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Changes in the Social Relations of Precolonial Hunter–Gatherers after Agropastoralist Contact: An Example from the Magaliesberg, South Africa
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JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHAEOLOGY ARTICLE NO.
15, 205–217 (1996)
0008
Changes in the Social Relations of Precolonial Hunter–Gatherers after Agropastoralist Contact: An Example from the Magaliesberg, South Africa LYN WADLEY Department of Archaeology, University of the Witwatersrand, P.O. WITS 2050, South Africa Received July 28, 1995; revision received November 27, 1995; accepted December 5, 1995 Jubilee Shelter in the Magaliesberg of the North West Province, South Africa, was occupied by hunter–gatherers during three phases of agropastoralist contact. This contact began in about 225 A.D. when Bambata pottery was introduced to the site. At this stage there was no change in the hunter–gatherers’ seasonal pattern of aggregation and dispersal. Later there is evidence for cooperative contact between the hunter–gatherers and the farmers and considerable changes are recorded in Jubilee Shelter. Seasonal markers alter and evidence for aggregation disappears. At the same time Stone Age scrapers appear in the local Iron Age village of Broederstroom and it appears that hunter–gatherers may have been processing hides for the villagers. When Late Iron Age settlement began in the Magaliesberg, the impact on hunter–gatherers was even greater. In Jubilee Shelter material culture becomes impoverished and in the local Iron Age villages there are also few Stone Age artifacts. At this stage, the hunter–gatherers either became assimilated into the village communities or moved to other areas. © 1996 Academic Press, Inc.
HUNTER–GATHERER AND AGROPASTORALIST CONTACT: THE EVIDENCE FROM ETHNOGRAPHY AND HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS “Passive,” “harmless,” and “defenseless” are stereotypes that are sometimes used to describe southern African hunter–gatherers in contact situations with pastoralists, agropastoralists, and white settlers. It has often been said that these “remnants of the Stone Age” were intimidated and overwhelmed by technologically more advanced groups that were guilty either of genocide or of driving the hunter–gatherers into marginal territories. While there is no doubt that southern African San were often shamefully and ruthlessly treated, ethnographic and historical records suggest that contact situations sometimes provided positive interaction that benefited all parties. The extent and nature of contact situations varied not only geographically but also through time and this issue has been successfully highlighted by the Kalahari debate. This debate (Wilmsen 1989; Solway and Lee
1990) illustrates the need for cautious interpretation of the southern African hunter– gatherer ethnography, particularly with regard to contact. Historically recorded interactions between hunter–gatherers and agropastoralists include trade and exchange of labor in the form of clientship, intermarriage, and warfare. San are known to have traded ivory, copper, ostrich feathers, ostrich eggshell beads, skins, salt, meat, berries, and firewood for maize, sorghum, tobacco, clay pots, assegai points, knives, axes, and metal rings (Cashdan 1977:128; Gordon 1984:197, 203,207–208; Wilmsen 1989; Wright 1994). San labor was sometimes in the form of clientship (Wilson 1982:63; Guenther 1986) which was usually seasonal: for part of the year, the hunter–gatherers would work for agropastoralists and then revert to hunting and gathering again, often in areas marginal to agricultural activities (Gordon 1984:217–218; Jolly 1994:63; Loubser & Laurens 1994). When working for agropastoralists, the San sometimes lived at kraal sites or amongst rocks near the village (Mac-
205 0278-4165/96 $18.00 Copyright © 1996 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
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quarrie 1962:30), but sometimes they camped 1 or 2 km from the village (Guenther 1986;350). San were used not only as seasonal herders but also as hired hunters and as rainmakers and healers (Macquarrie 1962:28– 30,35; Shostak 1981:215,219; Katz 1982; Guenther 1986:349; Wilmsen 1989; Jolly 1994:63). Assimilation of San by agropastoralists was and still is common. Genetic studies show that Khoisan admixture is present in all Bantu-speaking peoples who have been studied but that the reverse gene flow is almost absent (Jenkins 1986). The usual form of intermarriage has been between San women and Bantu-speaking men (Orpen 1905; Ellenberger and Macgregor 1912; Walton 1956:27; Macquarrie 1962:29; Peires 1981:70), although there are rare examples of San men marrying Bantu-speakers (Wright 1971:66). Attitudes to the intermarriage vary: Kalanga, for example, frown on marrying Basarwa (San) whom they consider inferior (Cashdan 1986:312). On the other hand, there are several records of San women marrying Xhosa or Sotho chiefs (Orpen 1905; Ellenberger & Macgregor 1912, Walton 1956; Macquarrie 1962; Peires 1981:70). There is some ambiguity about the acceptability of the offspring of such marriages, but at least some of the sons of mixed blood were allowed to inherit from their fathers (Walton 1956:27). Interaction between San hunter–gatherers and agropastoralists brought about dramatic social changes in some parts of southern Africa. The accumulation of livestock in the Drakensberg by some San groups, and perhaps by some individual San shamans (Campbell 1987), opened the way for stratification by wealth. Egalitarian structures were undermined in widely separated areas by the appearance of San chiefs (How 1962; Macquarrie 1962:29,35; Guenther 1994; Jolly 1994:38) who wielded power and took over the responsibility for resolving disputes (Macquarrie 1962:35).
Where chiefs were not appointed, agropastoralists sometimes took on the role of mediating hunter–gatherer disputes, so that the agropastoralists became a social resource and a source of information for the hunter–gatherers (Moore 1985:106–108). Moore suggests that these changed social relations came about partly because the sedentary settlements disrupted the hunter–gatherers’ seasonal shifts and particularly their ability to aggregate and disperse (Moore 1985:103,107). Amongst San in the Kalahari, aggregation played a vital role in social and economic life even in the 1970s. Aggregation was a time when important information was exchanged about the condition of the veld and the abundance of resources in neighboring areas. It was also a time when relations gathered together, when there was group hunting and gathering, socializing, making and mending of tools, making and exchanging gifts, marriage brokering, and ritual (Lee 1979:365; Silberbauer 1981:195). I now turn to some archaeological sites in the Magaliesberg, North West Province (formerly known as the north-western Transvaal), to examine the archaeological evidence for contact between hunter– gatherers and agropastoralists. The ethnographic data imply that a multiplicity of contact situations, with evidence for exchange of material culture, food, and labor, may be predicted in southern African archaeological sites. In addition, there may be evidence to suggest that hunter–gatherers were assimilated into agropastoralist societies. We should also expect to find varied intensities of interaction depending on the time depth of the contact and on the abundance of resources. ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FROM THE MAGALIESBERG, NORTH WEST PROVINCE The Pre-contact Period The scale and timing of changes that took
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FIG. 1. The Magaliesberg showing sites mentioned in the text.
place in hunter–gatherer lifeways after contact need to be viewed in the context of the pre-contact situation. Therefore I begin by outlining my interpretation of pre-contact occupation in two Stone Age sites in the Magaliesberg. Jubilee Shelter is on the northern slopes of the Magaliesberg (Fig. 1) in a bushveld environment. Cave James, a few kilometers away, is a hilltop site surrounded by sour grassland. Both sites have long Stone Age sequences (Wadley 1987, 1989), but here I discuss only the midHolocene and more recent occupations. Jubilee Shelter has a suite of dates between 6490 ± 200 B.P. (Wits-1462) and 3100 ± 150 B.P. (Wits-1214), while Cave James has dates of 6130 ± 110 B.P. (Wits-1744) and 3870 ± 50 B.P. (Wits-1383). In Jubilee Shelter the mid-Holocene stone tools comprise a great many formal components, including small segments, backed bladelets, finely worked scrapers, and a variety of groundstone work (Table 1). Formal tools have a high density per volume of deposit (the volume is measured in bucketsful). Local quartz was used but finegrained chert, jaspilite, and chalcedony were imported from outcrops between 20
and 30 km from the shelter. In addition to the stone tools, there are large frequencies of complete and incomplete ostrich eggshell beads, bone points, polished bone TABLE 1 Jubilee Shelter and Cave James: Mid-Holocene Lithic, Shell and Bone Inventories (Abbreviated) Jubilee Scrapers Backed tools Adzes Spokeshaves Awls and reamers Borers Points Miscellaneous retouch Total retouch Groundstone work Cores Flakes Ostrich eggshell (OES) beads Incomplete and broken OES beads OES fragments Decorated OES fragments Bone points and linkshafts Broken bone points and shafts Bone ornaments Buckets of deposit
325 168 40 7 12 34 2 96 684 34 740 32357 97 52 1730 3 22 128 6 240.5
James 27 6 3 1 20 57 1 39 3926
1
26
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LYN WADLEY TABLE 2 Jubilee Shelter Mid-Holocene and Late Holocene Seeds from Edible Plants 6490–3100 B.P.
Underground plants Vangueria infausta Bequaertiodendron sp. Rhus sp. Diospyros lyciodes Grewia sp. (summer and winter spp.) Tapiphyllum parvifolium Euclea sp. Ziziphus mucronataa Sclerocarya birreaa Mimusops sp.a Strychnos pungensa a
1840–1550 B.P.
1350 B.P.
<1350 B.P.
1 1
2 1 1
2
7
1 3 63
8 64 1
25
1 17 2 7 >100 2 3
>100
Autumn and winter fruits.
shafts, bone awls, spatulas, and worked bone fragments that were part of the manufacturing process (Table 1). Clearly Jubilee was the venue for active manufacturing and curation of tools and ornaments. Beads and bead-making debris were concentrated to one side of the hearth, while bone working debris and broken shafts of polished bone concentrated on the opposite side of the hearth. Such formal use of space may imply gender segregation, behavior that, among the Kung of the Kalahari, would be typical of an aggregation phase (Marshall 1976). The Cave James mid-Holocene assemblage is quite different from that in Jubilee; it contains no ornaments or bone tools and few formal stone tools compared with Jubilee (Table 1). The collection of worked stone is large, but is expediently manufactured on local quartz and quartzite with only rare pieces made on siliceous rocks. Jubilee and Cave James are clearly used for different purposes and the seasonal indicators at the sites provide part of the explanation. Autumn/winter fruits are represented in the Jubilee mid-Holocene levels (Table 2), whereas spring/summer-bearing fruits are present in Cave James (Table 3). The Jubilee fauna comprises a wide range of large and small bovids (Table 4; Turner
1986) that were probably hunted, whereas the Cave James faunal collection is small (Table 5) and contains only birds, rodents, and a few small bovids that may have been snared rather than hunted. I believe that the different behavior at the two sites can be best explained using the San model of aggregation and dispersal. Thus the Jubilee mid-Holocene assemblage was probably an autumn/winter aggregation camp, while James was a spring/ TABLE 3 Cave James Mid-Holocene and Late Holocene Seeds from Edible Plants 6200–3200 B.P. Underground plants Landolphia capensis Vangueria infausta Ximenia sp. Bequaertiodendron sp. Diospyros lyciodes Grewia sp. Tapiphyllum parvifolium Rhus lancea Euclea sp. Celtis africana Ozoroa paniculosa Rhoicissus sp. Pappea capensis Ziziphus mucronataa a
x 2
1
<3200 B.P. x 6 8 7 17 247 32 146 26 217 40 50 64 13 2
Autumn or winter fruits; x lots of fragments.
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TABLE 4 Jubilee Shelter Fauna (Total Identifiable Pieces) 6490–3100 B.P.
1840–1550 B.P.
13
15 4 12 1 5 13
Lepus sp. (hare) Hystrix africaeaustralis (porcupine) Procavia capensis (rock hyrax) Equus burchelli (Burchell’s zebra) Phacochoerus aethiopicus (warthog) Suid Aepyceros buselaphus (impala) Damaliscus dorcas (impala) Alcelaphus buselaphus (red hartebeest) Connochaetes gnou (black wildebeest) Connochaetes taurinus Oreotragus oreotragus (klipspringer) Ourebia ourebia (Oribi) Raphicerus campestris (steenbok) Tragelaphus scriptus (bushbuck) Sylvicapra grimmia (common duiker) Redunca fulvorufula (mountain reedbuck) Bovid (Size 1) Bovid (Size 2) Bovid (Size 3) Aves Testudo sp. (tortoise) Pisces
14 7 11 44 7 9 7 3 1 2 9 4 1 20 6 13 11 9 8 462 8
summer dispersal phase camp (Wadley 1987, 1989). I now discuss the changes that took place when Bambata pottery first appeared in Jubilee Shelter, then I turn to the introduction of different Early Iron Age pottery and, lastly, I discuss the final phase of occupation in Jubilee. Cave James contained some undiagnostic pottery implying contact period occupation, but it was not possible to date or seriate the ceramic levels and, therefore, the site will not be discussed further. TABLE 5 Cave James Fauna 6200–3200 B.P. Lepus sp. (hare) Oreotragus oreotragus (klipspringer) Bovid Size 1 Bovid Size 2 Aves
4
<1350 B.P. 7 1 5 3 2
1
3 1
1 3 8 3 4 5 4 7 10 68 7
1 1 2 1 1 4 62 9
1
1
The Bambata Contact Phase Bambata pottery is part of an Early Iron Age tradition (Huffman 1994). At Jubilee there are several decorated sherds and more than 100 undecorated sherds in levels BB to MS (Table 6). Charcoal from Level B is dated 1840 ± 50 B.P. (Wits-1398) while that from Level MS is dated 1550 ± 40 B.P. (Wits1381). Using the Stuiver and Pearson table, these dates calibrate to 225 A.D. and 561 A.D., respectively. The decorated sherds TABLE 6 Jubilee Shelter Pottery
<3200 B.P. 3
1 1
1350 B.P.
1 1 11
Plain bodysherd Decorated bodysherd Plain rim Decorated rim
1840–1550 B.P.
1350 B.P.
<1350 B.P.
110
7
84
4 4 3
1 1
4 5 2
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FIG. 2. Decorated Bambata pottery from Jubilee Shelter.
contain stamped impressions on neck and rim, with occasional incised cross-hatched decoration (Fig. 2). The undecorated sherds have been measured by Campbell (1985); they are thinwalled, measuring between 3.2 and 9 mm, as opposed to measurements of 10 and 11 mm in the post-Bambata levels. Apart from the addition of pottery, the material culture of the Bambata pottery levels (Table 7) is little changed from that in the pre-pottery levels, except that small scrapers have increased to 90% of the retouched tools from 48% in the pre-pottery levels dating between 6590 and 3100 B.P., and the density of retouch is 1.5 pieces in each bucket of deposit compared with the earlier density of 2.8. Ostrich eggshell beads are more numerous in the Bambata than any other level, numbering 196, and there are 55 incomplete beads and beads broken in the course of their manufacture (Table 7). Bone points
and broken polished shaft fragments continue to have high frequencies in the Bambata levels (Table 7). Remains of the autumn/winter marula fruit continue in these levels but a few seeds of spring/summer fruits are included (Table 2). A single sheep bone is present but comment on this must be reserved until the bone has been dated. Medium to large and small bovids occur in similar proportions, and the hunting/snaring pattern seems unchanged from that in the mid-Holocene. There is every reason to believe that the site was still being used as an aggregation site. No Bambata villages have been found in the area but dates of 130 A.D., 140 A.D., and 350 A.D. (Pta-5534, Beta 44965, and Beta 44966, respectively) were obtained from Toteng in Botswana (Huffman 1994). Huffman suggests that Bambata settlements spread from Angola to Botswana in the second and third centuries and that hunter–
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TABLE 7 Jubilee Shelter: Late Holocene Lithic, Shell, and Bone Inventories (Abbreviated from Campbell 1985; Wadley 1987) 1840–1550 B.P. Scrapers Backed tools Adzes Spokeshaves Awls and reamers Borers Miscellaneous retouch Total retouch Flakes Ostrich eggshell (OES) beads Broken and Incomplete OES beads OES fragments Bone points and linkshafts Broken bone points and shafts Buckets of deposit
295 16 2 1
1350 B.P. 7 4
<1350 B.P. 54 1 3
1 2 11 327 8854 196 55 1650 17 140 22375
gatherers acquired the pottery and passed it along their own exchange networks perhaps as far afield as Jubilee Shelter. Early Iron Age Contact Period By 561 A.D., the pottery samples are small and undiagnostic, but in Level RR, dated 1350 ± 120 B.P. (Wits-1399) on charcoal (calibrated to 680 A.D.), an Early Iron Age Phase 2 sherd has been identified (Huffman, personal communication). The sherd has multiple herringbone decoration on neck and shoulder, continuing up to the rim (Fig. 3.1). In contrast with earlier levels, faunal and plant material is scarce by 680 A.D. Amongst the identifiable bone there is only a single medium-sized bovid (Size 2), a suid, and a tortoise (Table 3). The few formal tools in this level mostly comprise small scrapers that are identical to those made before contact. Retouch density is 0.2 pieces per bucket of deposit, representing a considerable decrease compared with the Bambata levels. Ostrich eggshell beads and bone points are also less common than before (Table 7). The Jubilee assemblage no longer fulfils expectations for an aggrega-
1 13 340
4 62 1827
1
25 8 354 2 47 2635
16 8 6175
tion camp and the hunter–gatherers appear to have undergone social change (Wadley 1987). Part of the post-561 A.D. occupation of Jubilee coincides with the Early Iron Age settlement of Broederstroom less than 10 km away (Fig. 1). No early Iron Age settlement has been found in the Highveld grassland south of Broederstroom. Broederstroom settlement began about 350 A.D. and ended around 600 A.D. (Mason 1986). Flaked stone tools and some bored stones were excavated in the village, and Mason (1986:153) comments that some were near huts and others were in “ash lenses” that have been reinterpreted as cattle kraals (Huffman 1993). The Broederstroom stone tools are morphologically identical to those in the contemporaneous Jubilee Shelter assemblage (Fig. 4). Tiny endstruck scrapers are the only retouched tools, with the exception of a single adze. Most of the scrapers are made on chert or chalcedony but there are no cores made from these rock types, suggesting that the scrapers were brought to the village as finished tools. Microwear studies on scrapers have shown that they were used for scraping hides (Binneman 1984), and it is likely that
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FIG. 3. Jubilee Shelter Early and Late Iron Age pottery. 1, Phase 2 Early Iron Age sherd; 2–3, Late Iron Age pottery.
the scrapers at Broederstroom were also used for this purpose. Mason (1986) recorded 1045 ostrich eggshell beads, 3461 “rough cut” ostrich eggshell beads, and over 700 grooved stones, which he believed were used to polish ostrich eggshell beads. The grooves on some of the stones seem too wide to have been used for beads and these stones may have been used to grind the bone points (probably used as arrowheads) and linkshafts of which there were 200. Mason attributed both the beads and the polished bone work to hunter–gatherers; nonetheless, it is possible that Iron Age people made the beads themselves (Huffman, personal communi-
cation). Bead manufacture is prolific by Stone Age standards, suggesting that large scale production took place, perhaps as part of an exchange network. It is noteworthy that the Jubilee Shelter ostrich eggshell bead production decreased at the time that the Broederstroom production flourished. Similarly, the Jubilee faunal sample was impoverished in contrast to the rich Broederstroom faunal sample containing a wide range of wild game. The Broederstroom farmers kept livestock but were reliant on hunting and snaring for their meat supply. Two of the Broederstroom burials may have belonged to non-negroid people (Ma-
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FIG. 4. Stone tools from Broederstroom and Olifantspoort 1–6, Scrapers from Broederstroom; 7–9, Abraded stone flakes from Olifantspoort.
son 1986), but the fact that at least one of these burials was in a cattle kraal, which would have been used for high status burials (Hammond-Tooke 1974:327), makes it unlikely that hunter–gatherers or people of mixed ancestry would have been buried there. If the interpretation of non-negroid genes is correct, then the burial may have been of a man of mixed blood, the son from a marriage involving a Khoisan woman. Sometimes, as was previously mentioned, sons of mixed blood may be incorporated without prejudice into the agropastoral kinship system, but this may not have been possible in all farming societies. Late Iron Age Contact Period After 680 A.D., in the undated levels, most pottery is undecorated and thick. Two decorated sherds are illustrated (Figs. 3.2
and 3.3). Small scrapers continue to dominate the lithic assemblage, forming 87% of the retouched tools. Density of retouch remains low with 0.2 pieces per bucket of deposit, and ostrich eggshell beads and bone points have low frequencies (Table 7). The plant food collecting pattern has also changed: in addition to marula and other autumn/winter fruits, summer fruits are common and it seems that the shelter occupants changed their former seasonal mobility to remain in the area for longer periods. Although bovids dominated the fauna in the Bambata levels, they are almost absent in the uppermost levels where only mountain reedbuck and the common duiker persist. Micromammalian evidence (Avery 1987) suggests that grass cover may have become reduced by the upper levels and the veld may have become degraded. Mystromys albicaudatus, the white-tailed rat that requires dense grass cover, declines in
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the upper levels compared with levels occupied at and before 680 A.D. Late Iron Age settlement may then be associated with overgrazing, whereas this was not the case during Early Iron Age occupation. This final phase of hunter–gatherer occupation at Jubilee is considerably impoverished compared with previous levels, and the shelter seems to document the demise of hunter– gatherers in the area. The influx into the North West Province of farmers practicing Late Iron Age traditions may have been responsible for the dramatic changes that took place in the undated levels of Jubilee Shelter after 680 A.D.. Farming settlement began on a large scale (Maggs 1984:348) and stone-walled Late Iron Age settlements are common in the Magaliesberg (and elsewhere in the North West Province). One of these, which is unexcavated, is less than 500 m from Jubilee Shelter. In the Late Iron Age settlement of Olifantspoort, much of which dates to the early Nineteenth Century, the ash heaps produced thousands of stone artifacts in all stages of manufacture but few ostrich eggshell beads (Mason 1986:211,445,465). Small scrapers of the kind found at Broederstroom are absent; instead, there are many large, sidestruck flakes with heavily abraded, abrupt edges (Fig. 4). These tools do not resemble anything at Jubilee and are quite foreign to any LSA assemblage. Binneman (1988:309) examined the abraded edges of one of the tools and suggested that all the features pointed to hide working. DISCUSSION Three separate contact phases are discernible in Jubilee Shelter: first the Bambata, then post Bambata Early Iron Age, and finally the Late Iron Age. In the Bambata levels hunter–gatherer life seems to have been little changed by the introduction of pottery. There is no reason to suspect that the seasonal pattern of ag-
gregation and dispersal proposed for the pre-225 A.D. levels was disturbed by these innovations. On the one hand, the type of contact that seems to have taken place c. 225 A.D.–561 A.D. may be indirect, that is, the hunter–gatherers obtained ceramics and livestock through their own exchange networks reaching as far as places like Toteng in Botswana (Huffman 1994). If, despite the current lack of evidence, Bambata settlements did exist in the North West Province, then the contact between the farmers and hunter–gatherers seems to have been cooperative, transitory, and perhaps restricted to trade or exchange. Between 561 A.D. and 680 A.D., the situation is different and there is evidence of Early Iron Age settlement at Broederstroom not far from Jubilee Shelter. While it is possible that farmers made their own ostrich eggshell beads, the stone tools seem to have been manufactured by hunter–gatherers who brought ready made scrapers to the village for processing hides. This seems to be evidence for cooperative interaction between the farmers and hunter–gatherers and it is possible that a client relationship was operating. Furthermore, hunter– gatherers may have been commissioned to help with the hunt but there is currently no way of establishing this. The reduced numbers of large bovids in Jubilee by the Late Iron Age contact period implies that there was some change in hunting strategies: the villagers’ meat needs may have been in competition with those of hunter– gatherers, but it is not until after the influx of Late Iron Age settlements that this competition dramatically changed hunting patterns in Jubilee Shelter. The changes wrought at Jubilee Shelter when Broederstroom was occupied suggest that the shelter was being used by people whose livelihood had changed considerably from that a few centuries earlier. Evidence for aggregation is absent and the site was occupied for at least some part of summer as well as in winter. Hunter–gatherer
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mobility patterns were thus quite different from those in previous times. This evidence is critical for pointing to amicable, symbiotic relationships between the hunter– gatherers and the farmers. Quite clearly hunter–gatherers welcomed the presence of the Broederstroom village and changed their mobility pattern in order to remain near it. If this were not the case then the Jubilee inhabitants would have continued to make their summer forays into the sour grassland regions where there was no Early Iron Age settlement. Although the precise nature of the hunter–gatherer and farmer interaction is not clear, the changes at Jubilee Shelter suggest increased dependence of the hunter–gatherers on the Iron Age village causing their aggregation and dispersal patterns to be disturbed. As Moore (1985) suggests, the agropastoralists may have become a social resource for the hunter–gatherers. The Iron Age village may have become a substitute for the Stone Age aggregation camp; in addition to secure food supplies, it may have offered information and mediation. Intermarriage may also have taken place and the non-negroid human remains at Broederstroom may be evidence for this. The lack of domestic carbohydrates in Jubilee Shelter suggests that any food passed to the hunter–gatherers was consumed close to the Iron Age village. When traditional options declined and new kinship ties were established with assimilated hunter–gatherers, there may have been an increase in the frequency and length of visits to agricultural settlements (Hall 1990:246–247). The paucity and low density of material culture items in Jubilee suggests that after Late Iron Age contact occupations were ephemeral, perhaps involving only small groups. Data from Late Iron Age sites such as Olifantspoort suggest that there was minimal contact with hunter– gatherers. Later Stone Age scrapers were no longer used for hide processing; this task was instead undertaken with edge-abraded
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flakes made by farmers themselves. There is no evidence to suggest that hunter– gatherers ever went to Olifantspoort, and the data from Jubilee Shelter suggest that there may have been few hunter–gatherers in the area at the time. The demise of hunter–gatherers in the area was imminent and may have been exacerbated by the spread of Iron Age settlement into the sour grassland south of the Magaliesberg and by increasing degradation of the veld. Jubilee Shelter is not the only site showing the breakdown of hunter–gatherer communities in the area. Many tiny shelters in the North West Province and Gauteng (formerly known as part of the southern Transvaal), most of which were not occupied until a few hundred years ago, show signs of ephemeral occupation (Wadley 1987). Other examples of changing South African hunter–gatherer and agropastoralist interaction through time come from the Thukela Basin of KwaZulu-Natal and the eastern Free State. Mazel suggests that between 1000 A.D. and 1800 A.D., material culture in the Thukela Basin moved only from the farming communities to the hunter–gatherers, whereas before 1000 A.D. items were exchanged between the communities (Mazel 1989:150). The North West Province situation may be similar because there is no evidence for Stone Age artifacts in sites such as Olifantspoort. In the eastern Free State, Thorp (personal communication) is also examining the contact period and has found that pottery and domesticates predate settlement by several hundred years. Furthermore, some of the eastern Free State hunter–gatherers may have been producing their own pottery, a grasstempered variety similar to that produced in the Seacow Valley where Sampson (1989) documented hunter–gatherer, pastoralist, and European contact. The Jubilee sequence containing three phases of contact with agropastoralists illustrates the complexity of the interaction, and the potential for a variety of responses,
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between farming and foraging peoples. In the initial stage of contact, when only exchange through hunter–gatherer networks is inferred, there was no change to the seasonal patterns of aggregation and dispersal. When farming populations settled and increased in the area, the impact on hunter– gatherer life intensified: aggregation and dispersal patterns disappeared and were presumably replaced by interaction with Iron Age villages that may have involved clientship and even intermarriage. The complexity of contact situations in the Magaliesberg is likely to have been greater than I have indicated here, but many responses may remain undetected because, at present, archaeological resolution is not sufficiently fine-grained. The contact period is a rich area for research and further work may yield evidence of some of the social interactions discussed at the beginning. Currently there is no evidence in the Magaliesberg for contact involving aggression between hunter– gatherers and agropastrolists. If there was aggression then I predict that it would most likely have taken place during the Late Iron Age when the land was densely occupied, when overgrazing set in and resources became scarce. Evidence from Jubilee and Broederstroom suggests that a symbiotic relationship existed between hunter– gatherers and farmers who lived in Early Iron Age villages. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank B. Ward for drawing Fig. 1, and I am grateful to T. N. Huffman and S. L. Hall for reading the first draft of the paper and for useful discussions. I also thank the two reviewers of this paper for their helpful comments.
REFERENCES CITED Avery, D. M. 1987 Micromammalian evidence for natural vegetation and the introduction of farming during the Holocene in the Magaliesberg Transvaal. South African Journal of Science 83:221– 225. Binneman, J. 1984 Mapping and interpreting wear traces on stone implements: a case study from Boom-
plaas Cave. In Frontiers: Southern African archaeology today, edited by M. Hall, G. Avery, D. M. Avery, M. L. Wilson, and A. J. B. Humphreys, pp 143–151. BAR International Series 207, Oxford. 1988 Edgewear analysis of stone tools from Kruger Cave and Olifantspoort. In Kruger Cave, edited by R. J. Mason, pp. 279–310. Archaeological Research Unit Occasional Paper 17, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Campbell, C. 1985 The occurrence of Bambata pottery in the Magaliesberg. Unpublished Honours project, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. 1987 Art in crisis: Contact period rock art in the south-eastern mountains of southern Africa. Unpublished M.Sc. thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Cashdan, E. 1977 Trade and its origins on the Botletli River, Botswana. Journal of Anthropological Research 43:121–138. 1986 Competition between foragers and foodproducers on the Botletli River, Botswana. Africa 56:299–138. Ellenberger, D. F., and S. C. Macgregor 1912 History of the Basuto: Ancient and modern. Caxton, London. Gordon, R. 1984 The !Kung in the Kalahari exchange: An ethnohistorical perspective. In Past and present in hunter–gatherer studies, edited by C. Schrire, pp. 195–224. Academic Press, London. Guenther, M. G. 1986 Acculturation and assimilation of the Bushmen of Botswana and Namibia. In Contemporary studies on Kholsan 1, edited by R. Vossen and K. Keuthman, pp. 347–373. Helmut Buske Verlag, Quellen zur Khoisan-Forschung, Hamburg. 1994 Lords of the desert land: Politics and resistance of the Ghanzi Bushmen of the 19th century. Paper presented to People, Politics and Power, a conference held by the Rock Art Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand, August 1994. Hall, S. L. 1990 Hunter–gatherer–fishers of the Fish River Basin: A contribution to the Holocene prehistory of the eastern Cape. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Stellenbosch. Hammond-Tooke, W. D. 1974 World view 1: A system of beliefs. In The Bantu speaking peoples of southern Africa, edited by W. D. Hammond-Tooke, pp. 318–343. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London.
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SOUTH AFRICAN HUNTER–GATHERER AND AGROPASTORALIST CONTACT How, M. W. 1962 The mountain Bushmen of Basutoland. Van Schaik, Pretoria. Huffman, T. N. 1990 Broederstroom and the origins of cattle keeping. African Studies 49:1–12. 1993 Broederstroom and the central cattle pattern. South African Journal of Science 89:220–226. 1994 Toteng pottery and the origins of Bambata. Southern African Field Archaeology 3:3–9. Jenkins, T. 1986 The prehistory of San and the Khoikhoi as recorded in their blood. In Contemporary studies on Khoisan, edited by R. Vossen and K. Keuthmann, pp. 51–77. Helmut Buske Verlag, Hamburg. Jolly, P. 1994 Strangers to brothers: Interaction between southeastern San and southern Nguni/Sotho communities. Unpublished M.A., University of Cape Town. Katz, R. 1982 Boiling energy: community healing among the Kalahari !Kung. Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA. Lee, R. B. 1979 The !Kung San: men, women and work in a foraging society. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA. Loubser, J., and G. Laurens 1994 Depictions of domestic ungulates and shields, hunter–gatherers and agropastoralists in the Caledon River Valley area. In Contested images, edited by T. A. Dowson and J. D. Lewis-Williams, pp. 83–118. University of the Witwatersrand Press, Johannesburg. Macquarrie, J. W. 1962 The reminiscences of Sir Walter Stanford, Vol. 2. The Van Riebeeck Society, Cape Town. Maggs, T. 1984 The Iron Age south of the Zambesi. In Southern African prehistory and palaeoenvironments, edited by R. G. Klein, pp. 329–360. AA Balkema, Rotterdam. Marshall, L. 1976 The !Kung of Nyae Nyae Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA. Mason, R. J. 1986 Origins of black people of Johannesburg and the southern western central Transvaal AD 350– 1880. Archaeological Research Unit Occasional Paper 16, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Mazel, A. 1989 People making history: The last ten thousand years of hunter–gatherer communities
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in the Tugela Basin. Natal Museum Journal of Humanities 1:1–168. Moore, J. A. 1985 Forager/farmer interactions: Information, social organization and the frontier. In The archaeology of frontiers and boundaries, edited by S. W. Green and S. M. Perlman, pp. 93– 112. Academic Press, New York. Orpen, J. M. 1905 Reminiscences of life in South Africa from 1846 to the present day with historical researches (2 vols.) Struik, Cape Town. Peires, J. B. 1981 The house of Phalo: A history of the Xhosa people in the days of their independence. University of California Press, Berkeley. Sampson, C. G., T. Hart, D. L. Wallsmith, and J. D. Blagg 1989 The ceramic sequence in the upper Seacow Valley: Problems and implications. South African Archaeological Bulletin 44:3–16. Shostak, M. 1981 Nisa: The life and words of a !Kung woman. Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA. Silberbauer, G. B. 1981 Hunter and habitat in the central Kalahari Desert. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge. Solway, J. S., and R. B. Lee 1990 Foragers, genuine or spurious? Situating the Kalahari San in history, Current Anthropology 31:109–122. Wadley, L. 1987 Later Stone Age hunters and gatherers of the southern Transvaal. Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 25, Oxford. 1989 Legacies from the Later Stone Age. South African Archaeological Society Goodwin Series 6:42–53. Walton, J. 1956 African village. Van Schaik, Pretoria. Wilmsen, E. N. 1989 Land filled with flies. Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago. Wilson, M. 1982 The hunters and herders. In A history of South Africa to 1870, edited by M. Wilson and L. Thompson, pp. 41–74. David Philip, Claremont, Cape. Wright, J. B. 1971 Bushman raiders of the Drakensberg 1840–1870. University of Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg. 1994 Rethinking the history of Bushmen in the southern Drakensberg region in the mid-nineteenth century. Paper presented to People Politics and Power, a conference held by the Rock Art Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand, August, 1994.
JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHAEOLOGY ARTICLE NO.
15, 205–217 (1996)
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Changes in the Social Relations of Precolonial Hunter–Gatherers after Agropastoralist Contact: An Example from the Magaliesberg, South Africa LYN WADLEY Department of Archaeology, University of the Witwatersrand, P.O. WITS 2050, South Africa Received July 28, 1995; revision received November 27, 1995; accepted December 5, 1995 Jubilee Shelter in the Magaliesberg of the North West Province, South Africa, was occupied by hunter–gatherers during three phases of agropastoralist contact. This contact began in about 225 A.D. when Bambata pottery was introduced to the site. At this stage there was no change in the hunter–gatherers’ seasonal pattern of aggregation and dispersal. Later there is evidence for cooperative contact between the hunter–gatherers and the farmers and considerable changes are recorded in Jubilee Shelter. Seasonal markers alter and evidence for aggregation disappears. At the same time Stone Age scrapers appear in the local Iron Age village of Broederstroom and it appears that hunter–gatherers may have been processing hides for the villagers. When Late Iron Age settlement began in the Magaliesberg, the impact on hunter–gatherers was even greater. In Jubilee Shelter material culture becomes impoverished and in the local Iron Age villages there are also few Stone Age artifacts. At this stage, the hunter–gatherers either became assimilated into the village communities or moved to other areas. © 1996 Academic Press, Inc.
HUNTER–GATHERER AND AGROPASTORALIST CONTACT: THE EVIDENCE FROM ETHNOGRAPHY AND HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS “Passive,” “harmless,” and “defenseless” are stereotypes that are sometimes used to describe southern African hunter–gatherers in contact situations with pastoralists, agropastoralists, and white settlers. It has often been said that these “remnants of the Stone Age” were intimidated and overwhelmed by technologically more advanced groups that were guilty either of genocide or of driving the hunter–gatherers into marginal territories. While there is no doubt that southern African San were often shamefully and ruthlessly treated, ethnographic and historical records suggest that contact situations sometimes provided positive interaction that benefited all parties. The extent and nature of contact situations varied not only geographically but also through time and this issue has been successfully highlighted by the Kalahari debate. This debate (Wilmsen 1989; Solway and Lee
1990) illustrates the need for cautious interpretation of the southern African hunter– gatherer ethnography, particularly with regard to contact. Historically recorded interactions between hunter–gatherers and agropastoralists include trade and exchange of labor in the form of clientship, intermarriage, and warfare. San are known to have traded ivory, copper, ostrich feathers, ostrich eggshell beads, skins, salt, meat, berries, and firewood for maize, sorghum, tobacco, clay pots, assegai points, knives, axes, and metal rings (Cashdan 1977:128; Gordon 1984:197, 203,207–208; Wilmsen 1989; Wright 1994). San labor was sometimes in the form of clientship (Wilson 1982:63; Guenther 1986) which was usually seasonal: for part of the year, the hunter–gatherers would work for agropastoralists and then revert to hunting and gathering again, often in areas marginal to agricultural activities (Gordon 1984:217–218; Jolly 1994:63; Loubser & Laurens 1994). When working for agropastoralists, the San sometimes lived at kraal sites or amongst rocks near the village (Mac-
205 0278-4165/96 $18.00 Copyright © 1996 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
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quarrie 1962:30), but sometimes they camped 1 or 2 km from the village (Guenther 1986;350). San were used not only as seasonal herders but also as hired hunters and as rainmakers and healers (Macquarrie 1962:28– 30,35; Shostak 1981:215,219; Katz 1982; Guenther 1986:349; Wilmsen 1989; Jolly 1994:63). Assimilation of San by agropastoralists was and still is common. Genetic studies show that Khoisan admixture is present in all Bantu-speaking peoples who have been studied but that the reverse gene flow is almost absent (Jenkins 1986). The usual form of intermarriage has been between San women and Bantu-speaking men (Orpen 1905; Ellenberger and Macgregor 1912; Walton 1956:27; Macquarrie 1962:29; Peires 1981:70), although there are rare examples of San men marrying Bantu-speakers (Wright 1971:66). Attitudes to the intermarriage vary: Kalanga, for example, frown on marrying Basarwa (San) whom they consider inferior (Cashdan 1986:312). On the other hand, there are several records of San women marrying Xhosa or Sotho chiefs (Orpen 1905; Ellenberger & Macgregor 1912, Walton 1956; Macquarrie 1962; Peires 1981:70). There is some ambiguity about the acceptability of the offspring of such marriages, but at least some of the sons of mixed blood were allowed to inherit from their fathers (Walton 1956:27). Interaction between San hunter–gatherers and agropastoralists brought about dramatic social changes in some parts of southern Africa. The accumulation of livestock in the Drakensberg by some San groups, and perhaps by some individual San shamans (Campbell 1987), opened the way for stratification by wealth. Egalitarian structures were undermined in widely separated areas by the appearance of San chiefs (How 1962; Macquarrie 1962:29,35; Guenther 1994; Jolly 1994:38) who wielded power and took over the responsibility for resolving disputes (Macquarrie 1962:35).
Where chiefs were not appointed, agropastoralists sometimes took on the role of mediating hunter–gatherer disputes, so that the agropastoralists became a social resource and a source of information for the hunter–gatherers (Moore 1985:106–108). Moore suggests that these changed social relations came about partly because the sedentary settlements disrupted the hunter–gatherers’ seasonal shifts and particularly their ability to aggregate and disperse (Moore 1985:103,107). Amongst San in the Kalahari, aggregation played a vital role in social and economic life even in the 1970s. Aggregation was a time when important information was exchanged about the condition of the veld and the abundance of resources in neighboring areas. It was also a time when relations gathered together, when there was group hunting and gathering, socializing, making and mending of tools, making and exchanging gifts, marriage brokering, and ritual (Lee 1979:365; Silberbauer 1981:195). I now turn to some archaeological sites in the Magaliesberg, North West Province (formerly known as the north-western Transvaal), to examine the archaeological evidence for contact between hunter– gatherers and agropastoralists. The ethnographic data imply that a multiplicity of contact situations, with evidence for exchange of material culture, food, and labor, may be predicted in southern African archaeological sites. In addition, there may be evidence to suggest that hunter–gatherers were assimilated into agropastoralist societies. We should also expect to find varied intensities of interaction depending on the time depth of the contact and on the abundance of resources. ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FROM THE MAGALIESBERG, NORTH WEST PROVINCE The Pre-contact Period The scale and timing of changes that took
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FIG. 1. The Magaliesberg showing sites mentioned in the text.
place in hunter–gatherer lifeways after contact need to be viewed in the context of the pre-contact situation. Therefore I begin by outlining my interpretation of pre-contact occupation in two Stone Age sites in the Magaliesberg. Jubilee Shelter is on the northern slopes of the Magaliesberg (Fig. 1) in a bushveld environment. Cave James, a few kilometers away, is a hilltop site surrounded by sour grassland. Both sites have long Stone Age sequences (Wadley 1987, 1989), but here I discuss only the midHolocene and more recent occupations. Jubilee Shelter has a suite of dates between 6490 ± 200 B.P. (Wits-1462) and 3100 ± 150 B.P. (Wits-1214), while Cave James has dates of 6130 ± 110 B.P. (Wits-1744) and 3870 ± 50 B.P. (Wits-1383). In Jubilee Shelter the mid-Holocene stone tools comprise a great many formal components, including small segments, backed bladelets, finely worked scrapers, and a variety of groundstone work (Table 1). Formal tools have a high density per volume of deposit (the volume is measured in bucketsful). Local quartz was used but finegrained chert, jaspilite, and chalcedony were imported from outcrops between 20
and 30 km from the shelter. In addition to the stone tools, there are large frequencies of complete and incomplete ostrich eggshell beads, bone points, polished bone TABLE 1 Jubilee Shelter and Cave James: Mid-Holocene Lithic, Shell and Bone Inventories (Abbreviated) Jubilee Scrapers Backed tools Adzes Spokeshaves Awls and reamers Borers Points Miscellaneous retouch Total retouch Groundstone work Cores Flakes Ostrich eggshell (OES) beads Incomplete and broken OES beads OES fragments Decorated OES fragments Bone points and linkshafts Broken bone points and shafts Bone ornaments Buckets of deposit
325 168 40 7 12 34 2 96 684 34 740 32357 97 52 1730 3 22 128 6 240.5
James 27 6 3 1 20 57 1 39 3926
1
26
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LYN WADLEY TABLE 2 Jubilee Shelter Mid-Holocene and Late Holocene Seeds from Edible Plants 6490–3100 B.P.
Underground plants Vangueria infausta Bequaertiodendron sp. Rhus sp. Diospyros lyciodes Grewia sp. (summer and winter spp.) Tapiphyllum parvifolium Euclea sp. Ziziphus mucronataa Sclerocarya birreaa Mimusops sp.a Strychnos pungensa a
1840–1550 B.P.
1350 B.P.
<1350 B.P.
1 1
2 1 1
2
7
1 3 63
8 64 1
25
1 17 2 7 >100 2 3
>100
Autumn and winter fruits.
shafts, bone awls, spatulas, and worked bone fragments that were part of the manufacturing process (Table 1). Clearly Jubilee was the venue for active manufacturing and curation of tools and ornaments. Beads and bead-making debris were concentrated to one side of the hearth, while bone working debris and broken shafts of polished bone concentrated on the opposite side of the hearth. Such formal use of space may imply gender segregation, behavior that, among the Kung of the Kalahari, would be typical of an aggregation phase (Marshall 1976). The Cave James mid-Holocene assemblage is quite different from that in Jubilee; it contains no ornaments or bone tools and few formal stone tools compared with Jubilee (Table 1). The collection of worked stone is large, but is expediently manufactured on local quartz and quartzite with only rare pieces made on siliceous rocks. Jubilee and Cave James are clearly used for different purposes and the seasonal indicators at the sites provide part of the explanation. Autumn/winter fruits are represented in the Jubilee mid-Holocene levels (Table 2), whereas spring/summer-bearing fruits are present in Cave James (Table 3). The Jubilee fauna comprises a wide range of large and small bovids (Table 4; Turner
1986) that were probably hunted, whereas the Cave James faunal collection is small (Table 5) and contains only birds, rodents, and a few small bovids that may have been snared rather than hunted. I believe that the different behavior at the two sites can be best explained using the San model of aggregation and dispersal. Thus the Jubilee mid-Holocene assemblage was probably an autumn/winter aggregation camp, while James was a spring/ TABLE 3 Cave James Mid-Holocene and Late Holocene Seeds from Edible Plants 6200–3200 B.P. Underground plants Landolphia capensis Vangueria infausta Ximenia sp. Bequaertiodendron sp. Diospyros lyciodes Grewia sp. Tapiphyllum parvifolium Rhus lancea Euclea sp. Celtis africana Ozoroa paniculosa Rhoicissus sp. Pappea capensis Ziziphus mucronataa a
x 2
1
<3200 B.P. x 6 8 7 17 247 32 146 26 217 40 50 64 13 2
Autumn or winter fruits; x lots of fragments.
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TABLE 4 Jubilee Shelter Fauna (Total Identifiable Pieces) 6490–3100 B.P.
1840–1550 B.P.
13
15 4 12 1 5 13
Lepus sp. (hare) Hystrix africaeaustralis (porcupine) Procavia capensis (rock hyrax) Equus burchelli (Burchell’s zebra) Phacochoerus aethiopicus (warthog) Suid Aepyceros buselaphus (impala) Damaliscus dorcas (impala) Alcelaphus buselaphus (red hartebeest) Connochaetes gnou (black wildebeest) Connochaetes taurinus Oreotragus oreotragus (klipspringer) Ourebia ourebia (Oribi) Raphicerus campestris (steenbok) Tragelaphus scriptus (bushbuck) Sylvicapra grimmia (common duiker) Redunca fulvorufula (mountain reedbuck) Bovid (Size 1) Bovid (Size 2) Bovid (Size 3) Aves Testudo sp. (tortoise) Pisces
14 7 11 44 7 9 7 3 1 2 9 4 1 20 6 13 11 9 8 462 8
summer dispersal phase camp (Wadley 1987, 1989). I now discuss the changes that took place when Bambata pottery first appeared in Jubilee Shelter, then I turn to the introduction of different Early Iron Age pottery and, lastly, I discuss the final phase of occupation in Jubilee. Cave James contained some undiagnostic pottery implying contact period occupation, but it was not possible to date or seriate the ceramic levels and, therefore, the site will not be discussed further. TABLE 5 Cave James Fauna 6200–3200 B.P. Lepus sp. (hare) Oreotragus oreotragus (klipspringer) Bovid Size 1 Bovid Size 2 Aves
4
<1350 B.P. 7 1 5 3 2
1
3 1
1 3 8 3 4 5 4 7 10 68 7
1 1 2 1 1 4 62 9
1
1
The Bambata Contact Phase Bambata pottery is part of an Early Iron Age tradition (Huffman 1994). At Jubilee there are several decorated sherds and more than 100 undecorated sherds in levels BB to MS (Table 6). Charcoal from Level B is dated 1840 ± 50 B.P. (Wits-1398) while that from Level MS is dated 1550 ± 40 B.P. (Wits1381). Using the Stuiver and Pearson table, these dates calibrate to 225 A.D. and 561 A.D., respectively. The decorated sherds TABLE 6 Jubilee Shelter Pottery
<3200 B.P. 3
1 1
1350 B.P.
1 1 11
Plain bodysherd Decorated bodysherd Plain rim Decorated rim
1840–1550 B.P.
1350 B.P.
<1350 B.P.
110
7
84
4 4 3
1 1
4 5 2
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FIG. 2. Decorated Bambata pottery from Jubilee Shelter.
contain stamped impressions on neck and rim, with occasional incised cross-hatched decoration (Fig. 2). The undecorated sherds have been measured by Campbell (1985); they are thinwalled, measuring between 3.2 and 9 mm, as opposed to measurements of 10 and 11 mm in the post-Bambata levels. Apart from the addition of pottery, the material culture of the Bambata pottery levels (Table 7) is little changed from that in the pre-pottery levels, except that small scrapers have increased to 90% of the retouched tools from 48% in the pre-pottery levels dating between 6590 and 3100 B.P., and the density of retouch is 1.5 pieces in each bucket of deposit compared with the earlier density of 2.8. Ostrich eggshell beads are more numerous in the Bambata than any other level, numbering 196, and there are 55 incomplete beads and beads broken in the course of their manufacture (Table 7). Bone points
and broken polished shaft fragments continue to have high frequencies in the Bambata levels (Table 7). Remains of the autumn/winter marula fruit continue in these levels but a few seeds of spring/summer fruits are included (Table 2). A single sheep bone is present but comment on this must be reserved until the bone has been dated. Medium to large and small bovids occur in similar proportions, and the hunting/snaring pattern seems unchanged from that in the mid-Holocene. There is every reason to believe that the site was still being used as an aggregation site. No Bambata villages have been found in the area but dates of 130 A.D., 140 A.D., and 350 A.D. (Pta-5534, Beta 44965, and Beta 44966, respectively) were obtained from Toteng in Botswana (Huffman 1994). Huffman suggests that Bambata settlements spread from Angola to Botswana in the second and third centuries and that hunter–
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TABLE 7 Jubilee Shelter: Late Holocene Lithic, Shell, and Bone Inventories (Abbreviated from Campbell 1985; Wadley 1987) 1840–1550 B.P. Scrapers Backed tools Adzes Spokeshaves Awls and reamers Borers Miscellaneous retouch Total retouch Flakes Ostrich eggshell (OES) beads Broken and Incomplete OES beads OES fragments Bone points and linkshafts Broken bone points and shafts Buckets of deposit
295 16 2 1
1350 B.P. 7 4
<1350 B.P. 54 1 3
1 2 11 327 8854 196 55 1650 17 140 22375
gatherers acquired the pottery and passed it along their own exchange networks perhaps as far afield as Jubilee Shelter. Early Iron Age Contact Period By 561 A.D., the pottery samples are small and undiagnostic, but in Level RR, dated 1350 ± 120 B.P. (Wits-1399) on charcoal (calibrated to 680 A.D.), an Early Iron Age Phase 2 sherd has been identified (Huffman, personal communication). The sherd has multiple herringbone decoration on neck and shoulder, continuing up to the rim (Fig. 3.1). In contrast with earlier levels, faunal and plant material is scarce by 680 A.D. Amongst the identifiable bone there is only a single medium-sized bovid (Size 2), a suid, and a tortoise (Table 3). The few formal tools in this level mostly comprise small scrapers that are identical to those made before contact. Retouch density is 0.2 pieces per bucket of deposit, representing a considerable decrease compared with the Bambata levels. Ostrich eggshell beads and bone points are also less common than before (Table 7). The Jubilee assemblage no longer fulfils expectations for an aggrega-
1 13 340
4 62 1827
1
25 8 354 2 47 2635
16 8 6175
tion camp and the hunter–gatherers appear to have undergone social change (Wadley 1987). Part of the post-561 A.D. occupation of Jubilee coincides with the Early Iron Age settlement of Broederstroom less than 10 km away (Fig. 1). No early Iron Age settlement has been found in the Highveld grassland south of Broederstroom. Broederstroom settlement began about 350 A.D. and ended around 600 A.D. (Mason 1986). Flaked stone tools and some bored stones were excavated in the village, and Mason (1986:153) comments that some were near huts and others were in “ash lenses” that have been reinterpreted as cattle kraals (Huffman 1993). The Broederstroom stone tools are morphologically identical to those in the contemporaneous Jubilee Shelter assemblage (Fig. 4). Tiny endstruck scrapers are the only retouched tools, with the exception of a single adze. Most of the scrapers are made on chert or chalcedony but there are no cores made from these rock types, suggesting that the scrapers were brought to the village as finished tools. Microwear studies on scrapers have shown that they were used for scraping hides (Binneman 1984), and it is likely that
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FIG. 3. Jubilee Shelter Early and Late Iron Age pottery. 1, Phase 2 Early Iron Age sherd; 2–3, Late Iron Age pottery.
the scrapers at Broederstroom were also used for this purpose. Mason (1986) recorded 1045 ostrich eggshell beads, 3461 “rough cut” ostrich eggshell beads, and over 700 grooved stones, which he believed were used to polish ostrich eggshell beads. The grooves on some of the stones seem too wide to have been used for beads and these stones may have been used to grind the bone points (probably used as arrowheads) and linkshafts of which there were 200. Mason attributed both the beads and the polished bone work to hunter–gatherers; nonetheless, it is possible that Iron Age people made the beads themselves (Huffman, personal communi-
cation). Bead manufacture is prolific by Stone Age standards, suggesting that large scale production took place, perhaps as part of an exchange network. It is noteworthy that the Jubilee Shelter ostrich eggshell bead production decreased at the time that the Broederstroom production flourished. Similarly, the Jubilee faunal sample was impoverished in contrast to the rich Broederstroom faunal sample containing a wide range of wild game. The Broederstroom farmers kept livestock but were reliant on hunting and snaring for their meat supply. Two of the Broederstroom burials may have belonged to non-negroid people (Ma-
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FIG. 4. Stone tools from Broederstroom and Olifantspoort 1–6, Scrapers from Broederstroom; 7–9, Abraded stone flakes from Olifantspoort.
son 1986), but the fact that at least one of these burials was in a cattle kraal, which would have been used for high status burials (Hammond-Tooke 1974:327), makes it unlikely that hunter–gatherers or people of mixed ancestry would have been buried there. If the interpretation of non-negroid genes is correct, then the burial may have been of a man of mixed blood, the son from a marriage involving a Khoisan woman. Sometimes, as was previously mentioned, sons of mixed blood may be incorporated without prejudice into the agropastoral kinship system, but this may not have been possible in all farming societies. Late Iron Age Contact Period After 680 A.D., in the undated levels, most pottery is undecorated and thick. Two decorated sherds are illustrated (Figs. 3.2
and 3.3). Small scrapers continue to dominate the lithic assemblage, forming 87% of the retouched tools. Density of retouch remains low with 0.2 pieces per bucket of deposit, and ostrich eggshell beads and bone points have low frequencies (Table 7). The plant food collecting pattern has also changed: in addition to marula and other autumn/winter fruits, summer fruits are common and it seems that the shelter occupants changed their former seasonal mobility to remain in the area for longer periods. Although bovids dominated the fauna in the Bambata levels, they are almost absent in the uppermost levels where only mountain reedbuck and the common duiker persist. Micromammalian evidence (Avery 1987) suggests that grass cover may have become reduced by the upper levels and the veld may have become degraded. Mystromys albicaudatus, the white-tailed rat that requires dense grass cover, declines in
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the upper levels compared with levels occupied at and before 680 A.D. Late Iron Age settlement may then be associated with overgrazing, whereas this was not the case during Early Iron Age occupation. This final phase of hunter–gatherer occupation at Jubilee is considerably impoverished compared with previous levels, and the shelter seems to document the demise of hunter– gatherers in the area. The influx into the North West Province of farmers practicing Late Iron Age traditions may have been responsible for the dramatic changes that took place in the undated levels of Jubilee Shelter after 680 A.D.. Farming settlement began on a large scale (Maggs 1984:348) and stone-walled Late Iron Age settlements are common in the Magaliesberg (and elsewhere in the North West Province). One of these, which is unexcavated, is less than 500 m from Jubilee Shelter. In the Late Iron Age settlement of Olifantspoort, much of which dates to the early Nineteenth Century, the ash heaps produced thousands of stone artifacts in all stages of manufacture but few ostrich eggshell beads (Mason 1986:211,445,465). Small scrapers of the kind found at Broederstroom are absent; instead, there are many large, sidestruck flakes with heavily abraded, abrupt edges (Fig. 4). These tools do not resemble anything at Jubilee and are quite foreign to any LSA assemblage. Binneman (1988:309) examined the abraded edges of one of the tools and suggested that all the features pointed to hide working. DISCUSSION Three separate contact phases are discernible in Jubilee Shelter: first the Bambata, then post Bambata Early Iron Age, and finally the Late Iron Age. In the Bambata levels hunter–gatherer life seems to have been little changed by the introduction of pottery. There is no reason to suspect that the seasonal pattern of ag-
gregation and dispersal proposed for the pre-225 A.D. levels was disturbed by these innovations. On the one hand, the type of contact that seems to have taken place c. 225 A.D.–561 A.D. may be indirect, that is, the hunter–gatherers obtained ceramics and livestock through their own exchange networks reaching as far as places like Toteng in Botswana (Huffman 1994). If, despite the current lack of evidence, Bambata settlements did exist in the North West Province, then the contact between the farmers and hunter–gatherers seems to have been cooperative, transitory, and perhaps restricted to trade or exchange. Between 561 A.D. and 680 A.D., the situation is different and there is evidence of Early Iron Age settlement at Broederstroom not far from Jubilee Shelter. While it is possible that farmers made their own ostrich eggshell beads, the stone tools seem to have been manufactured by hunter–gatherers who brought ready made scrapers to the village for processing hides. This seems to be evidence for cooperative interaction between the farmers and hunter–gatherers and it is possible that a client relationship was operating. Furthermore, hunter– gatherers may have been commissioned to help with the hunt but there is currently no way of establishing this. The reduced numbers of large bovids in Jubilee by the Late Iron Age contact period implies that there was some change in hunting strategies: the villagers’ meat needs may have been in competition with those of hunter– gatherers, but it is not until after the influx of Late Iron Age settlements that this competition dramatically changed hunting patterns in Jubilee Shelter. The changes wrought at Jubilee Shelter when Broederstroom was occupied suggest that the shelter was being used by people whose livelihood had changed considerably from that a few centuries earlier. Evidence for aggregation is absent and the site was occupied for at least some part of summer as well as in winter. Hunter–gatherer
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mobility patterns were thus quite different from those in previous times. This evidence is critical for pointing to amicable, symbiotic relationships between the hunter– gatherers and the farmers. Quite clearly hunter–gatherers welcomed the presence of the Broederstroom village and changed their mobility pattern in order to remain near it. If this were not the case then the Jubilee inhabitants would have continued to make their summer forays into the sour grassland regions where there was no Early Iron Age settlement. Although the precise nature of the hunter–gatherer and farmer interaction is not clear, the changes at Jubilee Shelter suggest increased dependence of the hunter–gatherers on the Iron Age village causing their aggregation and dispersal patterns to be disturbed. As Moore (1985) suggests, the agropastoralists may have become a social resource for the hunter–gatherers. The Iron Age village may have become a substitute for the Stone Age aggregation camp; in addition to secure food supplies, it may have offered information and mediation. Intermarriage may also have taken place and the non-negroid human remains at Broederstroom may be evidence for this. The lack of domestic carbohydrates in Jubilee Shelter suggests that any food passed to the hunter–gatherers was consumed close to the Iron Age village. When traditional options declined and new kinship ties were established with assimilated hunter–gatherers, there may have been an increase in the frequency and length of visits to agricultural settlements (Hall 1990:246–247). The paucity and low density of material culture items in Jubilee suggests that after Late Iron Age contact occupations were ephemeral, perhaps involving only small groups. Data from Late Iron Age sites such as Olifantspoort suggest that there was minimal contact with hunter– gatherers. Later Stone Age scrapers were no longer used for hide processing; this task was instead undertaken with edge-abraded
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flakes made by farmers themselves. There is no evidence to suggest that hunter– gatherers ever went to Olifantspoort, and the data from Jubilee Shelter suggest that there may have been few hunter–gatherers in the area at the time. The demise of hunter–gatherers in the area was imminent and may have been exacerbated by the spread of Iron Age settlement into the sour grassland south of the Magaliesberg and by increasing degradation of the veld. Jubilee Shelter is not the only site showing the breakdown of hunter–gatherer communities in the area. Many tiny shelters in the North West Province and Gauteng (formerly known as part of the southern Transvaal), most of which were not occupied until a few hundred years ago, show signs of ephemeral occupation (Wadley 1987). Other examples of changing South African hunter–gatherer and agropastoralist interaction through time come from the Thukela Basin of KwaZulu-Natal and the eastern Free State. Mazel suggests that between 1000 A.D. and 1800 A.D., material culture in the Thukela Basin moved only from the farming communities to the hunter–gatherers, whereas before 1000 A.D. items were exchanged between the communities (Mazel 1989:150). The North West Province situation may be similar because there is no evidence for Stone Age artifacts in sites such as Olifantspoort. In the eastern Free State, Thorp (personal communication) is also examining the contact period and has found that pottery and domesticates predate settlement by several hundred years. Furthermore, some of the eastern Free State hunter–gatherers may have been producing their own pottery, a grasstempered variety similar to that produced in the Seacow Valley where Sampson (1989) documented hunter–gatherer, pastoralist, and European contact. The Jubilee sequence containing three phases of contact with agropastoralists illustrates the complexity of the interaction, and the potential for a variety of responses,
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between farming and foraging peoples. In the initial stage of contact, when only exchange through hunter–gatherer networks is inferred, there was no change to the seasonal patterns of aggregation and dispersal. When farming populations settled and increased in the area, the impact on hunter– gatherer life intensified: aggregation and dispersal patterns disappeared and were presumably replaced by interaction with Iron Age villages that may have involved clientship and even intermarriage. The complexity of contact situations in the Magaliesberg is likely to have been greater than I have indicated here, but many responses may remain undetected because, at present, archaeological resolution is not sufficiently fine-grained. The contact period is a rich area for research and further work may yield evidence of some of the social interactions discussed at the beginning. Currently there is no evidence in the Magaliesberg for contact involving aggression between hunter– gatherers and agropastrolists. If there was aggression then I predict that it would most likely have taken place during the Late Iron Age when the land was densely occupied, when overgrazing set in and resources became scarce. Evidence from Jubilee and Broederstroom suggests that a symbiotic relationship existed between hunter– gatherers and farmers who lived in Early Iron Age villages. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank B. Ward for drawing Fig. 1, and I am grateful to T. N. Huffman and S. L. Hall for reading the first draft of the paper and for useful discussions. I also thank the two reviewers of this paper for their helpful comments.
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