Southern African Humanities

Foreword

Carolyn Hamilton — 2023-07-17

No Abstract.

Beyond boundaries

M.H. Schoeman — 2023-07-17

No abstract.

Some reflections on the UCT Archaeology Department in the mid-1970s

Christine Sievers — 2023-07-17

Remembered almost 50 years later, the experiences of a group of archaeology students at the University of Cape Town in the mid-1970s describe the heady days of discovering a life-long vocation in an archaeology department brimming with opportunities and freedoms that were in stark contrast to the prevailing repressive situation in South Africa. Staff and students from disparate backgrounds and with diverse personalities made up a complex cocktail where boundaries were blurred and a new world was laid open to mostly naïve minds. The centrality of fieldwork is stressed repeatedly; it provided the environment for growth, intellectually, socially and as a person. Access to study at the University of Cape Town was controlled by harshly unjust apartheid laws and the reflections here are those of a privileged white minority who were extremely fortunate to land in a ‘bubble’ where hierarchical and racial boundaries were relaxed. Although I refer to various issues, including gender discrimination, there is no in-depth retrospection of the role of archaeologists and archaeology in an apartheid state. These important matters have been discussed elsewhere. In this brief history I use the reminiscences of some archaeology students and staff to provide an account of a particular group of people at a specific time and place.

Sheep and baboon paintings in Junction Shelter: shedding light on the history of Didima Gorge and surrounding areas, South Africa

Aron Mazel — 2023-07-17

This paper investigates the distribution of rock paintings in Didima Gorge, with particular emphasis on Junction Shelter. Based on Harald Pager’s recording of 3 909 paintings in 17 rock shelters, this investigation is underpinned by the premise that the positioning of rock paintings within the landscape would have been significant to their hunter-gatherer makers, particularly as they would have regarded these places as sacred and imbued with power. Interrogation of Pager’s Didima recordings has revealed that Junction Shelter, at the confluence of the Didima and Mhlwazini rivers in Didima Gorge, is unique in Didima Gorge and the surrounding area, with its combination of domestic animals (sheep, cows and dogs) and baboon paintings. Close examination of the sheep and baboon panels at Junction Shelter reveals that they contain imagery imbued with ritual significance. It is proposed that the hunter-gatherers made these paintings around 2 000 years ago and that they relate to a period when they experienced heightened stress arising from the arrival of new people into South Africa. Furthermore, it is concluded that the hunter-gatherers used the strategic position of Junction Shelter to create imagery relating to the incoming people and the symbolic protective powers of baboons.

Moxomatsi: the organisation of space in a major Bokoni settlement

Tim Maggs — 2023-07-17

In the archaeological quest towards better understanding the precolonial farming communities of South Africa, Bokoni settlements are doubly important. They represent the only ‘island’ of agricultural intensification in the region. They are also characterised by a wider use of stone in construction than any other such communities. This distinguishing attribute provides us with far greater potential for reconstructing the patterns according to which space was organised in Bokoni, than is possible with other precolonial farming societies. This applies particularly to the larger and more densely built settlements such as Moxomatsi, where intensive use was made of available space. Here we describe the various types of stone-built features and the spatial patterning we can derive from them. Networks of roads and footpaths, together with related features, give us insight into patterns of circulation by people and livestock within the settlement. Circulation routes together with walls, terraces and stone lines contribute to patterns on the ground, which indicate ways in which cultivated land was subdivided and allocated, both adjacent to homesteads and at some distance away. Ways in which groups of homesteads are linked seem to reflect clustering based on kinship, an organisational principle which resonates with ethnographic evidence. Local environmental issues of hydrology, topography, geology, and soils have also played a significant part in how the community used the landscape.

Making in turbulent times: new insights into late 18th- and and early 19th-century ceramic crafts and connectivity in the Magaliesberg region

Per Ditlef Fredriksen — 2023-07-17

Simon Hall’s influential contributions to historical archaeology include two research agendas: the focus of attention on lower scalar levels of analysis, and broadening the concept of ceramic style to include less visible technological qualities. The latter is important to the less decorated assemblages from the 18th and 19th centuries. Combining and developing these two agendas further, this article presents new analyses of ceramics from the sites Marothodi and Lebenya in the Magaliesberg region, dating prior to the difaqane in the 1820s. We explore households as flexible spaces for making, creativity and memory-work in turbulent times. The late 18th and early 19th centuries saw accelerated development of pyrotechnologies such as metalworking and ceramics. This happened together with changes to the built environment and spatial organisation of the household. Frequent relocation and alteration of learning spaces put transmission and teacher–apprentice ties under serious strain. Seeking to trace connections across a complex and layered political landscape, we hypothesise that ceramic craftspeople became less reliant on locally anchored insights and placed more emphasis on sharing knowledge and materials within extended craft-learning networks. The study includes a comparison of the results of laboratory analyses with those from a handheld XRF device. Offering instant feedback while still in the field, such mobile tools help develop sampling strategies that include a higher percentage of undecorated ceramic material.

