The Myth of the Zulu Homestead: Archaeology and Ethnography

International African Institute

The Myth of the Zulu Homestead: Archaeology and EthnographyAuthor(s): Martin HallSource: Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 54, No. 1 (1984), pp. 65-79Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1160144 .

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Africa 54(1), 1984

THE MYTH OF THE ZULU HOMESTEAD: ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHY1

Martin Hall

To those outside the anthropological disciplines, the Zulu are probably the best known chiefdom of southern Africa. Zulu military prowess acted as a sharp break on the process of colonial expansion in the nineteenth century and led to a series of battles which have been immortalized on celluloid and in the more popular historical accounts of the era. Despite this, the Zulu have prompted a comparatively sparse ethnography that is based largely on the work of nineteenth-century observers and is less comprehensive than the literature on some other southern African communities.

As a result of this inadequacy of basic source material, and its dominance by early recorders working within the paradigm of Victorian ethnography (Hall, 1981), the Zulu have been cast as a cultural stereotype that has been projected into the past to fill the gaps in a little-known pre-history. Recently however, historians have begun the process of revision, reassessing earlier sources, supplementing them with additional information from oral traditions and applying new theoretical concepts. In this new scenario, the Zulu are appearing not as an 'ethnic group' with fixed and timeless patterns of behaviour, but as a people with a rich history of change and response to differing economic, social and political circumstances. Examples of important re-evaluations are Wright's study of age-regiments (1978), Guy's work on ecological factors (1980), Smith's (1970) and Hedges's (1978) thorough examinations of trade and Slater's (1976) application of theory to the characterization of social formation.

A further contribution to this reassessment is from archaeological research. Studies of Iron Age farming communities of southern Africa have expanded considerably over the past decade, and this new research interest, coupled with the widespread availability of radiocarbon dating, has allowed the construction of a chronological framework and an understanding of material culture and economy. A recent general synthesis of this work, with special reference to the area to the south-east of the Drakensburg escarpment, has been provided by Maggs (1980), while specific archaeological studies have been carried out in Zululand by Hall (1981).

In this paper, I attempt to contribute further to this process of revision by looking at one aspect of the ethnographic model- the architecture of the Zulu homestead- and by comparing this with archaeological evidence for settlement construction in an area which is usually taken as falling within the Zulu 'ethnic boundary'. The results of this exercise illustrate weaknesses in the standard ethnographic description of the Zulu as well as the dangers of applying ethnographic stereotypes to archaeological situations.

THE ZULU VILLAGE IN ETHNOGRAPHY

In the ethnographic literature, there is consensus on the form of the typical Zulu homestead, or umizi (pl. imizi). All authors agree that it is founded on three concentric circles. The outer of these rings is a fence of timber, bushes (Bryant,



THE MYTH OF THE ZULU HOMESTEAD

1949, Krige, 1965) or, sometimes, stone walling (Shaw, 1974). Inside the perimeter are the round, dome-shaped grass huts in which the occupants of the homestead live, while the innermost ring is a fenced byre for livestock.

The main entrance of the umuzi is directly opposite the principal hut (the indlunkulu) and aligned with the entrance to the cattle byre (Bryant, 1949; De Jager, 1964; Holleman, 1940; Krige, 1936; Shaw, 1964; Walton, 1956). Most authors stress that it is normal for the homestead to be built on a gradient with the entrances to both homestead and byre facing down the slope of the hill. An example of such a typical homestead is illustrated in Figure 1.

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/012 26 27 9?

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Fig. 1. The Zulu homestead. I, indlunkulu. 2-7, Huts of Great Wife. 8-13, huts of other wives. 14-22, huts of sons and retainers. 23-24, Kraals for goats and sheep. 25, enclosure for calves. 26-29, entrances. 30-34, storage huts. 35-36, entrances. 37, main cattle kraal (after Krige 1936, 43).

This layout is seen as an expression of the dominance of the polygynous family unit, with the headman, his wives and children forming the core of the settlement, which may also accommodate non-relatives in a client relationship. The positioning of the hut reflects the status of the wives and their children (Bryant, 1949; Holleman, 1940; Krige, 1936; Kuper, 1980), and these family units are the seed of future settlements with dissolution of the homestead following dissension or the death of the headman (Holleman, 1940; Preston-Whyte and Sibisi, 1975).

