Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T06:45:25.472Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Beyond the drip-line: a high-resolution open-air Holocene hunter-gatherer sequence from highland Lesotho

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2011

Peter Mitchell ,
Ina Plug ,
Geoff Bailey ,
Ruth Charles ,
Amanda Esterhuysen ,
Julia Lee Thorp ,
Adrian Parker  and
Stephan Woodborne
Peter Mitchell
Affiliation:
1School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, St Hugh's College, Oxford OX2 6LE, UK; School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Wits 2050, South Africa (Email: peter.mitchell@st-hughs.ox.ac.uk)
Ina Plug
Affiliation:
2Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of South Africa, Box 392, UNISA 0003, South Africa
Geoff Bailey
Affiliation:
3Department of Archaeology, University of York, King's Manor, York YO1 7EP, UK
Ruth Charles
Affiliation:
4University Computing Service, Pembroke Street, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3QH, UK
Amanda Esterhuysen
Affiliation:
5School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Wits 2050, South Africa
Julia Lee Thorp
Affiliation:
6Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK
Adrian Parker
Affiliation:
7Department of Anthropology and Geography, School of Social Sciences & Law, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK
Stephan Woodborne
Affiliation:
8CSIR Natural Resources and the Environment, Box 395, Pretoria 0001, South Africa
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The activities of hunter-gatherers are often captured in rockshelters, but here the authors present a study of a riverside settlement outside one, with a rich sequence from 1300 BC to AD 800. Thanks to frequent flooding, periods of occupation were sealed and could be examined in situ. The phytolith and faunal record, especially fish, chronicle changing climate and patterns of subsistence, emphasising that the story here is no predictable one-way journey from hunter-gatherer to farmer. Right up to the period of the famous nineteenth-century rock paintings in the surrounding Maloti-Drakensberg region, adaptation was dynamic and historically contingent.

