Until recently, the later prehistory of the Kalahari has remained almost unknown and, in consequence, the long and complex past of the peoples of this region has often been condensed into an ahistorical and timeless caricature when compared with events in neighbouring countries. The summary presented here attempts to rectify this situation by drawing upon data from over four hundred surveyed sites and information from detailed excavations carried out since 1975 at twenty-two selected localities in Botswana.Three important topics in southern African prehistory are addressed from the perspective of these investigations. The first topic is the introduction of sheep and cattle to the sub-continent between 2,000 and 2,500 years ago. The second is the origins and social dynamics of pastoralism during the Early Iron Age, and relates these developments to the formation of stratified socio-political systems around the fringes of the Kalahari towards the end of the first millennium A.D. The third topic is the relevance to current information on the later prehistory of the Kalahari of ethnographic accounts of herding and foraging societies gathered in this same region during the twentieth century.
It has long been thought that farming and herding were comparatively recent introductions into the Kalahari and that it has been a preserve of foraging "Bushmen" for thousands of years. Agropastoral Bantu-speakers were thought to have entered this region only within the last two centuries. However, fully developed pastoralism and metallurgy are now shown to have been established in the Kalahari from A.D. 500, with extensive grain agriculture and intracontinental trade added by A.D. 800. Archeological, linguistic, and historical evidence delineates the continuation of mixed economies in the region into the present. Consequences of this revised view for anthropological theory and for policy planning concerning contemporary Kalahari peoples are indicated.
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