that

ostrich eggshell beads were moved at all, since

elsewhere the ubiquity of ostriches means that they

are not sourceable (Mitchell 1996). Furthermore,

we have no real evidence for the antiquity of the

bow and arrow, or the function of Pleistocene bone

points. Parkington (1998), for example, opts for a

date of c 9000 BP for the weapons introduction

since no points or linkshafts of later Holocene form

are present in the extensive terminal Pleistocene

worked bone assemblage from Elands Bay Cave.

The connections between hunting with bow and

poisoned arrow and ethnographically documented

Bushman beliefs about sex, gender and

shamanistic trance would thus suggest many

differences in social relations and ideology either

side of 9000 BP (Parkington 1998; Wadley 1998).

Regrettably, art, which could offer another means

of assessing arguments for or against continuities

in social structure and ideology, is virtually lacking

before the middle Holocene; the few similarities in

content observed by Lewis-Williams (1984)

between the Apollo 11 paintings and recent rock

art are too insubstantial to convince.

Most of the effort directed toward investigating

Mazels (1987) people-to-people questions is thus

being targeted at the Holocene Later Stone Age.

Foremost among the methodologies followed is the

recognition that in order to research questions of

social relations we must try and resolve time, place

and person as clearly as possible. This, as

Parkington (1998) and others have argued,

demands a concomitant shift away from the often

poorly-grained rock-shelter sequences and even

less well dated surface scatters of artefacts that

have hitherto dominated archaeological research

strategies. In addition, it requires a concerted effort

to deploy radiocarbon dating effectively, excavate

sites microstratigraphically and, where the

organisation of space is a concern, to dig them on

a sufficiently large scale.

Though still unpublished in detail, Elands Bay

Cave (figure 6) offers one example of a site where

the combination of these approaches allows the

recognition of several reasonably discrete

occupation episodes, among them are a mass

stranding of rock lobster (Jasus lalandii) c 10,000

BP, intensive exploitation of whelks (Burnupena sp)

some 400 radiocarbon years later and the shortlived

innovation and use, at least at this site, of bone



fish gorges and Donax serra shell scrapers in the

millennium thereafter (Parkington 1992). It is such

high resolution phenomena that can most closely

approximate in the prehistoric record the decisions

of individuals within actual social and environmental

contexts. The challenge, of course, is to multiply

such examples across many sites and regions.

One area where this has been attempted recently

is the eastern Free State.

Figure 6 Elands Bay Cave, Western Cape Province, South Africa,

with the Atlantic Ocean at the far right

Figure 7 Rose Cottage Cave, Free State, South Africa

The principal focus of Lyn Wadleys (1995,

1997a) work here has been Rose Cottage Cave (figure

7), where spatial patterning has been examined over

successive levels. Interestingly, in the light of our

earlier discussion of MSA behavioural capacities,

Wadley (1996a, 1997a, 2000a, 2000b) detects a

much less structured use of space in the transitional

MSA/LSA level G compared to overlying LSA

occupations. However, the spread of dates and high

artefact densities suggest that these layers may

result from many repeated occupations, and it is

uncertain whether the taphonomic processes

involved are strictly comparable.

Instead, it may be more productive to explore

sites where the palimpsest effects of multiple

occupations, which include vertical displacement

of key finds (cf Sealy & Yates 1994) are absent or

minimised. Strathalan in the northern Eastern

Cape is one such site. Here Cave A contains the

residues from two hunter-gatherer occupations,

one some 300 years old (Opperman 1999), the

other dating to c 2500 BP (Opperman 1996a). The

adjacent Cave B contains a series of overlying

terminal MSA occupations falling between 29,000

and 22,000 years ago (Opperman 1996b;

Opperman & Heydenrych 1990). At both sites the

occupation surfaces, separated from each other

by sterile sands, have a remarkable degree of

organic preservation, including remains of edible

plants and wooden artefacts. Open-air sites,

where activities could have been conducted free

from the constraints of rock-shelter walls, may

be even more informative. Dunefield Midden on

South Africas west coast, excavated by John

Parkington and colleagues from the University of

Cape Town, is the best example of this strategy.

With over 500 m2 uncovered, the bulk of this site

represents a single occupation c 650 BP, the

initial impetus for which may have been a

successful eland kill, though shellfish, seals and

ground game were also exploited, along with a

beached whale (Parkington et al 1992; Jerardino

& Parkington 1993). The finely resolved

stratigraphy permits detailed exploration of spatial

patterning in the arrangement of hearths, shell

dumps and meat-roasting pits, while refitting of

bones offers scope for investigating meat-sharing.

Kent (1998) offers a taste of what such analyses

may eventually offer, while the much smaller, but

repeatedly occupied, campsite at Likoaeng in

Lesothos highlands (figure 8) demonstrates that

high resolution open-air sites are not restricted to

the coast (Mitchell & Charles 2000). Florisbad,

and perhaps other open-air sites in the Free State,

offer comparable opportunities for the MSA (Brink

& Henderson 2001).



