The archaeological sequence at Kasteelberg B, in the Western Cape of South Africa, spans a millennium and covers several distinct occupational phases in the early pastoralist settlement history of the region. Attempts to understand that history through coordinating archaeological, linguistic and genetic evidence have proved problematic. The refined programme of radiocarbon dating presented here sheds further light on the different phases of occupation. More remarkably, it suggests, despite changes in material culture, the persistence of a single population over time, rather than population replacement as has been previously conjectured.

Among San communities in Botswana, the rate of student disengagement from both primary and junior secondary school is an ongoing concern for educators. San learners leave school at all levels of primary and junior secondary education. Students who leave school have tended not to provide reasons as to why they are dropping out. This study investigated some of the reasons why San learners decided to drop out at primary and junior secondary school levels in the Central District in Botswana. In-depth interviews were undertaken with 20 former students living in five cattle-posts where the participants worked as cattle herders. The results indicate that some San drop out of school for reasons of survival, both within and outside school. The findings of the study offer insights into some of the issues that impede students within San communities in achieving their educational goals. Further, the findings could assist educational authorities in their review of current educational practices in Botswana so that that all citizens can be appropriately accommodated within the education system.

The argument that shamanism is the key that unlocks the hidden meaning of rock art continues to provoke debate over three decades after it was first proposed. In a recent article in Antiquity (86: 696–706), David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce defend the argument that nineteenth-century ethnographies provide evidence for a trance dance and shamanic healing that are vital to understanding southern African rock art. In this reply, Anne Solomon challenges the claim that the ethnographic evidence describes shamanism and trance healing and argues that elision of southern San (/Xam) and Kalahari San practices in a single narrative has obscured important differences. The author suggests that there is no evidence that dances or trance states were connected with healing in /Xam society. These confusions, it is argued, undermine key aspects of the shamanistic interpretation of rock art.

Cave paintings and first-hand ethnographic accounts from living peoples have led to the notion that southern African spiritual experts routinely mediated with the other world through energetic dances leading to the trance state. The evidence for this idea has been challenged in recent years, and the importance of the trance dance diminished accordingly. The authors confront these criticisms and place the shamanistic dance back on centre stage—with important consequences not only for the study of San peoples, but for wider prehistoric interpretations.

The author demonstrates that the complex images of rock art known as formlings depict or evoke the equally complex architecture of ant-hills. Presented in cutaway and full of metaphorical references, they go beyond the image into the imagination.