South African Archaeological Society

Stone Bowls in the Northern Cape: A New Find and Its Possible ContextAuthor(s): David MorrisSource: The South African Archaeological Bulletin, Vol. 46, No. 153 (Jun., 1991), pp. 38-40Published by: South African Archaeological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3889012 .

Accessed: 28/06/2014 08:51

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

South African Archaeological Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toThe South African Archaeological Bulletin.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.213.220.146 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 08:51:05 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

38 South African Archaeological Bulletin 46: 38-40, 1991

STONE BOWLS IN THE NORTHERN CAPE: A NEW FIND AND ITS POSSIBLE CONTEXT*

DAVID MORRIS McGregor Museum, P 0 Box 316, 8300 Kimberley

ABSTRACT

A stone bowl, made of shale, was found on the Riet River in 1953. From the nature of a small number of artefacts collected at the time andfrom observations during a recent visit, it is suggested that the bowl was probably associated with a Ceramic Later Stone Age industry.

* Received February 1991

Introduction Rare stone bowls from southern Africa - principally

from Namibia, with an outlier in Botswana, and one from the Upington area - have been described during the last four decades (Fock 1956, 1960, 1961; Viereck 1959; Pudner 1971). It was a matter of great excitement when an example somewhat south and east of this distribution,

from Moirdale, on the Riet River, south of Kimberley (Fig. 1), was brought in to the McGregor Museum in December 1989. Found in the course of agricultural activities in 1953, it was mentioned to Dr Fock when he recorded engravings there in 1968, but it was not then in possession of the farmer. This remarkable artefact, which only recently came to light again, has been donated to the museum by Mrs J. H. Victor, formerly of Moirdale.

Description The bowl itself (Fig. 2), ground out of a local shale, is

relatively shallow in comparison with the Namibian and Botswanan examples (Fig. 3), but compares closely in size and form with the Ses Brugge bowl from the Upington area (Rudner 1971). With a rim diameter of 152 mm and maximum external diameter of 173 mm, it measures 52 mm deep, having a thickness of 9 mm at the base, and 17 mm below the rim. Apart from post-discovery fractures, which have been glued, the bowl appears to have been broken at an earlier stage and crudely 'repaired', with the jagged fracture edge being roughly rounded to facilitate continued use.

Tsumeb

AA I l

*Windhoek

Gaborone

SES BRUGGE Doo nfontein / t -- ingo *Blinkklipkopad

_ootdink / Riverton

Fig. 1. Distribution of southern African stone bowls. Selected thin-walled LSA 'herder' pottery occurrences

in the region are included in the inset.

This content downloaded from 91.213.220.146 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 08:51:05 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

South African Archaeological Bulletin 39

0 mm 30

Fig. 2. The Moirdale stone bowl.

Discussion Like other documented examples, unfortunately, the

precise archaeological context of the bowl is unknown. It came to the museum as part of a collection including bored stones, grooved stones, and other ground stone artefacts which, according to Mrs Victor, had been ploughed up when lands were being laid out next to the river some 38 years ago. Remnants of a Ceramic Later Stone Age site have since been found on the edges of these lands.

If stone bowls have not previously been described from here, however, ground stone artefacts are not unusual in the area. The collections at the McGregor Museum from Riet River sites contain many examples, including stone rings and pipes. Humphreys (1972), examining Type R settlements above the river banks, recovered ground stone artefacts from Khartoum 1; and noted that upper and lower grindstones, bored stones and grooved stones were remarkably abundant on all the sites he studied.

Indeed, fragments of a further stone bowl are reported to have been found by H. P. Prinsloo at Bucklands, near the confluence of the Vaal and Orange rivers (Beaumont & Vogel 1984:82). A subsequent visit there by Beaumont produced no similar finds; but again a variety of ground stone tools was noted in association with scatters of LSA artefacts and thin-walled pottery. It would appear, then, that both the Bucklands and Moirdale stone bowls may have had Ceramic LSA contexts. The associated pottery differs, however, from the generally coarser wares found on Type R sites, thus suggesting a non- and perhaps pre- Type R affinity.

New economic imperatives relating to pastoralism in this frontier zone in Ceramic LSA times may have led to a local production of stone bowls - but apparently on a very limited scale, damaged vessels being maintained rather

than discarded - by people who were accustomed to working in stone.

That some other material was generally used for such utensils, however, may be inferred from observations by Engelbrecht (1936) amongst early twentieth century Korana pastoralists in the northern Cape, people whose ancestors, and others like them, were makers of Ceramic LSA artefacts and pottery in the region. They used blocks of willow wood to make a variety of domestic goods and containers, including a range of shallow bowls and dishes called !xorekwa. These were also noted by Burchell and other travellers amongst the Korana in the early nineteenth century (Rudner n.d.).

Stone vessels have been recovered from Iron Age sites in the Letaba area of the Transvaal where they are believed to be associated with salt production (Mason 1962:426), but these are far more crudely hewn and bear little resemblance to the stone bowls now known from the northern Cape.

Much further afield, a range of more closely compara- ble stone bowl types (Fig. 3) have been documented from early, non-Iron Age, pastoralist contexts in East Africa (Cohen 1970; Merrick 1973; Phillipson 1977). While samples and contextual data remain extremely scarce, a distant affinity in this direction, posited for the Namibian and Botswanan examples by Clark (1959) and Fock (1960, 1961), might well be consistent with evidence of a spread, from that central and eastern African region, of ceramic technology and other aspects of culture generally associated with stone age pastoralism in southern Africa (e.g. Deacon 1984).

Height (mm)

U 150

100 - .

A 2 50_

100 150 200 250 Max, external diameter {mm)

A Northern Cape @ Ngorongaro Crater

I Namibia N ijoro River Cave

* Botswana O Hyrax Hill

Fig. 3. Measurements of height and maximum external dimension for individual southern African stone bowls (Fock 1956, 1960, 1961; Viereck 1959; Rudner 1971), plotted against mean values and sample profiles for three East African assemblages (Merrick 1973).

Acknowledgements I should like to thank Mrs H. Victor for bringing to

our attention this exceptional find and donating it to the McGregor Museum. Corne Gildenhuys, James Retief and Alfred Mngqolo helped locate remnants of the Ceramic LSA site at Moirdale.

References Beaumont, P. B. & Vogel, J. C. 1984. Spatial patterning

of the Ceramic Later Stone Age in the northern Cape Province, South Africa. In: Hall, M., Avery, G., Avery, D. M., Wilson, M. L. & Humphreys, A. J. B. (eds) Frontiers: southern African archaeology today.

This content downloaded from 91.213.220.146 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 08:51:05 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

40 South African Archaeological Bulletin

Oxford: British Archaeological Reports International Series 207.

Clark J. D. 1959. The prehistory of southern Africa. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Cohen, M. 1970. A reassessment of the Stone Bowl Cul- tures of the Rift Valley, Kenya. Azania 5:27-38.

Deacon, J. 1984. Later Stone Age people and their de- scendants in southern Africa. In: Klein, R. G. (ed.) Southern African prehistory and palaeoenvironments: 221-328. Rotterdam: Balkema.

Engelbrecht, J. A. 1936. The Korana: an account of their customs and their history. Cape Town: Maskew Miller.

Fock, G. J. 1956. Stone bowls from South West Africa. South African Journal of Science 52:165-166.

Fock, G. J. 1960. Another stone bowl from Southern Africa. South African Archaeological Bulletin 15:114.

Fock, G. J. 1961. Steint6pfe im siidlichen Afrika. Journal of the South West African Scientific Society 15:41-46.

Humphreys, A. J. B. 1972. The Type R settlements in the context of the later prehistory and early history of the Riet River Valley. Unpublished MA thesis: University of Cape Town.

Mason, R. J. 1962. Prehistory of the Transvaal. Johan- nesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press.

Merrick, H. V. 1973. Aspects of size and shape variation of the East African stone bowls. Azania 8:115-130.

Phillipson, D. W. 1977. The later prehistory of eastern and southern Africa. London: Heinemann.

Rudner, J. n.d. Non-Bantu pottery from the inland areas of South and South West Africa. Unpublished manuscript: National Monuments Council.

Rudner, J. 1971. Ostrich egg-shell flasks and soapstone objects from the Gordonia District, north-western Cape. South African Archaeological Bulletin 26:139- 142.

Viereck, A. 1959. Some relics from South West Africa. South African Archaeological Bulletin 14:90.

This content downloaded from 91.213.220.146 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 08:51:05 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions