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A Review of Recent Archaeological Research on Food-Producing Communities in Southern Africa*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Tim Maggs  and
Gavin Whitelaw
Tim Maggs
Affiliation:
Natal Museum, Pietermaritzburg
Gavin Whitelaw
Affiliation:
Natal Museum, Pietermaritzburg
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Extract

This review is a further development in the Journal of African History series of archaeological surveys away from the earlier radiocarbon date lists and towards regional examinations of recent archaeological evidence on food-producing societies. It is divided into two sections that examine respectively ‘Stone Age’ pastoralists in the drier west and ‘Iron Age’ agriculturalists in the better-watered east. Relations between food producers and hunter-gatherers are examined, particularly in the west, where it is becoming increasingly difficult to make meaningful distinctions between them in view of the variety of changes that took place roughly contemporaneously in both with the introduction of domestic stock. Several local sequences are beginning to suggest that socio-economic change took place within the framework of the local community rather than by the stereotypic, ethnic replacement model where Khoi succeeds San.

There is much new evidence on communities with an agricultural economic base. The earliest evidence is examined from southern Mozambique and the Transvaal, including traces of first-millennium mercantile trade and its regional antecedents. There are contradictions between different models proposed to explain interactions with residual hunter-gatherer communities and with the natural environment. A major theme of recent studies has been the development and use of models derived from structuralist analysis of the classic ethnography of the region. Such models have given a new understanding of settlement patterns but in several respects are still the subject of controversy.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 1991 , pp. 3 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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101 Ibid.

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