A zooarchaeological investigation into the meat industry established at the Cape of Good Hope by the Dutch East India Company in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Abstract

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) established their settlement at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652 in order to refresh passing trade ships with fresh water, vegetables, and meat in hopes of lessening disease and death during the long voyages around the tip of Africa between Europe and the Far East. The great demand for meat provided an impetus for Dutch-Khoehoe interactions which ultimately drained the Khoekhoe of their wealth, land, and identity. Currently, with the exception of the terrestrial faunal from Oudepost I (Cruz-Uribe and Schrire 1991), historic period faunal analyses at the Cape have been very localized, superficially descriptive, and taphonomically flawed, which has ii lead to very little understanding of the overall colonial meat market and included some implausible interpretations.This thesis takes into account contextual evidence, applies zooarchaeological methodology, and incorporates actualistically-based research into taphonomic traces on bone surfaces and to better reconstruct the originally deposited samples. The investigation of the VOC's meat industry that was emplaced at the Cape is carried out through the investigation of five faunal samples including three sites from the Castle of Good Hope; the Moat, the Granary (F2), and Donkergat (DKG); Elsenburg; and the Dump from Oudespost I. The systemic approach provides information about livestock production, slaughter, and consumption at the Cape with information about large scale slaughter for local markets or trade ship provisioning. This thesis describes the transplanted European husbandry practices as the VOC overcame initial hardships of meeting high meat demands to become the dominant power across the landscape.iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would foremost like to thank Carmel Schrire for sharing her guidance and critical mind, while also having great patience throughout the research and writing of this dissertation. I would also like to thank my dissertation committee, Robert Blumenschine, Robert Scott, and David Landon (University of Massachusetts-Boston), for helpful critiques and advice. I would like to additionally thank Robert Blumenschine for his instruction in faunal analysis and taphonomy. I would like to thank Royden Yates, Graham Avery, Margaret Avery and LalouMeltzer who were instrumental in helping me gain access and navigate the IZIKO: South African Museum, especially Graham Avery for working alongside me to help identify various bones and the birds. Thanks are also extended to the faculty at the University of Cape Town's Archaeology Department for allowing me access to various faunal assemblages kept in their store rooms. I also appreciate the help from Richard Klein (Stanford University) who had helped me with some bone specimens in addition to reviewing some portions of this work. I would also like to thank Eileen Westwig at the American Museum of Natural History for providing access to their Mammalogy Collections.Funding for this research has been obtained from Special Opportunity Award, Bigel Grants, the Center for Human Evoluti...