To investigate social relations archaeologists

have turned to the rich ethnographic data available

for southern African hunter-gatherers. Recently, this

evidence comes from the Kalahari Desert (Barnard

1992), but it also includes nineteenth century

records of the /Xam Bushmen of the Northern Cape

compiled by Lucy Lloyd and Wilhelm Bleek (J

Deacon 1996a). Lewis-Williams (1982)

identification of the importance of shamans in the

social reproduction of Bushman society and the

likelihood that rock art played a key part in this in

many areas of southern Africa have been pivotal in

encouraging archaeologists to address people-to-

people questions. Particularly through the work of

Lyn Wadley (1987, 1997b), Aron Mazel (1989),

Simon Hall (1990, 2000), Ann Solomon (1992, 1995)

and John Parkington (1996, 1998), aggregation and

dispersal patterns, gift exchange, gender relations,

burial and the identification of past alliance

networks have all emerged as important areas of

study (Mitchell 1997, in press).

Figure 8 Likoaeng, Lesotho

But simultaneously there has been an

enduring concern that these topics are

outstripping the abil i ty of archaeological

methodologies to keep pace (Barham 1992;

Walker 1995a). In the Thukela Basin, for

example, only with the excavation of Maqonqo

Shelter (Mazel 1996) has the identification of

distinct social regions (alliance networks) begun

to incorporate the recognition that cultural

systems are differentially organised and that

people will have used different sites for different

purposes or the same site for different purposes

at different times (cf Parkington 1980). For the

same reason a bipolar classification of site

variability into either aggregation or dispersal

sites, although encouraging the linkage of

excavated material and rock art to support one

or other identification (eg, Ouzman & Wadley

1997), may blind us to other differences in site

function.

Whether creat ing social regions or

designating sites as foci of aggregation or

dispersal, archaeologists face the problem of

how to assign meaning to the things they

excavate. Far from becoming clearer, recent

microwear and residue studies complicate this

picture still further, at least as far as it relates

to stone artefacts, many of which seem to have

been used on a wide variety of materials or in a

variety of ways (Wadley & Binneman 1995;

Binneman & Mitchell 1997; Williamson 1997).

Since many so-called unmodified (waste)

pieces were also certainly used and we have

virtually no southern African ethnography that

relates to stone tool manufacture or use the

challenges for determining how artefacts were

employed and why they were designed the way

they were are obvious. As Wadley (2000b)

makes plain, we need to differentiate intra-

regional differences in activity, whether or not

subsistence related, from inter-regional

differences in artefact style that may parallel or

reflect kinship alliances, language groups or

exchange networks. To give but two more

specific examples, we must therefore establish

whether and why particular kinds of retouch

should have signalled social identity, instead of

ref lect ing dif ferences in haft ing, use or

resharpening (Barham 1992 pace Mazel 1989),

and how we can best disentangle the effects of

size, nature and duration of occupation in

quant i fy ing f inds when at tempt ing to

discriminate aggregation from dispersal sites (cf

Walker 1995a with Wadley 1992a; Jerardino

1995a). Such questions need to be addressed

if progress is to be made in operationalising

ethnographically derived models of social

relations.



2.3 Beyond seasonality? Excavation and stable

isotope research in the western and southern Cape

One area of southern Africa with a database rich

enough to investigate some of these questions is

the Fynbos and Forest Biomes of the Western and

Eastern Cape Provinces. Sustained LSA research

here is almost a century old and provides some of

the best evidence for social and economic

intensification during the late Holocene (eg, HJ

Deacon 1976; Leslie 1989; Hall 1990). With the

exception, however, of Binnemans (1997a, 1998,

1999) work in the Baviaanskloof/Kouga region, the

eastern part of this region has taken a back seat

in recent years. Along with further documentation

of plant food collection strategies, one important

inference drawn here from spatial patterning in

assemblage variability is that LSA people used

stone raw materials and the artefacts made from

them to signal social identities (Binneman 1996a

and cf Inskeep 1987; Leslie 1989; Hall 1990). The

context for this, and for the appearance of growing

numbers of burials, including specialist cemetery

sites (Hall & Binneman 1987; Hall 2000), was

probably the desire to assert ownership claims

within a more crowded landscape that increasingly

constrained mobility. Storage and intensified use

of small package resources, such as fish, shellfish

and plant foods, were other responses (Hall 1988,

1990, 2000). Stable isotope analyses of human

skeletons add to this picture. Results from sites

within the Forest Biome show quite different mixes

of marine and terrestrial foods over distances of

less than 20 km. Along with greater diversity in

body size and an overall decline in mean body size

after 3300 BP, perhaps because of poorer nutrition,

this speaks to differentiating lifeways as people

settled into increasingly smaller territories (Sealy

& Pfeiffer 2000).

Broadly similar patterns of change can be

detected in Parkingtons research area in the

southwestern Cape. Here one of the past decades

most striking discoveries has been the realisation

that the whole area was not abandoned during the

middle Holocene (pace Parkington et al 1987).

While remaining true of Elands Bay itself, perhaps

because of the impact of the mid-Holocene sea

transgression on coastal and estuarine productivity

(D Miller et al 1993), excavations a little further

north at Steenbokfontein Cave (figure 9) show that

people were still present (Jerardino & Yates 1996).

