Paradigmatic History of San-Speaking Peoples and Current Attempts at Revision [and Comments and Replies]

Fieldwork and Footnotes

“…Single archaeological and archival records relating to the distribution of cattle have been examined in depth in order to establish whether they support the integrationist or the isolationist view (see Lee and Guenther 1991;Solway and Lee 1990;Wilmsen and Denbow 1990;Hitchcock 1990). Whether an early bone discovery is a hint towards the presence of cattle or of game, whether 'oxen' or 'onions' is the correct reading of an early document, were more than just side-tracks in the debate.…”

Thinking Across the African Past: Interdisciplinarity and Early History

“…There has been much debate about the appropriateness of such ethnographic analogies, especially when they have served to freeze a particular cultural form as normative, which is then read onto archaeological data. For example, in the case of the Kalahari, there has been much criticism of how rich ethnographic studies of hunter gatherers in the 1960s and 1970s served to obscure variable and complex subsistence practices in the past, both in the Kalahari itself and beyond (Schrire 1980;Wilmsen & Denbow 1990). Stahl (1993Stahl ( , 2001) urged archaeologists to carefully evaluate all analogies, subjecting them to both source-and subject-side criticism as a way of avoiding the potential pitfalls of reading the present back into the past.…”

Re-constructing the past in post-genocide Rwanda: an archaeological contribution

“…This theory was in opposition to the established stereotyped view and arguments between the two positions were termed the "Kalahari Debate" (e.g. Lee and Guenther 1991;Solway and Lee 1990;Wilmsen 1993;Wilmsen and Denbow 1990). The Revisionist School undermined the use of the Kalahari peoples in comparative anthropology and social evolutionary studies by emphasising the need to investigate the historical perspectives of these populations (Wilmsen 1989).…”