Untribing Marateng: reconsidering the context and meaning of pottery from central north-eastern South Africa

M.H. Schoeman — 2023-07-17

Studies of African material culture during the 20th century were complicit in the creation and normalisation of the concept ‘tribes’ as phenomena in South African archaeology. Marateng pottery, which was common in at least three precolonial polities in central north-eastern South Africa, did not escape this tribalisation. Recognition of the process in which ‘tribe’ or ‘cultural affinity’ was prioritised over other identities can play a significant role in the disruption of problematic 20th-century narratives about South African pottery. This in turn makes new, more situated insights possible. In this paper, I trace the academic making of Marateng pottery, before examining the context in which pottery in this style was made in the Leolo Mountains in the Sekhukhune district and Boomplaats near Lydenburg (now Mashishing). I suggest that these vessels were made in a milieu where there was an established trade in pottery by the second half of the 19th century, and that the 20th-century meanings of the peolane and mahlaka designs should be reconsidered in a context where invoking the traditional had become a form of resistance against apartheid.

Decoupling identities: moving beyond gendered binaries in the southern African archaeological record

Abigail J. Moffett — 2023-07-17

One of the many intellectual contributions Simon Hall has made to southern African scholarship is his exposition of the contextual, agentive nature of identity-making in the past. Building on this theme, this study explores evidence for the configuration of gender, labour and craft through a case study of copper production at Shankare in Phalaborwa, South Africa (900–1900 CE). Recovery of the full stages of copper production, interspersed with domestic activities, suggests that copper production processes were embedded within the domestic economy of the site’s inhabitants. Evidence of the use of shared spaces, as well as interaction, feedback and technological overlaps between various crafters, challenges conventional interpretations of the division of labour and space in southern African Iron Age societies along a male/female gender binary. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, the paper outlines an approach to gender, labour and craft that emphasises the fluidity and contextual negotiated nature of identity.

Dispersed craft production systems at Rooiberg, c. 1200–1850, and broader implications for southern African history

Shadreck Chirikure — 2023-07-17

Recent literature is slowly stepping back from the idea that regions located away from centres of powerful social formations (such as chiefdoms, states and empires) lacked agency and initiative. We contribute to this conversation by engaging with the Rooiberg craft production landscape. We argue that Rooiberg was an ‘open source’ that was owned by no one, and provide some examples of ‘open sources’ elsewhere. Concerning the organisation of production, Rooiberg metalworking was more dispersed than concentrated. No centralised polity directly controlled the distribution of tin or other metals extracted from this resource-rich region. Consequently, different communities producing crafts at Rooiberg controlled their destiny and traded and exchanged with others through intricate capillary circulatory systems. The frequency of objects recovered from excavations indicates that these systems involved mostly internal commodities, with limited amounts of exotica from the Indian Ocean trade.

Hearth and home in the Iron Age of eastern Africa: ethnographic models, historical linguistics and archaeological evidence

Paul J. Lane — 2023-07-17

Except for work on the symbolism of iron technology, there have been few archaeological studies that provide insight into the social and symbolic dynamics of early farming/metal-working communities (or Early Iron Age societies) in eastern Africa. Most research has instead been directed toward determining the chronology of the spread of diagnostic ceramic traditions, interactions with herding and hunter-gatherer groups and, most recently, identifying the range of crop types cultivated and the date of their introduction. Where archaeologists have sought to answer such questions as ‘What types of homes did people live in and how was this space organised?’ or ‘What were the gender divisions in society and the nature of relationships between young and old?’, they have tended to rely on models developed from historical linguistics and ethnography. This paper provides an assessment of these models in the light of available archaeological evidence from the region, while also contrasting the under-theorisation of the archaeological record of early farming communities in eastern Africa with the approaches adopted by archaeologists working in southern Africa. Some suggestions for future research directions and changes in excavation methodologies are proposed.