Reanalysis of the Tortoise Cave sequence also

suggests that the many undated artefact

occurrences in deflation hollows inland of the coast

are at least 3600 years old (Jerardino 1996 pace

Parkington et al 1987).

Figure 9 Steenbokfontein Cave, Western Cape Province, South Africa

Indeed, they may be several centuries older

(Manhire 1993) and were perhaps base camps from

which the coast was visited (Manhire 1987). More

localised patterns of lithic raw material use and

intensified exploitation of shellfish, tortoises and

small bovids are evident after 3500 BP (Jerardino

1996). Increased rainfall and cooler seas from 3000

years ago then greatly improved productivity of both

terrestrial and marine resources (Jerardino 1995b).

People took advantage of this to base themselves

almost wholly along the coast, producing huge

megamiddens almost entirely made up of black

mussel (Choromytilus meridionalis) shell. Though

only investigated on a minute scale, these middens

were certainly more than just shellfish

accumulations. New excavations demonstrate that

a range of subsistence and tool-working activities

took place at them (Jerardino & Yates 1997) and

they were probably associated with base camps

located on their edges or at nearby rock-shelters,

such as Panchos Kitchen Midden (Jerardino 1996,

1998). However, no sites are known more than 30

km from the sea anywhere in the southwestern



Cape at this time and Steenbokfontein is the only

cave site with any substantial occupation. Its

central position and large size suggest that it was

an aggregation focus for an otherwise dispersed

coastal population, while its deposits may

ultimately prove to reach back into the Pleistocene

(Jerardino 1996). They have already yielded the

oldest confirmed evidence for parietal art in southern

Africa (Jerardino & Swanepoel 1999), as well as

important new information on the hafting of stone

artefacts (Jerardino 2001).

Once again stable isotope analyses provide a

complementary perspective on peoples activities.

Marked differences in isotope composition between

inland and coastal skeletons suggest corresponding

differences in diet and landscape use, but it remains

uncertain whether the technique is emphasising

protein (from marine animals) at the expense of

carbohydrates (from terrestrial plants; Parkington

1991 cf Sealy & Van der Merwe 1992). A wholly

marine diet has been thought unlikely because of

possible protein poisoning (Noli & Avery 1988) and

studies of bone apatite confirm consumption of both

terrestrial and marine fats/carbohydrates (Lee

Thorp et al 1989). Experiments and archaeological

evidence also indicate that people could have

chosen to store seal and whale meat and blubber

(A Smith et al 1992; Jerardino & Parkington 1993)

in order to stay on the coast longer; drying mussel

meat is another possibility (Henshilwood et al

1994). The Matopo Hills of Zimbabwe is another

area where food storage is evident in the middle

and later Holocene, notably of marula (Sclerocarya

birrea), which, along with other fruiting trees, was

a major plant food staple (Walker 1995a). In both

these areas, in the southern parts of the Cape Fold

Mountain Belt and perhaps also in KwaZulu-Natals

Thukela Basin (Mazel 1989), what we may be

witnessing is the development of more sedentary,

delayed returns economies (sensu Woodburn

1982). Whether such economies could have

provided the basis for an indigenous development

of food-production, either in the Cape or elsewhere

in southern Africa, may be doubted. Few, if any,

African ungulates seem susceptible to

domestication (Estes 1991; Diamond 1997), while

key plant food staples typically have long

maturation times, high processing costs and/or low

productivities, except where fire-managed (HJ

Deacon 1995; Parkington 1999). Instead, resources

for food-production in southern Africa were

introduced from further north and it is their relations

with pastoralists and farmers that have become

another major research focus for archaeologists.

2.4 Hunter-gatherers and food-producers

For the past two millennia or so hunter-gatherers

have shared southern Africa with herders, farmers

and, more recently, settlers of European origin.

Though often treated apart, relations between

hunter-gatherers on the one hand and farmers or

pastoralists on the other share several concerns:

changes in landscape use and forager social

relations; the degree to which foragers took up food-

production themselves or were assimilated into

food-producing societies; exchange; and, at the

most basic level, how we can correctly identify

livelihood and ethnicity in the archaeological record.

These questions have been played out over the

past decade or so in three principal arenas, the

Kalahari, the southwestern Cape and the Thukela

Basin, but they are relevant to much, if not all, of

the sub-continent.

In the first of these areas, the Kalahari, a

frequently heated debate has contested the degree

to which recent forager groups are pristine, or

instead occupy a marginalised, oppressed position

on the geographical and social periphery of more

dominant societies (Wilmsen 1989; Wilmsen &

Denbow 1990). It now seems likely that many,

perhaps all, Kalahari Bushmen have had contacts

with food-producers over the past 2000 years

(Solway & Lee 1990), but it is not at all clear that

this necessarily led to their subordination: the

survival of distinctive and varied hunter-gatherer

languages, kinship systems, cosmologies and

social systems that emphasise sharing, reciprocity

and relatively egalitarian gender relations all

suggests the contrary (Barnard 1992; Kent 1992;

Guenther 1996). In the Tsodilo Hills, northwestern

Botswana, rare finds of iron beads and ceramics



of apparent Iron Age type at White Paintings Shelter

(Murphy et al 2001), increased evidence of

hidescraping in first millennium AD LSA levels there

and at Depression Cave, and the massive extraction

nearby of specularite and mica (for cosmetics;

Robbins et al 1993) may all reflect production for

exchange with farmers. Stone tools and enhanced

wild game frequencies at the nearby Early Iron Age

farming village of Nqoma could equally imply

exchange with, or even settlement of, foragers

(Denbow 1999). But the empirical basis for any

more widespread incorporation of foragers into a

farmer-dominated political economy is weak. As

Sadr (1998a) shows, the absolute numbers of

potsherds and metal items in LSA contexts are

exceptionally low, and bones of domestic livestock

even fewer, while farmers could certainly hunt

(Turner 1987) and, as at Bosutswe, make stone

tools (Denbow 1999).

Similar issues arise at the opposite corner of

the Kalahari in the Shashe-Limpopo Basin where

southern Africas first state society developed at

Mapungubwe (Huffman 1996; Meyer 1998). The first

and early second millennia AD saw marked

increases in forager visibility across the Limpopo

Valley and Zimbabwes lowveld, and the many

scrapers at sites like Dombozanga (Cooke &

Simons 1969) may again reflect intensive skin

preparation, with iron a valued item obtained in

exchange (Walker & Thorp 1997). Ivory, a principal

export to the Indian Ocean coast, may also have

been supplied by foragers, but whether the many

bone points from Mapungubwe (Meyer 1998), or

the stone tools from broadly contemporary Toutswe

sites further west (Denbow 1999), necessarily

indicate a forager presence, trade with hunter-

gatherers, ethnically and technologically mixed

communities or the use of stone and bone by

poorer, iron-deficient farming communities is not

clear. Recent work by Hall & Smith (2000) provides

a more nuanced appreciation of these problems.

They argue, from a combination of excavated and

rock art evidence, that Limpopo Valley/

Soutpansberg foragers were progressively

marginalised, first by incoming herders and then

by farmers. Initially more equitable exchange links,

which saw hunter-gatherers producing (or working)

skins, ostrich eggshell and Achatina shell2 for

nearby farmers, were replaced after AD 1000 by a

much less egalitarian pattern, linked to the

establishment of a class structure within the

emerging Mapungubwe state. A key moment came

when farmers took over the use of rock-shelters

from foragers, appropriating the location, and

sometimes the content, of their art. Though

ethnohistoric data (Van der Ryst 1998) demonstrate

the continued presence of foragers into the early

twentieth century, they seem to have so

substantially changed their settlement pattern and/

or material culture that, on present evidence, they

are archaeologically invisible, and a challenge for

future research (Hall & Smith 2000).

Assuming that particular kinds of artefacts

or sites - in this case stone tools, bone points,

ostrich eggshell beads and rock-shelters rather

than open-air villages - carry implications for the

ethnicity of their creators and users is evident

not only in the Kalahari, but also in the Thukela

Basin. While some of the archaeological record

in southeastern southern Africa undoubtedly

does speak to exchange relations between

Early Iron Age farmers and foragers (Mazel

1989, 1993), stone artefacts could easily have

been made by farmers themselves, especially

where iron was difficult to produce as may have

been the case in the Eastern Cape (Prins &

Grainger 1993; Binneman 1996b). Genetics

(Jenkins 1982), linguistics (Anders 1937),

physical anthropology (A Morris 1993) and

similarities in divination practices (Hammond-

Tooke 1998) and rainmaking beliefs (Schapera

1971; Ouzman 1995; Walker 1997) a l l

demonstrate the intermarriage of Khoisan

indigenes with Bantu-speaking, negroid farmers.

But when such assimilation took place, at what

rate and under what circumstances remains

unclear. In some areas, such as the Matopo

Hills, assimilation may have been rapid (Walker

1995a), though the scarcity of LSA sites

elsewhere in Zimbabwe makes it difficult to

generalise. Further south, hints of change are

easier to come by, for example the possibility



that hunter-gatherers acquired the technology

to make pottery from a farming (or pastoralist

?) source (Mazel 1992), and the possibility that

those living in the Drakensberg/Maloti Mountains

reoriented their exchange ties to the west after

the introduction of farming to KwaZulu-Natals

lowlands in the early centuries AD (Mitchell

1996). But only rarely are data sufficiently close

in time and space to offer more detailed

interpretations. One area where this may be

possible is the Magaliesberg Range northwest

of Johannesburg. Here Wadley (1996b) argues

that the Ear ly I ron Age set t lement at

Broederstroom increasingly became an

aggregation centre for local hunter-gatherers,

providing a context for intermarriage and

assimilation. As farming populations expanded

and overgrazing made hunting and gathering

more difficult (cf DM Avery 1987) contact

between forager groups may have been

hindered, contr ibut ing to a slow social

strangulation and further assimilation.

