Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T09:17:48.106Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Iron Age Sequence South of the Vaal and Pongola Rivers: some Historical Implications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Tim Maggs
Tim Maggs
Affiliation:
Natal Museum, Pietermaritxburg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The region south of the Vaal and Pongola rivers, being the southernmost on the continent to be settled by Bantu-speaking, Iron Age communities, is important in understanding the spread of these societies. Until recently, archaeological discussion has mostly been based on Schofield's work of the 1930s and 1940s, which is here shown to be substantially incorrect, and an outline of the new sequence is given.

New work on the Early Iron Age in Natal is sufficiently advanced to demonstrate a highly selective pattern of site location which, together with what we know of the economy, gives us some insight into the ecology of these communities. This enables us to estimate the limits of distribution in areas where there has been less archaeological exploration. It also indicates that ecological factors are significant in the rapid initial spread of the Early Iron Age.

The beginning of the Later Iron Age in this region is characterized not only by an abrupt change in ceramic styles but by other cultural and perhaps economic changes involving site location, architecture and aspects of technology. The most striking single factor is the expansion, beyond the coastal plain and wooded valleys of the Early Iron Age, into much of the interior grasslands. By at least the seventeenth century a dense population was established in many of these areas and their settlements can often be correlated with historically known groups on the basis of oral and ethnological links.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , January 1980 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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

1 Holden, W. C., The Past and Future of the Kaffir Races (London, 1866).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Stow, G. W., The Native Races of South Africa (London, 1905).Google Scholar

3 Shepstone, T. in Bird, J., Annals of Natal, 2nd ed. (Cape Town, 1965), 1, 156.Google Scholar

4 Especially Schofield, J., ‘Natal coastal pottery from the Durban district: a preliminary survey’, 5. Afr.J. Sci. xxxii (1935), 508–27Google Scholar; ‘Natal coastal pottery…Part II’, S. Afr. J. Sci. xxxiii (1937), 993–1009Google Scholar; Primitive Pottery (Cape Town, 1948).Google Scholar

5 Marks, S., ‘The traditions of the Natal “Nguni”: a second look at the work of A. T. Bryant’Google Scholar; Legassick, M., ‘The Sotho-Tswana peoples before 1800’, in L. Thompson, African Societies in Southern Africa (London, 1969).Google Scholar

6 Phillipson, D. W., The Later Prehistory of Eastern and Southern Africa (London, 1977Google Scholar). Inskeep, R. R., The Peopling of Southern Africa (Cape Town, 1978).Google Scholar

7 E.g. Fagan, B. M., Southern Africa during the Iron Age (London, 1965)Google Scholar; idem, ‘The later Iron Age in South Africa’, in L. Thompson, African Societies in Southern Africa (London, 1969); Inskeep, R. R., ‘The archaeological background’, in M. Wilson and L. Thompson, The Oxford History of South Africa (Oxford, 1969)Google Scholar; idem, ‘South Africa’, in P. L. Shinnie, The African Iron Age (Oxford, 1971).

8 Maggs, T., Iron Age Communities of the Southern Highveld (Pietermaritzburg, 1976).Google Scholar

9 Derricourt, R. M., Prehistoric Man in the Ciskei and Transkei (Cape Town, 1977).Google Scholar

10 Da Cruz e Silva, T. M., ‘A preliminary report on an Early Iron Age site: Matola IV 1/68’, in Iron Age Research in Mozambique: Collected Preliminary Reports (Maputo, 1976).Google Scholar

11 Klapwijk, M., ‘An Early Iron Age site near Tzaneen, N.E. Transvaal’, S. Afr. J. Sci., lxix (1973), 324Google Scholar; ‘A preliminary report on pottery from the N.E. Transvaal, South Africa’, S. Afr. archaeol. Bull. xxix (1974), 19–23;Google ScholarEvers, T. M., ‘Recent Iron Age research in the eastern Transvaal, South Africa’, S. Afr. archaeol. Bull. xxx(1975), 71–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Recent progress in studies of the Early Iron Age in the eastern Transvaal’, S. Afr. J. Sci., lxxiii (1977), 78–81.Google Scholar

12 Schofield, , ‘Natal coastal pottery’; Primitive Pottery.Google Scholar

13 Maggs, T. and Vogel, J. C., ‘Chronology of the Iron Age in Natal’ (in prep.).Google Scholar

14 Derricourt, , Prehistoric Man.Google Scholar

15 Mercury, Natal, 3 August 1978.Google Scholar

16 Phillipson, , Prehistory, 146.Google Scholar

17 Davies, O., ‘Excavations at Shongweni South Cave: the oldest evidence to date for cultigens in southern Africa’, Ann. Natal Mus. xxii, ii (1975), 627–62,Google Scholar and excavation notes.

18 Klapwijk, , ‘Tzaneen’; ‘Preliminary Report’.Google Scholar

19 Huffman, T. N., ‘The Early Iron Age of the Urungwe District, Rhodesia’, Rhodesian Prehistory, viii (1972), 12–13.Google Scholar

20 Huffman, T. N., ‘The Leopard Kopje tradition’, Museum Memoir, no. 6 (Salisbury, 1974).Google Scholar

21 Fagan, B. M. et al. , Iron Age Cultures in Zambia, vol. 2 (London, 1969).Google Scholar

22 E.g. Wilson, M. and Thompson, L., The Oxford History of South Africa (Oxford, 1969).Google Scholar

23 Acocks, J. P. H., ‘Veld types of South Africa’, Memoirs of the Botanical Survey, 40 (1975)Google Scholar, 2nd ed.; Edwards, D., ‘A plant ecology survey of the Tugela Basin’, Memoirs of the Botanical Survey, 36 (1967)Google Scholar; Moll, E. J., ‘The vegetation of the Three Rivers region, Natal’, Natal Town and Regional Planning Reports, 33 (1976).Google Scholar

24 Edwards, , ‘Survey’Google Scholar; Moll, , ‘Vegetation’.Google Scholar

25 Op. cit.

26 Van der Eyk, J. J. et al. , ‘Soils of the Tugela Basin’, Natal Town and Regional Planning Report, 15 (1969).Google Scholar

27 A. M., and Talbot, W. J., Atlas of the Union of South Africa (Pretoria, 1960).Google Scholar

28 E.g. Phillipson, , Prehistory, 143.Google Scholar

29 Talbot and Talbot, Atlas.Google Scholar

30 Derricourt, , Prehistoric Man.Google Scholar

31 Klapwijk, ‘Report’Google Scholar; Evers, , ‘Progress’Google Scholar; Maggs, T., ‘Some recent radiocarbon dates from eastern and southern Africa’; J. Afr. Hist. xviii (1977), 161–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Derricourt, R. M., ‘Some coastal shell middens in southern Mozambique’, Azania, x (1975), 135–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Carter, P. L., ‘Late Stone Age exploitation patterns in southern Natal’, S. Afr. archaeol. Bull. xxv (1970), 55–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Maggs, , Communities.Google Scholar

35 Davies, , ‘Blackburn’.Google Scholar

36 Davies, , ‘Moor Park’.Google Scholar

37 Ellenberger, D. F., History of the Basuto Ancient and Modern (London, 1912);Google ScholarBryant, A. T., Olden Times in Zululand and Natal (London, 1929).Google Scholar

38 Derricourt, , Prehistoric Man.Google Scholar

39 Maggs, , Communities.Google Scholar

40 Mack, K., personal communication.Google Scholar

41 E.g. Krige, E. J., The Social System of the Zulus (London, 1936).Google Scholar