Human remains from Ntshekane, an Early Iron Age site in central KwaZulu-Natal

Lawrence S. Owens — 2023-07-17

Research at the Early Iron Age site of Ntshekane in central KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, recovered human skeletal remains representing a pregnant adult, two young adults and two infants. All were exposed by severe erosion. Ceramics and an interpretation of settlement history at Ntshekane suggest an infant buried in a grain pit dates to the Msuluzi phase (630–800), one young adult to either the Ndondondwane (800–950) or Ntshekane (950–1050) phase, the second young adult to the Ntshekane phase, with the pregnant woman and possibly the second infant belonging to the Ntshekane phase. The dentition of the pregnant woman and a modified tooth associated with the remains of one young adult indicate the practice of dental modification. Differences in the interments of the two infants possibly relate to the circumstances of their deaths.

Imprints of patriarchy: the historical archaeology of a rural economy in the Piketberg-Sandveld, Western Cape

Antonia Malan — 2023-07-17

In 2011, the author was introduced to a farm on the north-eastern flanks of the Piketberg, where there are several ruined and standing structures of potential interest to the Vernacular Architecture Society of South Africa (VASSA). Over the following four years, members of VASSA explored the local farms and conducted an oral history project to capture farm stories (Malan 2015). Cultural landscape studies emphasise the connection between geography and genealogy, such as the sequence and history of houses and families, and the broader substrate of agricultural, social, economic and demographic history. The eclectic approach of historical archaeology towards the material traces of past lives is well suited for the purpose. Using diverse records, we identified a characteristic settler economic strategy in the Sandveld from the 18th to early 20th centuries, which was to assimilate diverse resources under the control of a patriarch. In this case study, the focus is on the Smit family clan. The resulting pattern of property holdings and inheritance, and the regional vernacular architecture of the Piketberg area, is reflected on the cultural landscape, but it looks very different to that of the contemporary and better-known patriarchal imprints on the rural landscapes of Stellenbosch and the Drakenstein.

“To save breakage and inconvenience”: rural probate inventories and pewter as an ‘evident absent’ in 19th-century colonial South Africa

Nicholas Zachariou — 2023-07-17

The investigation and analysis of the ceramic assemblage from the 19th-century European farm Kerkplaats, a site in the rural Karoo, Northern Cape, revealed a notable disjuncture in the ratio of hollow to flat forms. This anomaly was investigated further through the examination of probate inventories, which, in turn, revealed patterns of rural tableware use that both commented on and challenged the ceramic assemblage. This paper considers this disjuncture and evaluates probates as sources of historic material culture data in rural areas. Analysis of probates identifies a rural tableware ‘signature’ in the first half of the 19th century, which was reliant on pewter forms, particularly plates and dishes. The use of pewter, selected for functional reasons, provides some comment on social processes of material culture ‘modernisation’ in rural areas. Finally, pewter, all but absent from the archaeological record, is posited as an ‘evident absent’ that should be considered in analysing tableware and the domestic sphere on the 19th-century colonial frontier.

Broken promises: material biographies of trade and desire at Schoemansdal

Joanna Behrens — 2023-07-17

On the southern side of the Soutpansberg lies the ruined village of Schoemansdal, the most northern settlement of the Voortrekkers and a site of sustained archaeological investigations. Today, the landscape is dotted with mounds of varying sizes and forms and strewn with domestic artefacts. These material remains, specifically the imported ceramics, provide a point of entry into Great Trek historiographies, 19th-century trade and the vagaries of domestic life along a frontier. The results from extensive excavations are discussed at both community and ‘houseful’ scales and the imported ceramic assemblage from one yard, associated with the trader Casimiro Simões, is highlighted to explore the potential for materialities of individuality.

Prestwich Street: a reflection on the potential uses of narrativity in the management, preservation and curation of materiality, memory and space in South Africa

Vuyiswa Lupuwana — 2023-07-17

In 2003, one of the largest informal burial grounds of the former Cape Colony was uncovered on Prestwich Street in Green Point, Cape Town. A contentious public participation process created a divide between researchers and the public. A compromise was reached and the Prestwich Memorial ossuary was built to house the human remains. One of the issues that people have with the memorial is the manner in which it facilitates the process of active forgetting. In 2014, I made a documentary film, Prestwich Street, in which I interviewed key participants in the debates around Prestwich. I argue here for the possibility of using narrative and narrativity as tools of active remembering. I use the film to interrogate the potential use of these terms through a self-reflexive engagement with the narrative mode of documentary film. Narrative and narrativity can be tools for ‘talking back’ and resisting and that they can become counter-memorials facilitating active remembering in postcolonial South Africa. I also make the argument that the narrative process and narrativity are critical tools in facilitating the processes needed to grieve the past.