Ethnographic sources describe a standard distribution pattern for the imizi, with agreement that Zulu homesteads are to be found scattered across the landscape, rather than concentrated in villages or towns. This was noted by Bryant (1949) and categorized by De Jager (1964) as the 'dispersed homestead type', in distinction to the concentrated settlements found, for example, among the Sotho. More recently there has been a suggestion that such a dispersal is a response to ecological possibilities, with the broken, repetitive and productive environments of the south-east African seaboard providing adequate resources to make each umizi economically independent and encouraging spread rather than concentration (Preston-Whyte and Sibisi, 1975; Sansom, 1974; Shaw, 1974).

This ethnographic model of the typical umuzi varies to some extent from author

66




to author, but has overall a remarkable consistency. Such agreement does not come from a set of concurrent field studies. Rather, the notable regularity of description seems due to the reliance of most authors on a common, narrow base of primary ethnographic observations. The principal sources are by Bryant (1929; 1949), who spent many years in the field in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and who provided a comprehensive ethnography. Invaluable material was also recorded by James Stuart, but it is only in recent years that Stuart's notes have been translated from the Zulu and collated (Webb and Wright 1976; 1979; 1982), with the result that this source has remained little used by ethnographers. In comparison, there has been little primary fieldwork by other authors. Thus Holleman (1940), for example, carried out limited fieldwork between 1938 and 1939 and Preston-Whyte and Sibisi (1975) worked in a restricted area between 1964 and 1974. Walton (1956) clearly collected primary data over southern Africa as a whole, but it is not entirely clear to what extent he depended on earlier sources, while his statements are in any case very general.

A common attribute of the corpus of primary ethnography is that almost all work seems to have been carried out in the low-lying environments of the coast and river valleys. Thus, although Bryant undoubtedly knew the wider area well, it is clear from his descriptions that his material was drawn from the dry savanna woodlands of the major river valleys. Similarly, Preston-Whyte and Sibisi (1975) worked in the Valley of a Thousand Hills, close to Durban, although they felt that their findings had wider relevance.

Other authors have taken these primary sources and reworked them. The major synthesis is Krige's The Social System of the Zulu (1936), which deals with most compartments of the Zulu social formation in the framework of British functionalism. Other secondary studies are De Jager's (1964) general characterization of settlement patterns, which draws heavily on Krige's work, Shaw's study of material culture (1974), Sansom's (1974) search for ecological determinants and Kuper's recent use of the structuralist approach (1980; 1982).

It may be this narrowness of empirical base that underlies a major characteristic of the standard ethnographic model of the Zulu umuzi - the absence of a geographical frame. Although ethnographers have extrapolated from a spatially restricted body of information, they have avoided the problem of defining geographical limits for the legitimate use of such extrapolation, and have thereby also ignored the historical evidence for radical changes in the distribution of the Zulu polity. Thus, the Zulu chiefdom under Senzangakona was in the nineteenth century restricted to a limited part of the Mfolozi Valley (Bryant, 1929; Hall and Mack, 1983). In contrast, the Zulu Kingdom of Senzangakona's heir, Shaka, at its most extensive in the third decade of the nineteenth century, included most of the area to the south-east of the Drakensberg while a considerably larger part of southern Africa fell within its sphere of influence. Following conflict with Boer settlers, Shaka's successor, Dingane, was restricted to that area which is today known as 'Zululand'- the lower lying, northern parts of the province of Natal. In later years, conflicts came with British colonial interests and, following defeat in the Anglo-Zulu War, the Zulu Kingdom was broken into a number of separate administrative units. This process of fragmentation has continued, first with the 'native reserves' of colonial administration and subsequently with the 'homelands' of today. The modern

67




remnant of the Zulu Kingdom is known as Kwa-Zulu and, although still under the Zulu King as nominal head of state, consists of a number of widely scattered parcels of land.

