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Journal of Namibian Studies, 2 (2007): 141146 ISSN: 1863-5954

Copyright2007 Otjivanda Presse.Essen Eckl & Hartmann GbR

eview Karl-Johan Lindholm, Wells ofExperience: a Pastoral Land-use Historyof Omaheke, Namibia, Uppsala Uni-versity, Studies in Global Archaeology 9,2006.

Karl-Johan Lindholms PhD thesis is anin-depth study of the history of a drysection of northeastern Namibia byherders. It documents the archaeologyand later historical record of use of

wells in the Omaheke, a communal landarea, distinct from the mostly white-owned commercial farms of Ghanzi inBotswana, Gobabis and Grootfontein inNamibia which ring the Omaheke to thewest and south.

Let me begin by saying that this work isa major tour de forceas a PhD thesis.Lindholm has done an excellent job ofmining the literature, which will bewelcome to future researchers in thearea. His research and analysis are both

well-founded, and his interpretation,with somewhat limited archaeologicaldata, logical.

Lindholm situates his thesis aroundmisrepresentations of the use of thearea by pastoral people, and focuses onthe ambiguity of livestock herding inthe archaeological record. It wouldappear that the authors ideologicaldirection is to support possible landclaims of Herero historical right to the

Omaheke. This is done by archaeo-logical interpretation and attempts atreading the historic record.

The published work is structured intoeight chapters, the second of whichlooks at the history of research anddebates. It also situates Lindholms owninterests around pastoralism, and

attempts to suggest that previous workhas poorly understood the relationshipof herders with the Omaheke. He goesacross the border to look at the Dobearea, and here he uses Wilmsensidentification of a cow at /Xai/xai as aclue to how much contact probablyexisted with herders and hunters in thepast. The so-called cow from /Xai/xai issomewhat problematic. It is an idio-syncratic find around any waterhole (asLindholm himself would probably admit,

since he later in the work describes howlittle bone does exist around water-holes, and mostly from wild animals).Other researchers have raised doubtsabout how correct the identification was,but this can no longer be verified, asthe bone has been lost.

Lindholms survey of the researchbackground to his thesis is first class.He engages with the history of the GreatKalahari Debate, and, not surprising

since one of his main sources ofencouragement is Ed Wilmsen, there isa slight partisan leaning towards therevisionist side of the argument. In thisthere is criticism of the Bushman-centred research which he believesgave primacy of direction in favour ofthe Ju/hoansi. He is critical of theisolated and pristine vision of theBushmen propounded by the HarvardResearch Group, but does recognisethat this was an extreme position that

even the Harvard Group knew to beincomplete. This could be seen as earlyas Richard Lees PhD thesis fromBerkeley in 1964 where he mentionedthat some of his Ju/hoansi informantshad worked as herdsmen for Tswana.

In some ways this colours the authorsview of the history of the region, and

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allows him to state that interpretation ofthe work I did with Richard Lee atCho/ana which suggested independenceof Ju/hoansi towards outsiders untilrecently, is our greatest bias (p.139).1

An example of how peripheral theJu/hoansi were to outsiders can beseen in Marshall where she describesthe police post at Cho/ana in the early1950s.2 This was the de facto borderwith British Bechuanaland and the routeby which Ovambo labour was trans-ported by the Witwatersrand NativeLabour Association to the mines on thehighveld of South Africa. The post wascontrolled by a Tswana man namedMoremi. Marshall (ibid: 7) says: agroup of !Kung worked for him, tendinghis cornfields and his cattle. Tsho/anawas also the waterhole of Band 24; theband lived independently of Moremispost. Moremi had deepened the

waterhole at Cho/ana by either blastingor digging (ibid: 73).

She goes on to say (ibid: 8) Ourcontact and that of the !Kung with theBantu who passed through Tsho/ana

1A. B. Smith, & R. B. Lee, Cho/ana:

archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence forrecent hunter-gatherer/agropastoralist contact in

Northern Bushmanland, Namibia, South AfricanArchaeological Bulletin52, 1997: 52-55; A. B.Smith, Ethnohistory and archaeology of the

Ju/hoansi Bushmen,African Study Monographs,Supplement Issue 26, 2001: 15-27; R. B. Lee,Solitude or servitude. Ju/hoansi images of thecolonial encounter, in: S. Kent, (ed), Ethnicity,Hunter-gatherers, and the Other. Association or

Assimilation in Africa, Washington: SmithsonianInstitution Press,2002: 184-205.2L. Marshall, The !Kung of Nyae Nyae.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1976.

consisted only of staring at each otherfor an hour or so, once every twoweeks, and had no significant influenceupon our life there. Marshall alsodescribes how isolated the differentJu/hoansi groups were from each other(ibid: 21), never mind the outside world.

One of our informants, an elder namedN/ani, showed us his campsite from the1960s at Cho/ana. We mapped the sitethat was located behind the remains ofthe round huts of the Tswana, pre-sumably Moremis family.3 Thus therewas a strict hierarchy in the layout ofthe settlement.

Chapter 3 is a good description of theenvironment of the Omaheke, with a listof pasture grasses, and the animals tobe found in the area. Current settlementpatterns and population densities foundduring the research are also offered,along with some discussion on theCommunal Area, and the Nyae Nyae

Conservancy. The latter is described inrather negative terms, such asdespair, dependency and vio-lence, without any reference to thehistory of SADF use of the area in the1970s and the introduction of a casheconomy and a liquor store at Tsumkwethat disrupted the traditional sharingethic. The two paragraphs on this give asub-text that the pastoralists makebetter use of the land, so should havemore rights?

Chapter 4 is a history of the Omaheke,with the intended purpose to show howthe assumption of an unsuitableenvironment came into being. The

3A. B. Smith, The archaeology of the Ju/hoansiBushmen,Archeologia Africana,1999, 5: 75-84.

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author concludes with the statement (p.51) that the common notion of theOmahekewhich implies a dryimpassable barrier unsuitable forlivestock herding, may be open toquestion. His reading of the history isthat Herero used the entire Omaheke,including the lower reaches of theEpukiro and Eiseb before the Germanoccupation, and not just as a result ofbeing forced away from the richer upperend of this catchment.

Lindholm accepts Passarges statementthat Tswana cattle were being herded inNyae Nyae by Bushmen (probably amafisa arrangement, as documented inLee), and that Herero inhabit thesandveld at the upper end of theEpukiro and Eisebthe OmurambaOmatako.4 Passarge also mentionsseveral colonies of Herero furthereast in Kaukauveld. This can be read asthe Bushmen were basically in control of

the lower Eiseb (i.e. around /Gam), aswell as Nyae Nyae and Kaudom. Thatthe southern area had been controlledby Bushmen under the leader Dukuriin the mid-19thcentury when Baines andChapman travelled in the area is welldocumented.5 Outsiders use of thearea would have been contingent onnegotiation with the Bushmen.

Chapter 5 looks at a different source ofinformation: that of the archaeology of

4E. N. Wilmsen, (ed.)., The Kalahari Ethnogra-phies (1896-1898) of Siegfried Passarge, Kln,Kppe, 1997: 205, 86; R. B. Lee, The !Kung San:Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society,Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979.5M. Guenther, 1993-94. Independent, fearless

and rather bold: a historical narrative on theGhanzi Bushmen, Namibia Scientific Society, 44,1994-94: 25-40.

the region. This is done by survey andexcavation of a number of wells acrossa large area from the Epukiro and Eisebdrainages in the south to Dobe Pannorth of Tsumkwe. As predicted by thehistorical data there are huge numberof water points in the upper reaches ofthe Epukiro and Eiseb Valleys. Thesebecome fewer elsewhere in the studyarea, but when combined with huntingblinds the number is augmented. Theauthor admits that traces of human

activities are few and obscure inOmaheke. This is certainly our experi-ence in doing casual surveys aroundwells, partially, I believe, because therehas been so much disturbance by cattlethere. While Later Stone Age materialsand pottery are not plentiful, Cho/anadoes give some indication that theyexist, and I found flaked stone to adepth of 40 cm close to /Gam, as doesLindholm at Otjozondema (pp. 121-128). All this demonstrates prior hunteruse of the area.

Chapter 6 offers data on the potential ofthe Omaheke for pastoral use, andshows that the assumption that theOmaheke environment cannot sustainlivestock herding can be questioned onalmost every point (p. 108). I doubtthat any researcher would evenquestion this, especially after theoriginal cattle experiment of JohnMarshall with the Nyae Nyae Farmers

Cooperative in the 1980s that initiallywas so successful. As long as the cattlenumbers were low and they wereprotected from lions, they did very wellin and around /Gautsha and !ao/a,especially after the elephant-proofpump system was in place at the latter

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well.6 The problem would be insustainable use of the land for herding ifnumbers increased. One could see thearea having seasonal potential after therains, and most likely this would havebeen the practice in the lower Epukiroand Eiseb drainages in the past byHerero.

Chapter 7 is an attempt at offering achronology for the Omaheke wells.There is little in the argument by theauthor to give confidence that the waterpoints in the Nyae Nyae were originallyopened up by the Herero, rather thanJu/hoansi, even when the herders havenames for the wells. I think Lindholm ispushing his luck by suggesting thatbecause the origin of the small circularand oval rectangular wells are unknownto his informants this necessarilyindicates an earlier phase of pastoraluse (p. 121). His use of the data fromOtjozondema shows a mixture of flaked

stone and undecorated pottery, alongwith 15 small bone fragments are tooamorphous to say much. Wilmsenspredictive plotting of dates with depth isquestionable in the sandy matrix, andshould be used with extreme caution.Any dates younger than 500 years arealways suspect. At best, there may beastratified sequence.

One gets the impression that the authorwishes to conflate the Omaheke with thearea to the north, including the Kaudum

and the Omatako Omuramba. He earlierin the work (p. 13) debates the issue ofpottery occurrences over this largearea, suggesting that previous researchhad the bias towards pottery as exotic

6A. B. Smith, Pastoralism in Africa, London,Hurst, 1992: plate 14.

elements in hunting societies. Hisrevision of the archaeology wants tomake the pottery the result ofpastoralist occupation. He fails torecognise that the pottery found in theKaudom and Nyae Nyae is mostly cross-hatched ware of Mbukushu origin.7 TheMbukushu are fisher/farmers on theKavango River to the north. Kinahannotes the appearance of anotherpottery type in Nyae Nyae, a comb-stamped ware that is not Mbukushu.8In

our excavations at Cho/ana, comb-stamped ware was found stratifiedbeneath the Mbukushu pottery, andidentified by Tom Huffman as Divuyuware from the Tsodilo area.9

As argued by Smith & Lee, and by Leefrom the information given by Ju/hoansielders, there were no black people inthe Kaudom and Nyae Nyae until thelate 19thcentury, a situation that wouldappear supported by Passarges notes

on the people he met south of theKavango River in the Kaudom Valley.10Passarge does say he saw the Hererocolonies in the Upper Chaudum (whichaccording to his map would refer to theNhoma Valley where Cho/ana islocated).11 These he suggested werethe result of pressure from warfare, butmore likely herders fleeing the rinder-pest epidemic.

7Smith/Lee, Cho/ana; J. Kinahan, Settlementpatterns and regional exchange: evidence fromrecent Iron Age sites on the Kavango River,Northeastern Namibia, Cimbebasia,(Ser. B) 3(4), 1986: 109-116.8Kinahan, Settlement: 115.9Smith, Ethnohistory.10Smith/Lee, Cho/ana;Lee, Solitude; Wilmsen,Kalahari.11Ibid,: 86.

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The combination of the ethnohistoricinformation we were given by ourJu/hoansi informants and the Passargejournal led us to accept that theJu/hoansi, right up to the 1960s weregoing on trading forays to the Kavangofrom Cho/ana and to choose when to dothis and with whom to trade. Details ofthe trade have been given by HautmannMuller in 1911.12This has allowed us tosuggest a scenario of independenceconsistent with the picture offered by

Lorna Marshall of her observations inthe 1950s. All contact would seem tohave been with the north, except whenrefugees on their last legs managed toescape from the Germans and enter thearea without stock. Anyone who hastravelled through the waterless countryand dense vegetation to the west ofCho/ana would recognise the difficulty ingetting through, a fact that Mattenklodtfound when he almost died trying to getto Grootfontein from Nyae Nyae.13

I was fortunate to visit /Gam in 1998with Polly Wiessner. There we met anold Bushman named /Xao !oma whotold us about his life, and who showedus a piece of Mbukushu pottery whichhad been given to him by his auntaround 1950, before he wasblackbirded, i.e. forced into labour by awhite farmer. The pot had been buried,then later broken by cattle after JohnMarshall arrived (i.e. sometime after

12R. J. Gordon, The !Kung in the Kalahariexchange: an ethnohistorical perspective, in: C.Schrire, (ed), Past and Present in Hunter-Gatherer Studies, New York, Academic Press,1984: 195-224: (207).13W. Mattenklodt,A Fugitive in South West Africa1908-1920, London, Thornton Butterworth,1931.

1952). The pot must have travelledover 250 km from its source on theKavango River, and was a goodillustration of the movement of certainexotic commodities being transferredthrough xharo exchange networks.14This piece of pottery had been carefullycurated, and seen as an importantfamily heirloom. /Xao !oma told uswhere various commodities came fromin the past. From the north: pots,copper, wooden bowls, wooden spoons,

large white glass beads, spear points,knobkerries (with same decoration asthe pottery), a small red nut. From theeast (L. Ngami): tobacco, large whiteglass beads, gourd milk containers,shoes. From the south: ostrich eggshell,strike-a-lights, small red and black glassbeads, arrow straighteners, woodenmortars and pestles, metal enamelbowls. From the west (Eiseb): ostricheggshell beads. The north, thus, was amajor source of commodities that hadto come through the Kaudom and NyaeNyae.

What happened in the south, particularlyin the Eiseb area, may have been verydifferent. Since pastoralists always takeadvantage of good pasture conditionswhen they find them, there is no reasonto doubt that pasture forays out of theheart of Herero lands before they werestolen by the Germans would havemeant using the Eiseb as an avenue of

infiltration towards /Gam. This does notmean, however, that they necessarilyspent long periods there, and couldeasily have made good use of the water

14P. Wiessner, The pathways of the past: !Kung

San hxaro exchange and history, in: M. Bollig &F. Klees, (eds), berlebensstrategien in Afrika,Colloquium Africanum 1, 1994: 101-124.

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holes of the Bushmen, enlarging themfor animal-watering purposes. It alsodoes not mean that they could beconsidered the owners of the land andwater resources. Their tenure wouldhave had to depend on their relationswith the Ju/hoansi.

In the work there was only a limitedattempt to ask the Bushmen what theirhistory was, and what they remember ofthe use of the water holes/wells (p.119), or to ask the Herero what theirrelationships were with the Bushmen.Although he might not be aware of it, inspite of his excellent research into theoral traditions around the use of thewells, Lindholm tends to leave theBushmen out of the equation. In this hewould diminish any Bushman claims toaboriginal use of the border area ofnorth-eastern Namibia. This will onlypander to those in the corridors ofpower in Windhoek who wish to settle

people from the outside, as has beensuggested for Nyae Nyae. Like manyassumptions that have gone before,such as the gazetting of the Kaudom asa Nature Reserve, or creating Herero-land East, the Bushmen are seen to beincapable of properly using the landand resources, or being the owners ofthe wells. The Ju/hoansi around /Gamtoday are really third-class citizens inwhat was once their own land.

Andrew B. SmithDepartment of ArchaeologyUniversity of Cape Town