A New Look at the Later Prehistory of the Kalahari

Abstract

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.

Interconnections: glass beads and trade in southern and eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean - 7th to 16th centuries AD

“…The period up to the beginning of the 2nd millennium AD is usually referred to as the Early Iron Age (EIA) in South Africa (Kuper 1980;Denbow 1986;Huffman 1981Huffman , 1982Huffman , 1984aHuffman , 1986Huffman , 1993Mitchell 2002;Mitchell & Whitelaw 2005). Cattle were central to the economic, social and ideological life of these patrilineal communities and cattle kraals were normally of glass beads (Paper I), shows that from the 7th century some of these communities participated in trade with the Indian Ocean, there is no visible evidence that occurred mainly on the basis of sex and age.…”

Genetics and history of sub-Saharan Africa

“…(Walker, 1983). Study of the fauna indicates that the ancestral wild forms of domesticated stocks did not previously (Denbow, 1986;Denbow and Campbell, 1986; Denbow and Wilmsen, 1986). Meanwhile, Ehret (1973, 1982a suggests another model.…”

State Formation in Southern Africa: A Reply to Kim and Kusimba

“…A few glass beads from their ancestral sites 300 km to the south show that they were well aware of the trade (Huffman 2004/5). While some Zhizo people stayed behind (Calabrese 2000(Calabrese , 2007, the main Zhizo chiefdom moved west into Botswana to become the Toutswe group (Huffman 1982(Huffman , 1986, well known from the research of Denbow (1983Denbow ( , 1986. Other than an unusual hoard at Kgaswe, most glass beads in Toutswe sites (Trimingham 1975;Wood 2005).…”