Research in the Caledon Valley shows a

similar pattern. Though settlement by Iron Age

farmers only began in the seventeenth century

AD, foragers were quickly displaced, with the

primary focus of occupation shifting to smaller

shelters (Wadley 1995). In the central part of

the valley rock art rich in trance imagery may

have helped substitute for the real coming

together of a now more dispersed population

(Wadley & McLaren 1998), while changes in the

ceramics found on LSA sites suggest an

increasing focus of exchange ties on local farmers

rather than earlier, more distant connections to

farmers in KwaZulu-Natal and hunter-gatherers in

the Karoo and southern Free State (Thorp 2000).

The southern end of the Caledon Valley, however,

remained beyond the limit of farming settlement,

the frontier neatly traced by the negative

correlation between stonewalled Sotho-Tswana

villages and rock-paintings that frequently include

sheep, cattle and Sotho shields, all items

probably selected as symbols of supernatural

potency by hunter-gatherer artists (figure 10;

Loubser & Laurens 1994; Thorp 2000).

Figure 10 Paintings of cattle, Tienfontein, Free State, South Africa

Here the ability to survive in areas beyond the

margins of successful farming allowed some

foragers to acquire domestic livestock of their own

and perhaps develop more hierarchical leadership

structures, a process most clearly seen in the Type

R stone-walled sites of the Riet River Valley

(Humphreys 1988). Stable isotope analyses (Lee

Thorp et al 1993) support Burchells (1967)

description of a mixed subsistence strategy that

included both herding and hunting, but excluded

cultivated cereals.

Across the western third of southern Africa food-

production prior to European settlement took the

form of herding cattle, sheep and sometimes goats

within an otherwise hunting and gathering economy.

Historically associated with the Khoekhoen, whose

descendants survive today in both South Africa and

Namibia, the archaeology of pastoralism has

received considerable impetus during the past ten

years. Substantial projects have been published

for both Namibia (Kinahan 1991) and the

southwestern Cape (eg, A Smith et al 1991; Sadr

& Smith 1991; Smith 1992) and important new work

is currently being undertaken in the latter region at

the key site of Kasteelberg (figure 11; K Sadr, pers

comm). Looked at from a hunter-gatherer

perspective, key questions remain how livestock-

keeping was introduced across this region and

what the relationships were between people with

livestock and those without. Work by Andy Smith

and his colleagues in the Vredenburg/Saldanha

area lies at the heart of much of this discussion.

They argue that pastoralist and hunter-gatherer

sites are readily distinguishable in stone tool

assemblages, ceramic densities, ostrich eggshell



bead sizes and associated faunas (table 2; A Smith

et al 1991; Yates & Smith 1993). Comparable

distinctions in settlement signature, rock art,

l i th ics and ceramics have been drawn

between Doornfontein (herder) and Swartkops

(forager) assemblages in the Northern Cape

(Beaumont et al 1995).

Figure 11 Kasteelberg Site B (marked by the white bags), Western

Cape Province, South Africa

Critiques of these models point to the

importance of considering variability in what people

with stock and those without would have done at

individual sites (Schrire & Deacon 1989; Schrire

1992). Certainly, attempts to apply these criteria

elsewhere, as at Die Kelders (Wilson 1996) and

Jakkalsberg (Webley 1997), are not always

straightforward. Alternative readings of the

ethnohistoric literature (Elphick 1985) that envisage

people moving between high and low points of

stock-holding within a single socio-economic

system cannot therefore be wholly excluded, and

at least some Kalahari foragers have acquired goats

without (as yet) provoking major social or

ideological change (Ikeya 1993). Ultimately, this

debate turns on whether one sees pastoralism as

having spread through the southwestward

movement of people (the historic Khoekhoen ?) or

of animals alone (presumably via exchange links

and the transformation of indigenous forager

groups; cf Kinahan [1991] and A Smith et al [1996]).

As Sadr (1998b) points out, neither position can

be unequivocally supported at present and

allowance must be made for the internal evolution

of livestock-keeping societies (eg, the apparently

later introduction of cattle into the southwestern

Cape; Klein & Cruz-Uribe 1989). Nevertheless, the

development of delayed returns economies by

megamidden producers in the southwestern Cape

and subsequent changes in group organisation and

settlement pattern to cope with deteriorating

environmental conditions (Jerardino 1996) could

have made sheep, and the pottery that was

introduced at broadly the same time, attractive

innovations. Comparisons with the perhaps similar

spread of ovicaprines and ceramics in the early

Neolithic of the Western Mediterranean (Lewthwaite

1986; Barnett 1995) remain to be explored.

However introduced, the southwestern Cape

remains perhaps the easiest area in which to trace

the impact of herding. Building on earlier work

(Parkington et al 1986; Parkington & Hall 1987),

current syntheses see foragers being increasingly

Table 2 Distinguishing criteria for the recognition of pastoralist and hunter-gatherer sites in the southwestern Cape(after A Smith et al 1991)

Criterion Pastoralist sites, Hunter-gatherer sites,eg, Kasteelberg B eg, Witklip

Formal stone tools Few Relatively frequentUse of fine-grained rocks Rare Common

Grindstones Common Few

Ceramics Common; > 700/m3 Few; = 10/m3

Donax shell scrapers Absent Present

Ostrich eggshell beads Large = 4.5 mm Small = 5 mm, though becominglarger after 1400 BP

Wild bovids Infrequent Common

Sheep Frequent Rare

Seals Frequent Rare



forced into more marginal parts of the landscape,

such as the mountains and the drier Elands Bay/

Lamberts Bay area, as herder numbers grew and

livestock competed with wild game on higher nutrient

soils. Stable isotope studies indicate reworkings

of the integration of marine and terrestrial foods

(Sealy & van der Merwe 1988; Lee Thorp et al 1989),

while the earlier fine-line painting tradition gradually

disappeared, as suggested by the complete

absence of cattle imagery and low incidence of

sheep paintings (Yates et al 1994). That the latter

are almost wholly lacking near the coast (Manhire

et al 1986; but cf Jerardino 1999) implies that fine-

line paintings ended there first, where the

introduction of livestock had the greatest impact.

Work in the Seacow Valley on the eastern edge

of the Karoo has also contributed much to our

understanding of herder-forager relations. Here

analyses of temper, clay, size and shape

differentiate quartz-tempered Khoekhoe pottery from

grass fibre-tempered, stamp-impressed hunter-

gatherer wares (Bollong et al 1997; Sampson &

Sadr 1999). Stratigraphic evidence and direct dating

of sherds suggest that both kinds of ceramics were

introduced around the same time, with foragers

perhaps taking up pot-making technology from

incoming herders. Though the grass-tempered

wares can be sequenced stylistically (Bollong et

al 1993; Sampson & Vogel 1995; Bollong &

Sampson 1996; Sampson et al 1997), their variety

and the large areas over which people clearly moved

have precluded successful analyses of the social

geography of their makers (cf Sampson 1988).

However, applying close vertical and horizontal

controls during excavations of rock-shelters that

have only poorly developed stratigraphies shows

that forager population levels closely tracked

climatic change (Sampson et al 1989; Bousman

1991; Sampson & Plug 1993). In particular, ostrich

egg collection seems to have intensified greatly

after 400 BP as a partial substitute for declining

game numbers during the Little Ice Age (Sampson

1994); herding and a local Khoekhoe presence may

have disappeared from the upper Seacow Valley

at this time as both went unreported by later

European settlers (Sampson 1996).

The Seacow Valley, scene now of some two

decades of research by Garth Sampson and his

colleagues, is also an area where archaeology has

successfully tracked the impact of European

settlement on southern Africas hunter-gatherer

peoples. Lying on the northeastern edge of late

eighteenth century colonial settlement, the Swy i

Bushmen strongly resisted European expansion,

forcing farms to cluster together for protection

(Sampson et al 1994). Only after 1800 did the

combination of gifts, genocide and the destruction

of game herds succeed in subjugating them.

Survivors had few options but to become farm

labourers, acquiring domestic stock and access

to a range of European cultigens, beads, ceramics

and other goods (Saitowitz & Sampson 1992;

Sampson 1993, 1995; Sampson & Plug 1993);

sites in the Caledon Valley may record a similar

story (Wadley 1992b; Thorp 1997). To the northwest

Janette Deacon (1996b) has identified several

nineteenth century /Xam Bushmen sites mentioned

by people who worked with Lucy Lloyd and Wilhelm

Bleek in the late 1800s, but visible connections

with the colonial economy are much fewer.

Elsewhere, rock art remains an important source

of evidence for how hunter-gatherers coped with

European expansion. In the Drakensberg/Maloti

Mountains Dowson (1994, 1999) has elaborated

on the model first developed by Colin Campbell

(1987), who argued that shamans rose to positions

of leadership and dominance by capitalising on their

abilities to protect their communities, make rain

for farmers and co-ordinate raids and trade. Though

more intense, accelerated and ultimately much

more destructive, the assimilation and

displacement provoked by European settlement

may not have been wholly dissimilar to earlier

impacts by pastoralists and farmers.

3 Future directions

The local development of archaeology as a

discipline was one consequence of European

settlement in southern Africa, producing

understandings of the past often at variance with

those of indigenous peoples. In turning briefly to



what the future may hold for hunter-gatherer

archaeology in the sub-continent this seems an

appropriate starting point. Across southern Africa

indigenous people are increasingly taking an

interest in their past. The highlighting of Khoisan

descent by groups within the Western Cape has,

for example, precipitated calls for the reburial of all

human skeletons in existing museum collections

(Jordan 1999), and may make their further

excavation difficult. The Southern African

Association of Archaeologists has adopted a clear

code of ethics as a pro-active response to such

concerns, and some skeletons have already been

reburied after analysis (Sealy et al 2000). Other

responses include opportunities for archaeological

training of Ju/hoan people in northern Namibia (A

Smith & Lee 1997; Lee & Hitchcock 1998), and

the development of community-based approaches

to the presentation and conservation of

archaeological resources (eg, Clanwilliam Living

Landscape Project 2001). Both conferences, such

as the 1997 Cape Town-based Khoisan Identities

and Cultural Heritage Conference, and specific

events, like the reopening of the Tandjesberg

National Monument rock art site in the eastern Free

State (D Morris et al 2001), seek to include people

of Bushman descent, while major exhibitions have

expanded awareness of the cultural richness and

mistreatment of hunter-gatherer communities (eg,

Skotnes 1996).