Keywords

southern Africalate HoloceneNeoglacialhunter-gatherersfishingspaceintensificationnondirectionalityphytoliths
Type
Research article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 85 , Issue 330 , December 2011 , pp. 1225 - 1242
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arbousset, T. & Daumas, F.. 1968. Narrative of an exploratory tour to the northeast of the Cape of Good Hope. Cape Town: Struik.Google Scholar
Arthington, A.A., Rall, J.L., Kennard, M.J. & Pusey, B.J. 2003. Environmental flow requirements of fish in Lesotho rivers using the drift methodology. River Research Applications 19: 641–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arthur, C. & Mitchell, P.J.. 2010. The archaeology of the Metolong Dam, Lesotho: a preliminary assessment. Antiquity 84. Available at: http://www. antiquity. ac. uk/projgall/mitchell325/ (accessed 11 May 2011).Google Scholar
Arthur, C., Mohapi, M. & Mitchell, P.J.. In press. The Metolong Cultural Resource Management Project: a case study in African CRM. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites.Google Scholar
Bailey, G.N. & Galanidou, N.. 2009. Caves, palimpsests and dwelling spaces: examples from the Upper Palaeolithic of south-east Europe. World Archaeology 41: 215–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartram, L., Kroll, E.M. & Bunn, H.T.. 1991. Variability in camp structure and bone food refuse patterning at Kua San hunter-gatherer camps, in Kroll, E.M. & Price, T.D. (ed.) The interpretation of archaeological spatial patterning: 77–148. New York: Plenum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bird, C.F.M. & Frankel, D.. 1991. Problems in constructing a prehistoric regional sequence: Holocene south-east Australia. World Archaeology 23: 179–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carter, P.L. 1978. The prehistory of eastern Lesotho. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Challis, W. 2008. The impact of the horse on the Ama Tola ‘Bushmen’: new identity in the Maloti-Drakensberg mountains of southern Africa. Unpublished DPhil dissertation, University of Oxford.Google Scholar
Challis, W., Mitchell, P.J. & Orton, J.. 2008. Fishing in the rain: control of rain-making and aquatic resources at a previously undescribed rock art site in highland Lesotho. Journal of African Archaeology 6: 203–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, S.L. 1988. Settlement and subsistence developments during the Later Stone Age in the Lower Fish River Basin, Eastern Cape. Palaeoecology of Africa 19: 221–32.Google Scholar
Hayden, B. 1990. Nimrods, piscators, pluckers and planters: the emergence of food production. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 9: 31–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobart, J.H. 2004. Pitsaneng: evidence for a neolithic Lesotho? Before Farming 2004/4 article 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jerardino, A. 1995. Late Holocene Neoglacial episodes in southern South America and southern Africa: a comparison. The Holocene 5: 361–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jerardino, A. & Yates, R.. 1997. Excavations at Mike Taylor's Midden: a summary report and implications for a re-characterisation of megamiddens. South African Archaeological Bulletin 52: 43–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, R.B. 1979. The !Kung San: men, women and work in a foraging society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lee, R.B. 2003. The Dobe Ju/hoansi. Toronto: Thomson Learning.Google Scholar
Lewis-Williams, J.D. 2003. Images of mystery: rock art of the Drakensberg. Cape Town: Double Storey.Google Scholar
Lourandos, H. 1997. Continent of hunter-gatherers: new perspectives in Australian prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mazel, A.D. 1989. People making history: the last ten thousand years of hunter-gatherer communities in the Thukela Basin. Natal Museum Journal of Humanities 1: 1–168.Google Scholar
Mccormac, F.G., Hogg, A.G., Blackwell, P.G., Buck, C.E., Higham, T.F.G. & Reimer, P.J.. 2004. SHCal04 Southern hemisphere calibration 0-11.0 cal kyr BP. Radiocarbon 46: 1087–1092.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mcintosh, S.K. (ed.) 1999. Beyond chiefdoms: alternative pathways to complexity in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, P.J. 2002. The archaeology of southern Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mitchell, P.J. 2005. Archaeological resource management in Lesotho: thoughts on its past record, present situation and future prospects, in Finneran, N. (ed.) Safeguarding Africa's archaeological past: selected papers from a workshop held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2001 (British Archaeological Reports international series 1454): 37–46. Oxford: Archaeopress.Google Scholar
Mitchell, P.J. 2009a. The flaked stone artefact assemblages from Likoaeng: a late Holocene sequence in highland Lesotho and its regional context. Southern African Humanities 21: 117–56.Google Scholar
Mitchell, P.J. 2009b. Hunter-gatherers and farmers: some implications of 2000 years of interaction in the Maloti-Drakensberg region of southern Africa. Senri Ethnological Studies 73: 15–46.Google Scholar
Mitchell, P.J. & Vogel, J.C.. 1994. New radiocarbon dates from Sehonghong rock-shelter, Lesotho. South African Journal of Science 90: 380–88.Google Scholar
Mitchell, P.J., Plug, I. & Bailey, G.N.. 2006. Spatial patterning and site occupation at Likoaeng, an open air hunter-gatherer campsite in the Lesotho highlands, southern Africa. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 16: 81–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, P.J., Plug, I., Bailey, G.N. & Woodborne, S.. 2008. Bringing the Kalahari debate to the mountains: late first millennium AD hunter-gatherer/farmer interaction in highland Lesotho. Before Farming 2008/2 article 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker, A.G., Lee Thorp, J.A. & Mitchell, P.J.. 2011. Late Holocene Neoglacial conditions from the Lesotho highlands, southern Africa: phytolith and stable carbon isotope evidence from the archaeological site of Likoaeng. Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association 122: 201–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parkington, J.E., Fisher, J.W. & Tonner, T.W.W.. 2009. ‘The fires are constant, the shelters are whims’: a feature map of Later Stone Age campsites at the Dunefield Midden site, Western Cape Province, South Africa. South African Archaeological Bulletin 64: 104–121.Google Scholar
Plug, I. & Mitchell, P.J. 2008a. Fishing in the Lesotho highlands: 26,000 years of fish exploitation, with special reference to Sehonghong Shelter. Journal of African Archaeology 6: 33–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plug, I. & Mitchell, P.J. 2008b. Sehonghong: hunter-gatherer utilization of animal resources in the highlands of Lesotho. Annals of the Transvaal Museum 45: 1–23.Google Scholar
Plug, I., Mitchell, P.J. & Bailey, G.N.. 2003. Animal remains from Likoaeng: a post-classic Wilton open air fishing campsite on the Senqu River, Lesotho. South African Journal of Science 99: 143–52.Google Scholar
Plug, I., Mitchell, P.J. 2010. Late Holocene fishing strategies in southern Africa as seen from Likoaeng, highland Lesotho. Journal of Archaeological Science 37: 3111–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowley-Conwy, P. 2001. Time, change and the archaeology of hunter-gatherers: how original is the ‘original affluent society’?, in Panter-Brick, C., Layton, R.H & Rowley-Conwy, P. (ed.) Hunter-gatherers: an interdisciplinary perspective: 39–72. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sadr, K. 2003. The Neolithic of southern Africa. Journal of African History 44: 195–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sadr, K. 2008. An ageless view of first millennium AD southern African ceramics. Journal of African Archaeology 6: 103–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sampson, C.G. 1985. Atlas of Stone Age settlement in the Seacow Valley. Memoirs of the National Museum (Bloemfontein) 20: 1–116.Google Scholar
Skelton, P. 2001. The freshwater fishes of southern Africa. Cape Town: Struik.Google Scholar
Smits, L.G.|A. 1973. Rock painting sites in the Upper Senqu valley, Lesotho. South African Archaeological Bulletin 28: 32–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spielmann, K.A. & Eder, J.F.. 1994. Hunters and farmers: then and now. Annual Review of Anthropology 23: 303–323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stahl, A.B. 2005. Introduction: changing perspectives on Africa's pasts, in Stahl, A.B. (ed.) African archaeology: a critical introduction: 1–23. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Stow, G.W. 1905. The native races of South Africa. Cape Town: Struik.Google Scholar
Vinnicombe, P. 2009. Basotho oral knowledge: the last Bushman inhabitants of the Mashai District, Lesotho, in Mitchell, P.J. & Smith, B.W. (ed.) The eland's people: new perspectives in the rock art of the Maloti-Drakensberg Bushmen: 165–91. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.Google Scholar
Vogel, J.C., Fuls, A. & Ellis, R.P.. 1978. The geographical distribution of Kranz grasses in South Africa. South African Journal of Science 74: 209–215.Google Scholar
Wilmsen, E.N & Denbow, J.R.. 1990. Paradigmatic history of San-speaking peoples and current attempts at revision. Current Anthropology 31: 489–524.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodburn, J. 1982. Egalitarian societies. Man 17: 431–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yellen, J.E. 1977. Archaeological approaches to the present: models for reconstructing the past. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar