MAPUNGUBWE RECONSIDERED: Exploring beyond the rise and decline of the Mapungubwe state

INSTITUTE FDA STRATEGIC REFlECTlO .

Frontiers and interaction Simon Hal l, Seki ba kib a Lekgoa thi , Ka rim Sadr, Da vi d Pea rc e & Al ex Sc hoeman

I ntrod uction

The studies tabu lated in the previous chapter

form the foundation of our understand ing of

the formation of Mapungubwe society. Racist

interpretations dominated the work of Gardner

(1963) and Galloway (1937; 1958), but others

acknowledged that Mapungubwe Hill was the

core of a pre-colonial African civilisation (see

Schofield 1937; Eloff 1985) More recent work

recognises that Mapungubwe comprised of

people from mUlt iple origins, including hunter­

gatherers, pastoralists and farmers. This chapter

highlights insights gained from stud ies exploring

interaction in other parts of southern Africa

and then reflects on interaction in the Shashe­

Limpopo Confiuence Area and surrounds.

Hunter-gatherers and their way of life

Archaeologists have found that the first people

to live in southern Africa were hunter-gatherers

who made their living by gathering wi ld plant

foods and by hunting wild animals. According to

Simon Ha ll (Smith & Ha ll 2000) and Nick Wa lker

(1994, 1995a, b & 1998), smal l numbers of hunter­

gatherers began inhabiting the region around the

Shashe-Limpopo Confiuence Area (hereafter SLCA)

around 10000 - 15 000 years ago. She lters were

also ritua l sites as is shown by the hunter-gatherer

art in the shelters (e.g . Eastwood and Cnoops 1999;

Eastwood and Blundell 1999; Eastwood 2003) We

do not know the group affiliation of these hunter­

gatherers. It is possible that they are ancestra l to

either the Eastern Khoe San or the Shashi San (Fish

1998)

Similar to the hunter-gatherers in other parts

of southern Africa, the hunter-gatherers of the

SLCA were in all probabi lity organised in family­

based groups that changed in size from a few

members to a fairly sizeable group, depending on

the movements of people across the landscape.

This variation in group size has been attributed

by some archaeologists to the seasonal migration

of large antelopes such as elands. As the elands

migrated to the mountains during the summer

the hunter-gatherers would follow them the re

and organise themselves in larger bands, but they

then spl it into smal ler units in w inter when the

animals moved to lower-lying regions to the east.

However, other archaeologists maintain that there

was enough food in the mountains throughout

the year and therefore the hunter-gatherers would

have lived there all-year round (cf. Wright & Mazel

2012: 16-19).

An important feature of hunter-gatherer societies

throughout the world was the division of work

between men and women. Whereas hunting

was the prerogative of men, women spent most

of their time gathering plant foods such as fru its,

24 Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Ref l ection MI )TRA)

•

Glass trade beads from K2. These were often melted down and remade into larger beads (Copyright University of Pretoria)

berries, wild spinaches and small animals. This

was also true of the hunter-gatherers in the

uKhahlamba. While meat from t he hunt was a

vital and highly prized source of protein, the plant

foods gathered by women probably constit uted

the greater pa rt of their nutrition. Thus, for a

hunter-gatherer society to have sufficient food

and to function as cohesive unit s, men and

women spent most of their t ime perfo rming their

gendered roles for t he common good of their

groups (Wadley 1996, 2000; Wright & Mazel 2012:

19)

Hunte r-gatherer men were highly skilled hunters;

they used bows and arrows as well as traps to kill

a wide range of an imals such as dassies, hares,

bush pigs, warthog s, porcupines and different

kinds of antelopes, including the eland. They also

caught f ish in the rivers in the area. The bones

of meat-eat ing animals such as jacka ls, leopards,

lions, wildcats, mongooses and otters have also

been excavated from different sites. While some of

these carnivores we re probab ly hunted for food,

archaeologists have speculated that some of these

anima ls may have been central to the hunter­

gatherers' rituals and religion.

• ~ ..

, ~ , ..

I

! . -'" " ,~, .-•

Indian red glass beads were common throughout the Indian Ocean trade system (Copyright University of Pretoria)

Arriva l of pastoralism

The development of new economies based upon

pasto ralism and mixed farming fundamentally

altered the outlook for hunter-gatherers. The

conventional view in southern African pre­

colonial history has been that the first shift in

hunter-gatherer occupat ions was the result of the

arrival of pastoralists. The herding way of li fe (and

associated technologies such as ceramics) was

spread sout hwards from the Zambezi basin about

2000 yea rs ago by Khoekhoe-speakers, a group

of autochthonous 'Khoisan'who had come into

contact with Bantu-speaking farmers and herders

who themselves were drifting southwards from

East Africa. I n close contact, so the story goes, the

Khoekhoe-speakers learned the art of herding and

ceramic manufacture, obtained small livestock and

became pastoral ists.

In due time, they started to move sout h and west

away from the Bantu-speakers in search of fresh

pastures. Eventually they reached the south and

west coasts of the sub-continent, where they co­

existed with local non-Khoe-speaking 'San' hunter­

gatherers (e.g. Elphick 1977, 1985; Smith 1992,

2005). An early debate was about whether the

Mapungubwe Reconsidered 2S

,

4" I 1#

...

Khoekhoe and the San mingled and assimilated

one another in the south-western Cape, or

whether they maintained their separate identi ties

and economies (Schrire & Deacon 1989; Smith et

al. 1991), but archaeologists were agreed that, to

begin with, there had indeed been a migration of

Khoekhoe herders into lands of the San peop le.

In the eastern half of the subcontinent, where the

Bantu-speaking farmer-herders were spreading

southwards, the debate amongst scholars

centred on whether, and to what extent, the

autochthonous San hunter-gatherers became low­

class members of the farmer communities as they

became engulfed by the newcomers (e.g. Wi lmsen

& Denbow 1990; Solway & Lee 1990). There is

agreement that by the late twentieth centu ry

the autochthonous San and their way of life had

been decimated throughout the subcontinent

by immigrant farmers and herders - by the

Khoekhoe, Bantu-speakers or Europeans.

But this early scho larly debate had some problems

with it The sub-text in this discourse is the

helplessness of the autochthones, who were

portrayed as neither able to res ist nor adapt to

new technologies and ways of life. It also harps on

the idea that technological advances and complex

economies and social organisations had to be

imported from the north as the autochthones,

living in 'the land that time forgot' at the bottom of

Africa, could only ever be recipients of innovations

and never innovators themselves.

Over the past two or three decades, however,

new excavations, surveys and re-examinations of

evidence have shown that this conventional view

is in need of revision.

The principal objection to the conventional

explanation for the arriva l of the first livestock

on the west coast of South Africa has been the

absence of material evidence for the sudden

appearance of a new population of herders in that

landscape around 2000 years ago. Archaeologists

can detect the arriva l of new popu lations and

ways of life fairly easily if a reasonable sample of

sites in the landscape in question is appropriately

surveyed, excavated and ana lysed. Such fie ldwork

on the west coast only showed continuity rather

than a radical change in material cultures across

the BClCE chronological boundary, even if there

was clearly an addition of sma ll amounts of loca lly

manufactured earthenware ceramics and some

bones of sheep and cattle amongst the rema ins

of hunted animals on sites of the last 2000 years

(e.g . Sadr 2003, 2008). The proposed alternative

was that livestock had reached the west coast

by a process of diffusion, with sheep, cattle and

the new technology of ceramic manufacture

being passed down the line from one group of

autochthonous hunter-gatherers to t he next, in

much the same way that, from the seventeenth

century onwards, horses had spread from Mexico

throughout North America without the help of

accompanying Spanish cavalry.

However, at an international colloquium on the

Khoekhoe and the origins of herding in southern

Africa that brought together specialists from

the fields of archaeology, history, linguistics,

ethnography, physical anthropology and genetic

studies, academics reached the conclusion

that although the conventional view of a folk

migration of Khoekhoe-speakers indeed lacked

supporting evidence, a pure diffusion model

was equally unlikely as it did not fit the linguistic

and ethnographic evidence (e.g. Barnard 2008;

Guldemann 2008). A more synthetic view pointed

towards a process of infiltration or percolation

from perhaps as far as East Africa by smal l groups

of Khoe-speaking herders, who at each step of the

way along their centuries- long southward drift,

mingled with autochthonous non-Khoe hunter­

gatherers. By the time livestock had reached the

west coast, their accompanying herders were

a thoroughly hybridised popu lation, whose

materia l culture and perhaps physiognomy was

ind istinguishable from autochthonous San hunter­

gatherers, and who could not be described as

pastora lists so much as hunters-with-sheep; but

who had retained much of the language and

perhaps kinship system of their original proto­

Khoe ancestors. Such a drawn-out process of

continuous assimilation could indeed expla in the

lack of evidence for the arrival of an immigrant

26 Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection MISTRA

The site of K2 with Bambandyanalo in the background (Alex Schoeman)

pastoral population on the west coast, whilst

explaining the presence of livestock and the

Khoekhoe language in that area .

In terms of interactions and frontiers, then, it

seems that the introduction of the first herds of

livestock to southern Africa involved no Clearly

delineated frontier between two populations

and no coherent process of folk migration, but

rather a process of inAltration and progressive

hybridisation (or percolation, see Fauvelle-Aymar

2008). Such a process involved small, drifting

groups of hunter-herders who had retained a clear

language and kinship structure, but who had also

adopted much from local cultures.

First farmers 500 - 1000 CE:

interaction and exchange

The arrival of the Arst grain and livestock farmers,

however, formed part of a more clearly divided

frontier. Grain farming was introduced by African

farmers into southern Africa about 2000 years

ago and formed the basis for new ways of living

in the subcontinent (Hall 1987: 1). It led to the

estab lishment of more permanent villages in

place of the nomad ic camps of the hunter­

gatherer bands that had moved seasonally from

place to place for thousands of years. Unlike

their predecessors, who lived off what the land

naturally provided, the new communities changed

their environment: they chopped down t rees

and burned clearings in the woodlands to make

fie lds where they planted crops. The first farmers

only arrived in the SLCA in around 900 CE, but

processes of interaction and exchange between

hunter-gatherers and farmers were well under

way by then. In fact, until around 900 CE, the SLCA

may have been a place where hunter-gatherers

cou ld distance th em selves from farmers w ith

the new patterns of exchange and changing

social and cultural relations that their presence

entailed. Before looking at the relations between

farmers and hunter-gatherers at the SLCA. it is

Mapungubwe Reconsidered 27

worth considering the changes that had occurred

elsewhere in the region, during centuries of

economic, social and cultural exchange, by

looking at the archaeological record left behind.

There is a fascinating hint about the interaction

between hunter-gatherers and fa rmers at

Broederstroom. This site is located on the fiats to

the south ofthe Magal iesberg and was the site

of an early first millennium CE farmer homestead.

During his excavations of the site, Revil Mason

recovered hunter-gatherer microl ithic scrapers

from the cattle enclosures, but made no mention

of scraper manufacturing debris. The implication is

that hunter-gatherers went to farmer homesteads

with readymade scrapers to work on anima l hides.

The presence ofthese tools in cattle byres, if

correct, raises interesting questions about where

hunter-gatherers were allowed to go when they

were within the boundaries of farmer homesteads.

This has implications for the conceptual definition

of space (see Madikwe points below). Alternatively,

the scrapers may have been used by farmers

themselves.

The impact of interaction between hunter­

gatherers and farmers in the Magaliesberg to

the north was more disruptive than the initial

interaction at Broederstroom. The Magaliesberg

area constituted an important location for the

interface between hunter-gatherers and first

millennium farmers, and the evidence shows that

by 1300 CE, hunter-gatherers, or hunter-gatherer

'materia l culture' had decayed and disappeared

from shelters in this area . Wadley (1996), who

considered the changes that took place at the

Jubilee and Good Hope shelters, shows that

the presence of farmers in the Magaliesberg

progressively disrupted, and led to t he breakdown

of, seasona l mobility patterns. This disrupted

critica lly important socia l functions linked to

the Valley Bushveld in order to better coordinate

mutually beneficial exchanges with farmers. The

key to t his interaction is possibly premised on the

fact that hunter-gatherers were not necessarily

spatially encapsulated or hemmed in by farmers.

Farmers preferred to establish their homesteads

in the low-lying bushveld, but seasonally took

their cattle to graze in the higher-up grassland

surrounding their settlements. This al lowed

hunter-gatherers to live close to farmers but have

the seasonal/spatial security of being ab le to

retreat to areas beyond the farmer frontier (Mazel

1989)

The recovery of ostrich eggshell beads (OES) from

early farmer settlements potentially elaborates

this scenario because ostrich shell was ava il able

only from the more open habitats away from

these valleys. Additiona lly, OES beads on these

sites must have been acquired through exchange,

because there is little evidence that they were

manufactured on site. Hunter-gatherers may have

supplied beads, perhaps on a seasona l basis, when

they'retreated'from farmer homesteads in the

Thu kela Basin .

What is very clear in this period is that technology

could spread far and wide. Pottery made by

farmers has been found at hunter-gatherer sites

far from farmer settlements and ostrich eggshell

beads have been found in farmer settlements

without any evidence that hunter-gatherers

lived nearby. By exchanging techno logy, hunter­

gatherers and farmers were also in some ways

sharing aspects of their cultures - ostrich eggshe ll

beads for example may have been worn or used

in similar ways by both groups. But both groups

still also held onto their own identities and wou ld

also have attached different meanings to the items

they exchanged.

the aggregation and dispersal phases of hunter- There were also significant shi fts in the types of

gatherer bands. tools used by hunter-gatherers. The frequency

of adzes, used fo r wood-work, declined while

Another response is visible in the excavated the re lative frequency of scrapers, used for hide

sequences in the Thukela Basin. The material found working, increased. The implicat ion is that hunter-

suggests that first millennium Later Stone Age gatherers were specifically modifying their tool -

occupations may have actually intensified within kits in response to farmer needs/contracts. The

28 Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection MISTRA}

tool-kit consequently becomes more specific or

specialised in its labour focus.

If adze technology ultimately refers back to

female labour, i.e. digging stick manufacture and

ma intenance, and scrapers to a male focus on hide

working, then the emphasis on scrapers at the

expense of adzes equally infers a shift in the social/

gendered division of labour. The material shift has

potentially important implications for the whole

social process that underpinned lithic technology

and use in al l its stages. Additionally, this may infer

a decl ine in the importance of wild carbohydrates

and the replacement of domesticated cereal

acquired through labour/exchange interactions.

The changing technology suggests that women's

ro le in society was changing in an important way.

This close interaction between hunter-gatherers

and farmers did not simply lead to new types of

work or economic exchange for hunter-gatherers.

It seems that it may also have led to a fundamental

shift in the gendered division of labour, and even

in the way that hunter-gatherer women were

valu ed.

Whereas hunter-gatherers in the Tukela Basin

and Broederstroom established close ties with

farmers, those on the edges of the northern

Mopane veldt, north of the SLCA, moved away

from areas suitable for farming. After the start of

Ivory fragments from K2 (Copyright University of Pretoria)

the first Millennium CE there was an increase in the

number of shel ters in the SLCA region occupied by

hunter-gatherers. This rapid increase suggests that

new groups of hunter-gatherers had moved into

the area. Simultaneously, hunter-gatherers moved

away from northern margins of the Mopane

veldt, where the habitat is more suitable to mixed

farm ing (Walker 1995a). This population shift

might ind icate a response by hunter-gatherers to

the ecological and economic impacts associated

with the arrival of mixed farmers. A sudden

population increase in the northern margins of

the Mopane veldt, combined with the impact of

herds of cattle, would have placed more pressure

on wild plant foods and grazing. Increased stress

on grazing, combined with more intensive game

hunting would have depleted the resources on

which hunter-gatherers relied, and thus forced

them to move to the SLCA where resources were

still abundant.

Moving away, however, was not the regional norm.

Other intermediate forms of interaction took

place between hunter-gatherers and incoming

Bantu-speaking herder-farmers in the Limpopo

basin (e.g. Sadr 2005) In the Metsemothlaba

valley in south-eastern Botswana, for example,

a long archaeological sequence in rock shelter

sites around the village ofThamaga shows three

variants of interact ion with incoming farmer-

Mapungubwe Reconsidered 29

herders (Sadr & Plug 2001; Sadr 2002) Initially,

around the turn of the second millennium CE,

contact and interaction seems to have taken place

with farmer-herders in villages from five to ten

kilometres away. At one rock shelter, a number of

shards of pots from the farming community and

a few bones of livestock are al l that document

the presence of fa rmer-herders in the landscape.

However, an apparent increase in productive

activity at the rock shelter (evidenced by the .

increase in fiint-knapping, minerals used for

decoration, and wild animal bones left behind

at the site) indicates the hunter-gatherers' eager

response to this new opportunity for exchange

and interaction with immigrants, who presumably

provided a new social and economic resource for

the hunters to exploit.

Evidence from excavations at the Saltpan and

Little Muck rock shelters in t he SLCA-Soutpansberg

landscape suggest that here, similar to the

Magaliesberg, the in itia l hyperactive state in

hunter-gatherer productivity was eventually

followed by loss of traditional material culture, and

ultimate assimilation.

The Soutpansberg looms large on the outer

margins of the Mopaniland fiats that characterise

the central SLCA Located about 80km south of the

Limpopo River, the Soutpansberg was relatively

prime habitat for mixed farmers, and a number of

Happy Rest homesteads have been located close

by. Excavations at an open camp and a rock shelter

at the Saltpan in the Soutpansberg documented

the clear co-presence of first millennium CE hunter­

gatherers, herders and early farmers.

The dynamics of this interaction can be tracked

through material culture, such as stone tools. One

of the types of stone tools commonly used as a

proxy for interaction intensity is scrapers. These

tools are associated with hide working, and it has

been suggested that hunter-gatherers traded

worked animal hides for grains and other domestic

foodstuffs. The frequency of scrapers in the lower

unit of the Saltpan Rock Shelter is exceptionally

high. This correla tes with Happy Rest ceramics

and infers specia list hunter-gatherer hide working

as clients for neighbouring farmers. In the upper

Saltpan Shelter unit with Eiland and Icon ceramics,

the scraper frequency drops off Significantly, and

indicates a Significant decline in hunter-gatherer

occupation/use of t he shelter after 1000 CEo

Similarly, increases in tool frequencies were noted

in the SLCA where worked bone, shell, ochre,

and especially, microlithic scraper frequencies are

spectacula rly high in units dated through ce ram ic

associations to the Bambata, Happy Rest and

Zhizo phases. However, there appears to be no

convincing evidence in the Shashe-Limpopo core

area for early farmer homesteads, and some of the

Happy Rest cera mics that have been recovered

come from hunter-gatherer contexts. This

suggests that the SLCA core area might have been

aVOided by the early farmers. The absence of early

farming community settlement in the nearby SLCA

in this period suggests that this area remained a

hunter-gatherer controlled landscape in the initial

period after the arrival of the first farmers.

First farmers in the SLCA

The first farmer homesteads in the area contain

Zhizo ceramics from 900 CEo These farming

communities established their capital at Schroda,

nearthe Limpopo River (Hanisch 1980, 1981;

also see Figure 3). Glass beads found at Schroda

suggest that this community was involved in long

distance trade.

On first glance, the area does not seem to have

been very favourable for farmers. The rainfall at

this time was low, similar to the present range

of between 350 and 500 mm per annum (Smith

2005). But clearly this-low rainfall did not preclude

successful agricultural endeavours. According to

Smith (2005), exploitation of wet areas amongst

rocky outcrops and tributaries, and other creative

farming, could have contributed to some

agricultural success. The population at Schroda

may have been only 300 to 500 people (Huffman

2000), and this small population would not have

required a large agricultural surplus.

Excavations at Little Muck, Balerno Main shelter

30 Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection ( STRA)

•

Aerial view of Mapungubwe Hill (Copyright University of Pretoria)

(BMS) and Tshisiku shelters in the SLCA were initiated in order to investigate interaction between hunter-gatherer campsites near large Zhizo, Leokwe and K2 settlements, as well as the interaction between farmers and hunter-gathers based at more remote sites. Through ceramics, the layers in these shelters were associated with Zhizo, K2, Mapungubwe and possibly historic nineteenth century Venda deposits.

The archaeology at Little Muck suggested that control over the area, and associated balance of power, started to shift after the arrival offa rming communities who made Zhizo pots. The Zhizo layer at Little Muck shelter is especially rich in scrapers. Significantly, the Zhizo (900 CE) occupation is the first stable farmer settlement of the basin. The scraper frequencies indicate intensive levels of hide working using technologies conventionally associated with hunter-gatherers. The implication is that hunter­gatherers worked and produced hides for farmers rather than simply for their own needs. In the

process the shelter may have become a workshop for hunter-gathers rather than a domestic

residence alone.

After this first phase of intense interaction, hunter­gatherer technologies abruptly disappear and yet deposition in the Little Muck shelter continues. There are a rela tively large number of K2 and Mapungubwe ceramics, metal fragments and glass trade beads (Hall & Smith 2000)

A number of scenarios may account for this. Most favoured is the appropriation of the shelter by farmers for ritual purposes. Although difficult to date, many Mankala gaming boards and smoothed hollows on the sandstone slabs in front of Little Muck Shelter in the SLCA - 80km north of Saltpan Shelter - may be associated with the K2 and Mapungubwe phases. These may be linked (through ethnographic analogy) specifically to ritualised male 'gaming: The same boards are found and recorded by Schoeman, especially around natural rock tanks on rain-making hi lls (i.e. EH hill and M3S) in the vicinity (Schoeman 2006). The interpretation of the Little Muck sequence is that farmers appropriated the shelter for their own ritual needs. This potentially taps into the

Mapungubwe Reconsidered 31

secluded, 'liminal' nature of the site and the

redolence there of hunter-gatherer'power over

nature'that was a critical 'ingredient' in the efficacy

of farmer rituals of transformation. This scenario

resonates with the character of hunter-gatherer

'first-comers' as ritually adept at living within

'nature' and therefore having the ability to assert

control over it. This does not imply that hunter­

gatherers were physically present. but what was

of importance for farmers was their essence. The

overall interpretation of the Litt le Muck sequence

is intense ly 'Koppytoffian: meaning that it focuses

on the progressive subordination of hunter­

gatherers within an increasingly domesticated

and hierarchically layered landscape. Interaction

within the Zhizo phase was potentially mutually

beneficial, but hunter-gatherers were conceptually

defined within a subordinate status.

The archaeological sequence at other shelters,

such as the BMS and Tshisiku shelters, follows

different trajectories. BMS is occupied until the end

of the Mapunguwbe era - 1300 CE, whereas the

Tshisiku shelter occupation abruptly ends soon

after the first farmers move into the region. There,

different patters suggest that there was not a

uniform hunter-gatherer response to the arrival of

farmers in the SLCA, but rather a range of strategic

choices (Hall & Smith 2000; Van Doornum 2000,

2005,2007; Forssman 2010, 201l).

The establishment of the the K2 polity and Mapungubwe state 1000 - 1300 CE

In about 1000 CE a new capita l was established at

K2, located at the base of Bambadyanalo Hill. It

seems that the capital was established by a new

group of people who expanded their territory,

which previously was restricted to south-western

Zimbabwe. Their networks of interaction can be

traced through the designs on pottery with a

pattern known as 'Leopard's Kopje:

K2 was occupied between 1000 and 1220 CE

(Meyer 1980, 1998, 2000). In this period commoner

sites were scattered in the river valleys (Huffman

2000). The extent of the coastal trade also

increased, as did the size of the polity under the

control of the K2 leaders (Huffman 1986). The

K2 capital was much larger than Schroda, with

about 1 SOO people. Such a large capital and the

people living in the valley would have required

the production of a large agricultural surplus. The

crop farmers could no longer rely on rainfall alone

to produce a large surplus. It is at this time that

agricultural intensification strategies, floodpla in

agriculture, and cattle transhumance developed

(Smith & Hall 1999; Huffman 2000; Smith 2005).

This new strategy involved the movement of

livestock around to offset the seasonal availability

of water and vegetation (Smith 2005; Smith et al.

2007,2010). These new agro-pastoral strategies,

however, did not remove the need for rain.

The new farmers were not the only farmers on

the landscape. Some of the first farmers also

remained behind in the SLCA, and continued to

produce Zhizo related ceramics, into which they

incorporated 'Leopard's Kopje' elements. Calabrese

named this new style 'Leokwe' (Calabrese 2000a,

2000b). Hunter-gatherers were also still present.

During the 200-year occupation, society

underwent political, economic and ritual changes.

These changes eventually became incongruous

with the settlement pattern informed by the old

ideologies. The new ideology was materialised

when K2 was abandoned for Mapungubwe, less

than a kilometre away. There was already a K2

occupation at its base (Meyer 1998). In a dramatiC

materialisation of the new order, the el ite now

moved onto t he hill itself (Huffman 1986).

The interpretations of who lived on top of

Mapungubwe and who was buried there vary.

The traditional view is that the hilltop was

the residence of prominent members of the

community (see Meyer 1998), or members of the

royal family (Huffman 1986, 1996, 2000) More

Mapungubwe residential remains were found at

the base of the hill. These can be classed into two

types: elite and commoner (Meyer 1980, 1998,

2000; Huffman 1982, 1986,2000). Huffman (2000)

32 Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection KA

estimated that about 5000 people resided at the Mapungubwe capital.

In addition to residential features, a burial area was found in the centre of the hill. The rema ins of three adults, two male and one female, were found in graves containing gold beads and other golden objects such as a golden sceptre, a golden bowl and golden rhino fragments (Meyer 2000). The fact that it is only these graves that contain such prestige objects indicates significant social stratification. The remains of at least 29 other individuals were excavated (steyn & Nienaber 2000).

Mapungubwe Hill was aband9ned at the end of the thirteenth century. Huffman (2000) argues that this was due to climatic factors, in particular a drop in temperature. On the other hand, Smith (2005; Smith et al. 2007) contends that the disintegration of the Mapungubwe state could not be due to climatic factors, as rainfall was above 500 mm per annum and the temperature ranged between about 19 and 22'C. Other factors, perhaps socia l or economic, would have to explain the decline of Mapungubwe. After the elite left Mapungubwe Hill, the SLCA became deserted. Both farmers and hunter-gatherers left. This move by the hunter­gatherers suggests that they had establ ished an enduring, mutually beneficial re lationship with the farmers. Consequently, there was no reason for them to remain in the valley when the farmers left.

The K2 and Mapungubwe parts of the little Muck sequence suggest that hunter-gatherers were increasingly physically marginalised (Hall & Smith 2000). Forssman's (2010, 2011) survey

in the immediate surrounds of Mapungubwe, howeve r, suggests that the arrival of the farmer­herders around the turn of the second millennium

brought the autochthones out of their shelters and camps on the rocky outcrops, down into the open landscape around the villages, where presumably more intensive interaction took place. Evidence suggests that at the height of Mapungubwe's occupation, hunter-gatherer occupations had shifted to a few shelters, such as Balerno Main shelter which was located close

to farming homesteads. The archaeological data suggests that these la rger shelters were occupied year round, which might indicate a decreased level of seasonal mobility (Van Doornum 2005). Thus, while some hunter-gatherers moved away from farmers, others chose to live closer to the farming landscape. Additional forms of interaction are also evident in the Mapungubwe landscape, notably in the crucial role played by hunter-gatherers' autochthones in rain-making rituals, as evidenced by Schoeman's (2006) surveys and excavations in this landscape.

Evidence from Calabrese's work and others

suggest that people using 'Leokwe' pottery, who were descendants of the first farmers in the area, and possibly became a different ethnic group to those using 'Leopards Kopje' or'K2' pottery, replaced hunter-gatherers as a second tier subordinate 'class: It is possible that 'creole' identities developed in this area, as different groups became politically subordinated by the elite based at K2 and, later on, Mapungubwe. This second phase of contact and interaction, dating to the post-Mapungubwe period, generally saw the decrease in production of autochthonous material culture, and the increase in the number of imports. This speaks to a gradual change in 'traditional' cultural identity. However, this was not a uniform process and a hundred kilometres to the south of Mapungubwe, in the many rock shelters on Makgabeng Plateau, hundreds of rock paintings and deep archaeological deposits document the continuation of traditional hunter­gatherer ways of life until the nineteenth century (Bradfield et al. 2009).

In south-eastern Botswana, at the rock shelter

occupation on Thamaga Hill (known as 'Ostrich' shelter), the extent of assimilation of hunter­gatherers into the farmer-herders'world is considerably more pronounced. These shelters include hardly any traditional hunter-gatherer fiaked stone tools, but substantial numbers of late farming community potsherds, a metal axe and a significant proportion of livestock bones. The implication is that at a distance of a few dozen metres, the autochthones in Ostrich shelter had

Mapungubwe Reconsidered 33

Ra in-control played an important role in the ideologica l processes leading to the rise of the Mapungubwe state (Copyright Al ex Schoemanl

all but lost their traditional cultura l identity and had become perhaps servants in the employ of the farmer-herders, subsisting mainly on cereal products which reached the shelter as hand-outs in farmers' pots (Sadr 2002).

Such interaction was recorded in historical times by early missionaries such as David Livingstone. Colonial historical documents suggest that the last of the autochthonous San popu lation in this area were sent off into the Kalahari by their Tswana masters, away from the prying eyes of inspectors, when the Protectorate Government of Bechuanaland declared slavery il legal in the early twentieth century. By then, of course, the long history of interaction between Bantu-speakers and San had also resulted in much hybridisation, notably through the acquisition of San wives by the male Bantu-speakers.

On the 'other side' of the frontier, excavations at Madikwe sites yielded residues of hunter­gatherers in back courtyards (Hall 2001). This has implications for the way Tswana speaking

farmers conceptualised hunter-gatherers and accordingly allocated them to homestead space that expressed that concept. The difaqane probably exacerbated the subordination and the creation of these categories by Tswana' farmers. The impact is refiected in Campbell's record (1967) in the early nineteenth century of the process of marginalisation of Lala, Basarwa and Kgalagadi. Campbell makes repeated references to marginalised, poor people, who lived outside of the large towns. His classification is explicit and he refers to them as a 'mongrel race' and 'Bootshuana Bushmen: as opposed to 'Bushmen proper'.

A similar, much clearer frontier, and lack of assimilation characterised the encounter between autochthonous hunter-gatherers and a different group of herders - the European trekkers who spread northwards down the Seacow valley on their way to the central interior of South Africa during the nineteenth century. Decades of archaeological and historical research in this area by Professor Garth Sampson and his colleagues has produced a detailed and well-supported

34 Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Re fle ctio n \ 111 S RA

..

>

, ~ __ lWods Indian Ocean

Southern Monsoon· Mayb to Aug

Nortllem MOI'IsoOl'l' Oec toApril

Year N':II,lnd currents that are constant (with seasonal variatlon In strength)

narrative of intrusion and occupation by herders,

who were resisted by the local hunter-gatherers

for nearly three generations (e.g. Neville et al. 1994; Plug & Sampson 1996; Sampson 1995; Voigt et af. 1995; Westbury & Sampson 1993).

Initially, t he herders had difficulty establishing

a foothold in the valley and lost much livestock

and community members to raiders armed

with poisoned arrows. Gradually, however, they

managed to establish themselves around sources

of fresh water and, with their firearms, began to

have an impact on the wild game which formed

the subsistence base of the local hunter-gatherers.

The local San could still operate in the interstices

of the first loan farms in this landscape, but

eventually increasing numbers of herders, fewer

game, and finally the introduction of fencing

which restricted freedom of movement for hunters

and their prey, the autochthones were reduced to

dependency on handouts from the settlers. They

eventually became labourers - marginalised and

dispossessed of their homeland.

o

Map of the pre~co lo n ia ll ndian

Ocean trade winds (Copyright Marilee Wood 2005)

These archaeological settings, as well as new

evidence from sites in the mid-Vaal basin

and the Drakensberg fa rther south, point to

simila rly diverse forms of interactions between

autochthones and incoming populations.

Although the ultimate outcome has been the

te rmination of t raditional hunter-gatherer ways

of life, as we ll as their traditional material culture

and language, the autochthones have been

far from helpless victims and have in one way

or another influenced the outcome of contact

and interaction, leaving their genetic imprint on

many diverse and hybridised communities across

southern Africa. In the most marginal lands of the

sub-continent, deep in the Kalahari thirst lands,

their culture and way of life may have survived

well into the twentieth century, but even here

modern borehole technology has allowed herders

and ranchers to encroach and assimilate the

autochthones into a food-producing, as opposed

to food-extracting, economy.

Mapungubwe Recons id ere d 3S

The confluence of the Shashe and -Umpopo Rivers (Copyright Alex $choeman)

What rock art can tell us about contact between hunter-gatherers and fa rmers

'Contact' art is valuable because it gives insights

into how the hunter-gatherers were thinking about the people they encountered. Given that

rock art was considered potent and powerful, it

is not surprising that it became involved in social

negotiations and contestations (e.g. Dowson 1994;

Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004b). Thomas Dowson

(1994) argues that the position of shamans

within particular communities was modified

as the social structures of those communities

changed, and, importantly, these changes were

expressed in the way shamans were depicted in

paintings. Importantly, Dowson argues that the

paintings not only refiect the changes, but were

actively implicated in negotiating and legitimising

those changes. The paintings became a sort of

'supernatural sanction'for the changes occurring

in the communit y. Similarly, David Lewis-Williams

and Pearce (2004b) have argued that depictions

of ra in animals Ukhwa-ka xoro) were, in certai n

circumstances, used by rain-control shamans

Ukhwa-ka !gUen) in developing and maintaining

positions of prestige. Rock art was thus not

important exclusively in a religious sphere, but also

in social processes.

A good example of the non-literal nature of

contact paintings is the work of Colin Campbell

(1986). He studied so-called 'fight' scenes from

central parts of the Drakensberg. These typically

depict groups of people with bows and arrows

in violent confiict with another group of people

usually in European dress and with horses, some

of whom may have rifles (Challis [2008] has

pointed out that we cannot assume that people

in European dress and with horses were in fact

36 Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection {M STRA.l

...

br

Europeans; several local groups adopted this style of dress and the use of horses after colonial contact). It was thought that such paintings depicted rea l historical events, and attempts were made to correlate them to historical records (e.g. Vinnicombe 1976). This type of explanation, however, makes little sense in terms of our broader understanding of LSA rock art: it does not depict historical events; indeed, it is not at all narrative.

Campbell (1986) observed that many of these scenes incorporated depictions of trancing shamans. The paintings are thus placed firmly back in the realm of the religious. He argued that real-world connict (not necessarily'battle: but conAict of whatever nature) was being dealt with in the traditional hunter-gatherer manner using the trance dance and rock paintings. He suggested that this imagery was used as a backdrop that reinforced the new social order. Importantly, Campbell was able to see the San as active agents in their relationships with others.

Similarly, other'contact'paintings cannot be taken at face value. They need to be understood within the terms of hunter-gatherer cosmology and society. Livestock is a particularly interesting example. Earlier studies that focused on images of domestic stock in LSA rock art found a correlation between paintings of fat-tai led sheep in the Cederberg and the location of known pastoralist sites during the colonial era (Manhire et 01. 1986). This sort of correlation, useful as it may be, does not answer the fundamental question of why livestock were incorporated into paintings. The majority of wild animals were never depicted in southern areas. Only specific ones are chosen for particular purposes. Livestock was not, then, depicted just because it was there. It must have become significant in some way.

A purely economic explanation also seems unlikely. Livestock probably did take on greater and greater economic significance to former hunter-gatherers. Yet, if one examines the rock art, economic significance does not seem to have been the deciding factor in choosing what to depict. In the Drakensberg, for instance, the eland

is the most frequently painted animal. However, it played a relatively minor role in people's diets; they lived largely on plant foods with most protein in the form of small animals. Eland were depicted because they are the animal believed to contain the most supernatural potency. This potency is a crucial component of all beliefs and rituals. The eland was a central symbol and prominent in all rituals (Lewis-Williams 1981). An explanation for livestock in the art is more likely to be found in the realm of supernatural potency and ritual usage.

Cattle are particularly intriguing in this regard; they are significant cosmologically and socially for several of the groups with whom hunter-gatherers

. would have interacted. It may therefore have been that they formed sectors of articulation amongst communities. Bel iefs on different sides may have been suffiCiently similar to allow cattle to transcend boundaries and become incorporated into the beliefs of former hunter-gatherers.

Much of what we have described so far relates to what are clearly hunter-gatherer paintings depicting some aspect of their interaction with other groups. The nature of the art suggests (and this may not be a reliable way of assessing the matter) that the contact did not fundamentally alter the social, cultural and religious base of the society that made it. It gives very much the appearance of new circumstances accommodated within an existing system. Of course, the art is ideological and may mask dramatiC changes in a society. More evidence will be needed to take this sort of argument further.

An important study by Loubser and Laurens (1994) in the Caledon River Valley considers the effects of the spread of Sotho-Tswana speaking agro­pastoralists on the LSA rock art of the area. They conclude that the depiction of images such as domestiC livestock, derived from a Sotho-Tswana socio-economic world, suggests that these images came to have meaning within the San shamanistic worldview. Similarly, Hall focuses on the southern Eastern Cape Province and argues that evidence from excavated material, rock art and ethnographic data suggests that San-Bantu-

Mapungu b we Reconsidered 37

speaker interaction in that area was not a simple one-way process, but rather led to mutual social re-structuring (Hall 1994).

Th is last point is a tricky one. In any process of contact and exchange the process is not necessarily symmetrical. One side may take more or less from the encounter. An allied point is that exchange is not necessarily wholesale. Only certain elements may be chosen as seem most suitable within particular social circumstances.

David Hammond-Tooke (2002) gives an excellent example of this in describing how certain aspects of the San trance dance were incorporated into Nguni mediumistic divination: not the whole ritual was transferred nor is it used in the same way as in its original context. He argues for clear social circumstances that led to the partial transfer. In this case, heavily patriarchal unilinear descent, an impersonal concept of the ancestors and a disempowered position held by women (Hammond-Tooke 2002). Contact may have led to social restructuring, but may also have been accommodated within existing social structures.

Conclusion

This chapter explored interactions between the various groups from which SLCA society was woven. Their interactions cannot be seen in isolation. A range of regional processes impacted on the arrival and departure of individuals and groups, and shaped the networks that interlinked these groups. Interaction varied between sites and changed through time. Fundamentally, these interactions were not uniform, nor were the trajectories of dispossession.

38 Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (M ITRAI