In addition to this lack of a spatial frame, the ethnographic model of the Zulu also lacks a time dimension. An interest in the nature and causes of historical change is comparatively new in studies of pre-colonial societies in southern Africa. Nineteenth-century commentators we"e dominated by the philosophy of evolutionism - the belief that 'primitive' s )cieties were but fossilized relics of earlier stages of the great civilisations and were capable of only slow 'advancement'. Although evolutionism has only persisted in the fringe ethnographic literature of the later twentieth-century, it has not been replaced by an interest in historical process. The anthropology of southern Africa came to be dominated by functionalism, in which approach societies were held constant in an artificial 'ethnographic present', while the synchronic interaction of different components was examined (Harris, 1969). In the Zulu case, Krige's work (1936) was the first example of this reorientation, which has since been followed by other authors.

As the time dimension has been largely ignored in Zulu ethnography until recently, the varying territorial extent of Zulu chiefdom and nation has been

compressed into a sort of palimpsest with boundaries that are not defined. It is therefore not surprising that most ethnographic descriptions of the Zulu umuzi fail to define the geographical position or period of their subject; such definition is not possible while time and change remain unacknowledged.

This problem of delimitation was clear to Van Warmelo (1935), one of the few ethnographers who were concerned with classification and with plotting the distribution of 'the Zulu'. Van Warmelo noted that changes in political status and the different meaning of the label 'Zulu' make consistent classification virtually impossible. Holleman (1940) was also aware of the problem of assuming that a 'model village' was the characteristic form through time and space, since he went on to discuss the royal umuzi, which, as he noted, was somewhat different from the ordinary settlement. Other ethnographers have not had this perception and have implied that the model homestead described earlier has a constancy through time and space.

AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL TEST OF THE ETHNOGRAPHIC MODEL

Evidence that the ethnographer's model umuzi is not generally applicable comes from recent archaeological research carried out in the high-lying land of the upper White Mfolozi River catchment (Figure 2)- an area close to the core of 'Zululand'. Dispersed over these uplands are numerous Late Iron Age archaeological sites, dating to the period between AD 1000 and the recent past (Hall, 1981) and invariably incorporating stone structures. Because of their surviving architecture, such sites are highly visible and can be plotted and often classified from aerial photographs. In the research described here a detailed survey covered an area of almost 900 square kilometres, in which more than 800 sites were plotted. Examination of the air photographs was backed by a ground survey in which further sites were recorded. This control indicated that the aerial survey was producing a fair reflection of distribution patterns and about 70% of the total number of sites. It also confirmed

68




0 500 1000 I km

SWAZILAND

Fig. 2. The Mfolozi uplands and the extent of Type B sites.

69




that very few Iron Age sites which are not marked by lithic structures occur in these areas, indicating that the data from the aerial survey may be taken as representative of the diversity of settlement types.

A simple typology was devised for the architectural styles used in building these settlements (Hall, 1981). Here we are concerned with those sites designated Type B, which have as their main definitive feature between two and nine primary enclosures (circular structures formed by continuous walls, as defined by Maggs, 1976: 25) linked by secondary walling to form a central area. Because of the clear suitability of such Type B sites for detailed analysis, one well-preserved example, known as Nqabeni, was cleared, mapped and partially excavated in order to learn more of the technology of construction. Results have been described in detail elsewhere (Hall and Maggs, 1979) and only germane information need be summarised here.

A plan of Nqabeni is shown in Figure 3. As at other Type B sites in the area, the walls have now collapsed, although excavation revealed building technique. A double row of foundation stones underlay carefully constructed inner and outer walls while the gap between these had been filled with loose rubble. During excavation, part of the Nqabeni walling was reconstructed using the original foundations and the stones from the fallen wall which lay immediately adjacent, showing that the original perimeter of the enclosure was between 1 and 1.2m in width at ground level and had a maximum height of just less than one metre.

The entrances to the enclosures which comprise Nqabeni form a distinctive and definitive feature of this and other Type B sites. All were placed to face uphill, normally leading into the large secondary enclosure. Indeed, this requirement was strong enough to dictate the overall layout of many Type B sites, as the primary enclosures were grouped in the lower part of the site to permit the entrances both to be orientated up, or across, the slope and to lead into the secondary enclosure. In settlements with a large number of primary enclosures, however, such a compromise was sometimes not possible and primary enclosures had to be built in the upper part of the settlement. Nqabeni is an example of such a site, and illustrates well the solution to this dilemma that was adopted. Figure 3 shows that the entrance to Primary Enclosure 1, which had to lead directly out of the settlement to avoid facing down the hill, has had an additional alcove of stone walling added which forms a further secondary enclosure.