One area where the involvement of forager

communities and their descendants may become

particularly important is the archaeological

investigation of the prehistory of known Khoisan

groups. As Walker (1995b) points out, despite the

frequency with which they are invoked by

archaeologists, very little is known about the

antecedents of twentieth century Kalahari

Bushman peoples. Work by Larry Robbins and his

colleagues in northwestern Botswana should pay

dividends here and already attests to the antiquity

of mongongo nut (Ricinodendron rautanenii)

exploitation, freshwater fishing and a sophisticated

worked bone technology, as well as to important

changes in regional climate (Murphy 1999; Robbins

et al 1994, 1996a, 1996b, 1998; Robbins & Murphy

1998). Their research is also helping to fill one of

the many outstanding gaps on the map of hunter-

gatherer archaeology in southern Africa. Others

include virtually all of Zimbabwe, outside of the

comparatively well-studied area of the Matopo Hills

(Walker 1995a; Walker & Thorp 1997); much of

Namibia, though here work by Vogelsang (1998,

2000) in Kaokoland is now complementing earlier

foci in the Brandberg and central Namib; and the

savanna regions of the former Transvaal, where

research in the Shashe-Limpopo Basin (Eastwood

& Blundell 1999; Hall & Smith 2000) and the

Waterberg Plateau (Van der Ryst 1998) continues

to stand almost alone. One important question in

all of these regions, and elsewhere in southern

Africa, will be determining the extent to which

apparent breaks in regional settlement histories

are real or the product of archaeological research

strategies. In the former Transvaal, for example,

does the continuing dearth of early/middle Holocene

LSA occupation reflect reality, or a preference for

hard-to-find-and-date open-air sites, such as those

at Honingklip (Korsman & Plug 1994)?

Linked to this issue is the extent to which

variation in the availability of major plant food staples

can explain patterns of regional settlement (HJ

Deacon 1993). Connections between spatio-temporal

patterning in the distribution of archaeological sites,

viewed as proxy evidence for the density and

distribution of people, and environmental change have

been a longstanding concern for southern African

archaeologists (HJ Deacon & Thackeray 1984). But

we are still far from being able to translate

broadbrush impressionistic statements about

precipitation and temperature into meaningful

quantitative data, let alone impacts on the

productivity of the plant and animal resources that

people used (but cf JF Thackeray 1988). Master

sequences of palaeoenvironmental change are

slowly being developed, notably from the Tswaing

Crater (Partridge 1999) and Cold Air Cave (Lee Thorp

& Talma 2000). Smaller scale phenomena, such as

the Younger Dryas stadial, are also being recognised

(JF Thackeray 1990; Cohen et al 1992; DM Avery

2000), but there is a long way to go in building up a

detailed picture for the whole sub-continent, even



for the period since the Last Glacial Maximum.

Dating is another area where much progress has

been made. Many thousand radiocarbon

determinations are now available and, as indicated

earlier, several new techniques are being applied to

the chronology of the Middle Stone Age. This is,

perhaps, the most crucial area for which dating must

be improved, not least because of radiocarbons

inapplicability much before c 40,000 BP, the rarity of

long sequence sites and the vagueness with which

spatial and temporal variability in MSA industries is

still defined. In particular, the coherence of the

Howiesons Poort as a single entity (Parkington 1990),

the behavioural significance of industrial variability as

indicating the deliberate investment of material culture

with stylistic messaging (Wurz 1999; dErrico et al

2001) and the archaeology of almost the entire sub-

continent during Oxygen Isotope Stage 3 (Mitchell in

press) all demand much more research. But Later

Stone Age dating frameworks too need to be

addressed, since calibration is generally only applied

to dates of the last two millennia or so. Only when

this has been systematically undertaken shall we be

able to compare rates of cultural and environmental

change in a meaningful fashion. On a final

chronological note: while dating of rock paintings and

engravings has been the subject of important recent

advances, particularly accelerator radiocarbon dating

(Mazel & Watchman 1997) and the sophisticated

application of Harris matrices (Russell 2000), much

more is required for rock art (figure 12) to be integrated

into the rest of the archaeological record.

Figure 12 Paintings of human and antelope figures, Giants Castle,

KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Dismissing such concerns as chronocentric

is not enough. Unless rock ar t can be

contextualised in time, as well as in space,

instead of speaking to the social and ideological

relations of past hunter-gatherer societies,

interpretations that employ it run the risk of

producing unvarying, ahistorical and synchronic

understandings of the whole archaeological

record (Parkington 1998).

The same danger haunts other uses of

ethnographic data in southern Africa, and not

just archaeological studies of hunter-gatherers

(cf Lane 1994/95; Beach et a l 1997).

Archaeologists continue to concentrate on Ju/

hoansi, G/wi and /Xam Bushmen as role models

for LSA peoples, despite the great diversity

among surviving Bushman groups (Barnard

1992) and the still greater linguistic, and likely

cultural , var iat ion among now ext inct

communities south of the Limpopo River (Traill

1996). And this is before one considers changes

over time in the histories of the peoples

concerned, something emphasised by the

Kalahari debate. The time is long overdue to de-

!Kung the Later Stone Age (Parkington 1984) and

to investigate southern African prehistory using

a much broader set of anthropological and

archaeological parallels, including those from

other parts of the world and from groups practising

delayed returns economies (Hall 1990). The

increasing involvement of overseas researchers

in the study of southern Africas past, especially

the appearance of anatomical ly modern

humans, should promote this trend (table 3),

though the closure or restructuring of university

departments and chronic underfunding of

museums in South Africa is a cause of concern

(Binneman 1997b). Working with and alongside

local scholars and indigenous communities, the

result should be to make concrete the motto of

South Africas new coat of arms (!ke e: /xarra /

/ke - People who are different join together),

collectively expanding our knowledge of the

hunter-gatherer peoples from among whom it is

taken (B Smith et al 2000).



1 Southern African archaeology, anthropology and history constitute a minefield of potentially offensive terms. The problem is that the vocabularies

of the indigenous hunter-gatherer and herder groups of southern Africa traditionally lacked inclusive names for themselves larger than those of the

linguistic unit to which they belonged. Bushman first appears in written form in the late seventeenth century and came to be employed by

Europeans as a generic term for people subsisting primarily from wild resources. However, it also acquired derogatory, pejorative (and, indeed,

sexist) overtones, with the result that it began to be replaced in academic writings from the 1960s with the supposedly more neutral and indigenous

term San, a Nama word for their hunter-gatherer neighbours. Unfortunately, since this literally means foragers, implying that those concerned are

people of lower status too poor to own livestock, it too is not without problems, one of which is that many forager groups actually speak languages

identical or closely related to those of southern Africas indigenous herders! Another solution is offered by the Botswanan governments change of the

Tswana term Sarwa (Bushman) to BaSarwa, the Ba prefix placing it in the same class of nouns as people speaking Tswana and its closest relatives

(Wilmsen 1989); the Sotho term Baroa shows a similar predisposition. Perhaps to avoid the problems inherent in both Bushman and San some

archaeologists now employ Basarwa when describing Later Stone Age hunter-gatherers outside the confines of modern Botswana (eg, Bollong et al 1993).

Clearly, none of these terms is ideal and people of hunter-gatherer origin in the Kalahari express different preferences. While Namibias Ju/hoansi

choose Bushmen over San, some Botswanan groups use Basarwa, though San and Khoe also have their indigenous advocates (Lee &

Hitchcock 1998). In this confused situation I use the term Bushman, rejecting any derogatory connotations that it may have and agreeing with

Barnard (1992), who sees no reason to employ a Tswana or Nama, rather than an English, word in an international context. I follow him too in spelling

the names of individual Bushman groups, but use Ju/hoansi, their own name for themselves, for the people commonly referred to in the literature

as the !Kung, a more all-embracing, linguistic term (after Biesele 1993).

2 Achatina is a large snail, the shell of which was sometimes used to make beads.

Table 3. Individuals and institutions based overseas active in hunter-gatherer archaeology within southern Africa 1991-2001.

Individual Nationality Institution Project

C Bollong American Arizona State University Ceramics of the Seacow Valley, Eastern Cape

B Bousman American Southern Methodist University Palaeoenvironments and LSA archaeology, Blydefontein Basin, Eastern Cape

N Conard et al German University of Tbingen Stone Age landscapes of the Geelbek Dunes, Western Cape

T Dowson South African University of Manchester Rock art recording and analysis, Namibia

F Grine et al. American State University of New York Excavation of LSA/MSA site at Die Kelders, Western Cape

G Haynes & J Klimowicz American University of Nevada Palaeoenvironments and archaeology of Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe

J Hobart British University of Oxford Hunter-gatherer/farmer interaction, Lesotho and Natal Drakensberg

R Klein et al American Stanford University Excavation of Duinefontein, Acheulean open-air site, Western Cape

L Larsson Swedish University of Lund MSA of Zimbabwe

T Lenssen-Erz German University of Kln Rock art recording and analysis, Brandberg, Namibia

R Milo American Chicago State University Faunal analysis, MSA and LSA sites

P Mitchell British University of Oxford LSA archaeology of the Lesotho Highlands

S Pfeiffer American University of Guelph Physical anthropology of LSA and MSA humans, South Africa

J-P Rigaud French University of Bordeaux Excavation of Diepkloof Shelter, Western Cape

L Robbins et al American Michigan State University Excavation of LSA/MSA sites, Tsodilo Hills, Botswana

G Sampson et al South African Southern Methodist University Survey and excavation of sites relating to the impact of the colonial

frontier on the Bushmen of the Seacow Valley, Eastern Cape

A Sinclair et al British University of Liverpool MSA landscapes, Cave of Hearths, Northern Province

R Vogelsang German University of Kln MSA of southwestern Namibia; Survey and excavation of LSA sites,

northern Namibia

A Watchman Australian James Cook University Radiocarbon accelerator dating of rock paintings, KwaZulu-Natal

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Hunter-gathere Archeology in Southern Africa

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