All the -enclosure entrances at Nqabeni had been carefully cobbled with river-rounded dolerite stones, both between the immediate break in the walling and in a wide apron running into the enclosure. A further feature was that the edges of the corner stones set into the walling had been battered to produce rounded edges. From this close examination it was clear that enclosure entrances of Type B sites were carefully integrated components in the overall design of the site rather than casual breaks in the walling.

As the upland areas of Zululand were not occupied by Iron Age communities before the present millenium (Hall, 1981; Maggs, 1980), Nqabeni must have been built between AD 1000 and the recent past. It is difficult to obtain a precise chronology for the site, as radiocarbon dates fall in a period when calibration is difficult, and the determinations from Nqabeni could indicate either an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century occupation (Hall and Maggs, 1979). Other evidence, however, suggests that Nqabeni was built before the formation of the Zulu

70




P2

0 10 20 30 m

Fig. 3. Nqabeni (after Hall and Maggs 1979).

Kingdom. The entire Type B architectural style is today completely unknown to local elders, although the same men can provide a detailed commentary on the history of the Zulu Kings and Kingdom. The series of internecine wars which marked Shaka's expansion of power early in the nineteenth century led also to a general break in oral traditions, and it would seem that this horizon accounts for the absence of a local explanation for Nqabeni and similar sites. This evidence, with the radiocarbon date, suggests that Nqabeni was probably built in the late eighteenth-century.

This chronology is further reinforced by the coincidence between the boundaries of the Type B tradition and the reconstructed distribution of the pre-Shakan chiefdoms shown in Figure 4. The position of the eastern limit of the Type B tradition cannot be explained in ecological terms and it has been suggested that it

I 71



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reflects the boundary between two chiefdoms, kwaKhumalo and kwaButhelezi (Hall and Mack, 1983). These were separate political entities until the early nineteenth-century, when Shaka incorporated both within the Zulu Kingdom (Bryant, 1929).

Examination of the distribution of Type B sites reveals interesting characteristics. Favoured habitats were the higher peripheral parts of the uplands, virtually along the watersheds themselves, and close to the outcrops of dolerite which have weathered to the more fertile soils (Hall, 1981). Within these favoured zones sites were clustered. Thus, in the upper catchment of the Ntinini River, a tributary of the White Mfolozi River and an area which was carefully and completely searched, Type B sites form distinct groups rather than an even scatter across the landscape (Figure 5).

The value of this distributional information can be increased through the use of a simple but effective method of relative dating, used successfully with sites in the southern Highveld (Maggs, 1976) and based on the different states of preservation of adjacent stone-built sites. In the Ntinini area it has been possible to identify a set of Type B sites that were occupied at the end of the prehistoric Iron Age and are thus a synchronic 'slice' of the Type B settlement pattern (Hall, 1981). In Figure 5, it can be seen that this group of contemporary sites forms four clusters, thus reinforcing the pattern suggested when all the Ntinini Type B sites were considered together.

Information concerning the use of the enclosures in Type B sites is available from excavations at Nqabeni. There was no evidence that the Iron Age community had lived inside the primary or secondary enclosures, suggesting that they were rather used for housing livestock. In support of this interpretation, the site profile showed that ground level within the primary enclosures was lower than that immediately outside the site, suggesting that livestock dung had been removed. Lowering of primary enclosure floors was also noted by Maggs (1976) on sites in the southern Highveld, where the largely treeless environment would also have created a need for fuel.

The positioning of the entrances of the primary enclosures to lead into secondary enclosures suggests that the latter were general marshalling areas in which livestock were separated into smaller groups. Entrances were cobbled, probably to prevent erosion following the constant traffic of animals. Excavation of midden deposits at Nqabeni has shown that both cattle and caprines were kept by the site's occupants, but that cattle were more numerous (Hall and Maggs, 1979). Local men, expert in the management of the small, 'Nguni' breed of cattle common in the area today and probably prevalent during the Iron Age, were convinced that walls of about a metre high would be adequate for containing such cattle.

It is important to remember, however, that the occupants of Nqabeni, in common with other Iron Age communities in Zululand, had a mixed economy. Grain crops, such as sorghum (Sorghum sp.) and late in the Iron Age, maize (Zea mays), as well as a number of other domestic plants, would have been cultivated within reasonable proximity to the site, as flotation of samples from the Nqabeni midden has confirmed (Hall and Maggs, 1979). Nevertheless, it would seem unlikely that these elements in the economy would have had much influence on the design of the settlement.

This archaeological information provides an adequate basis for testing the general

73



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X Type B sites

Fig. 5. Clusters of Type B sites in the Ntinini River Valley (after Hall 1981).




validity of the ethnographic model of'Zulu' architecture and settlement location. A first point of difference is in building materials. For although timber and thatch were undoubtedly important in the uplands for the construction of houses outside the livestock enclosure, extensive use has been made of stone as well. This was probably a product of necessity, as the open grasslands of the uplands were lacking in extensive supplies of organic building materials. The structure of Nqabeni shows that stone-building was by no means a casual art, for the careful placement of foundation stones and the painstaking construction of outer walling indicate a well established technique.

More significantly settlement design was of a form which is not acknowledged by the ethnographic model. Whereas the basis of the homesteads described by ethnographers was a single enclosure, the main thought of the designers of the Type B sites was clearly of many circular enclosures, linked by secondary walling to demarcate a central area which was sometimes symmetrical but often irregular.

Furthermore, the distinctive design of entrances to both primary and secondary enclosures at Type B sites stands in sharp contrast to the straightforward breaks in the wooden palisades that are the gateways to ethnographically described homesteads. In addition, the positioning of entrances is different, for whereas the makers of Type B sites went to great lengths to ensure that entrances faced up the hillslope, gateways to the conventional umuzi always faced downwards (Bryant, 1949; Krige, 1936). Indeed, members of the local community would not accept that entrances at Nqabeni could be gateways at all, as design was so contrary to expectation.

In addition, the distribution of Type B settlements in the part of the Ntinini valley that was examined in detail was clearly very different from that predicted by ethnographic analogy. Figure 5 shows Type B sites arranged in tight clusters of five or six units - a distribution pattern which bears little resemblance to the dispersed homestead model championed recently by Sansom (1974). The more general aerial survey, although lacking in detail, does suggest that the clustered pattern occurs repeatedly across the upland region.

Such differences in design and distribution imply that the ethnographic model of the Zulu social formation is also inappropriate for the communities that built and lived in the Type B settlements. Ethnographic sources see the byre as an expression of the single-family dominance of the umuzi - the herd is the property of the lineage segment and is used in the support of the homestead head, his dependent wives, children and resident clients. If this relationship between social organisation and homestead plan is applicable in the prehistoric Iron Age as well as in the ethnographic present, then the design of Type B settlements implies a different domestic arrangement. Either a number of lineage segments shared a settlement, separating the livestock herd into the different primary enclosures, or the herd was apportioned to the wives within the polygynous family who, by implication, must therefore have had a considerably greater control over the means of production than is allowed in the ethnographic model. The archaeological data are inadequate to indicate the precise nature of the actual social relations involved, but the information is sufficient to call into doubt the general applicability of the 'traditional Zulu' model.

A parallel observation arises from the distribution pattern of the type B

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settlements. The ethnographic texts have emphasized that economic and political authority in 'traditional' Zululand was devoluted, with fairly loose organization of largely autonomous homesteads. As mentioned earlier, Sansom (1974) has found in this the dominance of ecological factors, with the dispersed but readily available resources of Zululand exerting a centrifugal influence. Again, archaeological research suggests that this is a generalization unrealistic for all the environments of Zululand. The close proximity of settlement units which appear to have been occupied contemporaneously suggests aggregates of population rather than independent homesteads, which in turn implies a level of political organization beyond the lineage segment.

THE CONCEPT OF THE 'ETHNOGRAPHIC PRESENT'

Comparison of the archaeological evidence and the ethnographic model of the Zulu homestead demonstrates that the concept of this architectural form persisting through time and over a wide, ill-defined area is a myth. For, although the umuzi described in the ethnography certainly existed, it was found in specific regions (mostly in the lower-lying river valleys and coastal areas) and in a particular period (which included the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). At other times, and within an area that could certainly be designated 'Zululand', other forms of architecture, and possibly socio-economic organization, were dominant.

It follows that the concept of the 'ethnographic present' not only has little value, but can be actively misleading. Any characterization of a standard form involves the suppression of variation. When such a model is presented without reference to its time of existence or area of distribution, the situation is particularly dangerous. The divergence between the archetypal Zululand homestead of the ethnographer and the varied architecture found over the same geographical area in recent centuries well illustrates this point.

Although the philosophical paradigms that sired the 'ethnographic present' - evolutionism in the nineteenth century and functionalism in the twentieth - have had their day, there is a danger that the application of structuralist principles will perpetuate the ahistorical approach. For in Kuper's recent examination of 'Southern Bantu' architecture (1980, 1982), there is little interest in the problem of change through time. Kuper identifies three fundamental and general oppositions in the Nguni homestead. The right versus left opposition is expressed in the location of wives' huts according to seniority as well as in the male/female sides within the hut. Secondly, the centre versus sides opposition is expressed in the relative positioning of the huts of kinsfolk and wives. Thirdly, up in opposition to down coincides with west versus east when the homestead is built on a slope and is expressed in the locations of the indlunkulu and the cattle byre. Kuper then goes on to suggest that similar patterning is to be found among the Sotho.

Kuper's aim is to identify fundamental structural principles which underlay Southern Bantu social organization and to move to generalizations such as the following: 'Nguni homesteads all share a fundamentally similar spatial idiom, which gives meaning to, and governs, their physical arrangements' (Kuper, 1980: 15). Note that there is no reference to a time frame here; Kuper would seem to share with earlier ethnographers a belief in the ethnographic present, and implies in this

76




and other statements that the oppositions discerned apply irrespective of time. The main reference to change is to the modern form of settlements, where such variations as lines of huts facing a rectangular byre are found. These are explained as 'transformations' of the basic oppositions.

It is not in fact surprising that Kuper can find a timeless set of oppositions as, certainly in the case of the Zulu, he makes use of a body of ethnography that assumed time to be irrelevant and did not therefore look for change. Comparison of Kuper's model homestead with the archaeological evidence given earlier in this paper reveals a more complex picture. It is not possible to test the right/left and centre/sides oppositions with the archaeological data, as the positioning of huts is not known for settlements such as Nqabeni and other Type B occurrence. The complex arrangement of primary enclosures, however, suggests that a simple arrangement around the livestock enclosures is unlikely to have occurred. Kuper's third opposition would certainly be difficult to find in a Type B settlement. 'Among all the Nguni, the cattle-byre is built to the East of the indlunkulu, or if the homestead is built on sloping ground, as is preferred, it is built below' (Kuper, 1980: 13). A Type B settlement consisted of several byres, each with its entrance upslope. Even allowing for several indlunkulu in one village, its builders would have found it physically difficult to conform with Kuper's imperative.

In fairness, it must be noted that the archaeological data from the Zulu area was not available when Kuper was preparing his analysis. On the other hand, Kuper makes only passing reference in a footnote to the wealth of information on the Iron Age architecture of the southern Highveld (Maggs, 1976), which could have provided a most useful addition to the ethnography of the Sotho. One can but conclude that, in this form of structuralist application, the possibility of change through time is not a primary interest.

Ethnographic analogy of the type which stereotypes the Zulu homestead, whether derived from nineteenth-century observations or from recent structuralist analysis, is a dangerous artefact in the hands of the archaeologist. Faced with the fragments of prehistoric architecture, it is always tempting to fit the ethnographic model over the archaeological remnants, even though such fragments of the past structure are insufficient to test the analogy for neatness of fit. There are numerous examples of this form of analogy from the literature on the southern African Iron Age, but two cases that use the Zulu model illustrate the point well. Davies (1971), describing the eleventh-century settlement at Blackburn on the Natal coast, had evidence for the positions and approximate dimensions of huts from post holes, colour variations in the deposit and fossil termite runs, which he took ingeniously as marking the boundary where the structure met the ground and was consumed by the insects after it had been abandoned. Although there was no evidence beyond this rough plan, the writer both felt justified in calling the Blackburn structures 'beehive huts', after the standard Zulu model, and constrained to explain the absence of archaeological evidence for the hoops that support the thatch in the ethnographer's model. Yet Davies was describing a settlement occupied some eight centuries before the first systematic ethnographic description - a long period over which to assume continuity.

The second example is more germane to the present paper. In our first description of the Nqabeni site, which has been used in this paper as a key example, Maggs and I

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argued that the Type B settlements were very different from the ethnographic model homestead, yet used this same ethnographic model to explain the more obscure features of our archaeological site; an inconsistency that well illustrates the powerful temptation of ethnographic data. Thus, although we stated that 'the general architecture of Nqabeni and similar settlements is at variance with the standard ethnographic model for Nguni settlement structure' (Hall and Maggs, 1979: 174), we also believed that 'in interpreting the function of Late Iron Age settlements the use of ethnographic evidence is generally admissible where the date of occupation is sufficiently close to the present day to make the probability of some degree of continuity high' (1979: 172). Working from this last position, we used the ethnographic data to interpret a number of problematic features at Nqabeni and to suggest that the huts, of which we found no trace, 'would have been similar to the Natal Nguni beehive huts of the nineteenthtcentury'. As there is actually evidence for a major discontinuity between the Type B architectural style and the ethnographic model Zulu umuzi, there was in fact no reasonable basis for our interpretive analogy.

Perhaps the most significant problem with the static ethnographic analogy, however, is that it makes the identification of change impossible. For if the partial evidence of prehistory is interpreted as reflecting the same structures and institutions that are seen in full form through the eyes of the ethnographer, then the past and present automatically become the same, the possibility of change is denied and a circular argument is perpetuated. The result, as Schire (1980) has perceptively and eloquently argued for the case of the San hunter-gatherers of southern Africa, is that today's ethnography is taken as an indication of the form of past societies, and the misconceptions of nineteenth-century evolutionism are recreated. If archaeology and anthropology are to contribute to the new perspective of African history, then ethnographic stereotypes, such as the model of the Zulu homestead, must be accepted as myths.

NOTES

I thank John Wright and Kathleen Mack for their constructive comments on this paper and Louis Lawrence and Kathleen Rial for help in preparing the manuscript.

REFERENCES

Bryant, A. T. 1929. Olden times in Zululand and Natal. London: Longman, Green and Co. - 1949. The Zulu people. Pietermaritzburg: Shuter and Shooter.

Davies, O. 1971. 'Excavations at Blackburn', S.Afr.archaeol.Bull. (26). 165-78. De Jager, E. J. 1964. 'Settlement types of the Nguni and Sotho tribes', Fort Hare Papers (3).

19-30. Guy, J. 1980. 'Ecological factors in the rise of Shaka and the Zulu Kingdom', in S. Marks and

A. Atmore (eds.), Economy and society in pre-industrial South Africa. London: Longman. 102-19.

Hal, M. 1981. Settlement patterns in the Iron Age of Zululand: An Ecological Interpretation. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.

Hall, M. and Mack, K. 1983. 'The outline of an eighteenth-century economic system in south-east Africa', Ann.S.Afr.Mus. 91(2). 163-94.

Hall, M. and Maggs, T. 1979. 'Nqabeni: A later Iron Age site in Zululand.', S.Afr.archaeol.Soc.Goodwin Series (3). 159-76.

Harris, M. 1969. The rise of anthropological theory. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

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Resume

Le mythe de la ferme Zoulou: archeologie et ethnographie

On presume generalement que le village Zoulou se conforme a un type standard defini par une serie de cercles concentriques. On peut cependant soutenir, que ce modele ne repose que sur une base d'observation etroite, specifique dans le temps et dans l'espace, et que l'evidence archeologique suggere une variete considerable dans la forme d'installation de la region connue sous le nom vague de 'Zululand'.

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The Myth of the Zulu Homestead: Archaeology and Ethnography

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