Claudia Abatino: Exploitation and Management of Animal Resources During the Middle Iron Age, Northern Limpopo Province, South Africa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Plan Shenjere-Nyabezi
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Limpopo Province ◽  
Middle Iron Age ◽  
Animal Resources

Exploitation and Management of Animal Resources During the Middle Iron Age: Northern Limpopo Province, South Africa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Abatino
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Limpopo Province ◽  
Faunal Remains ◽  
Middle Iron Age ◽  
Animal Resources

This book offers a zooarchaeological study of Mapungubwe and Mutamba, two Middle Iron Age sites in northern South Africa. The author provides an interpretation of the economic and social role of animal resources within agro-pastoral societies by combining analysis of faunal remains with ethnozooarchaeological research conducted in a Venda village and comparison with other zooarchaeological studies of sites located in this region.

Bone hoes from the Middle Iron Age, Limpopo Province, South Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 472 ◽  
pp. 126-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Bradfield ◽  
Annie R. Antonites
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Limpopo Province ◽  
Middle Iron Age

Ores Sources, Smelters and Archaeometallurgy: Exploring Iron Age Metal Production in the Southern Waterberg, South Africa

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Foreman Bandama ◽  
Shadreck Chirikure ◽  
Simon Hall
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Mineral Resources ◽  
Limpopo Province ◽  
Metal Working ◽  
Cultural Interaction ◽  
Metal Production ◽  
European Colonization ◽  
Sem Analyses

The Southern Waterberg in Limpopo Province is archaeologically rich, especially when it comes to evidence of pre-colonial mining and metal working. Geologically, the area hosts important mineral resources such as copper, tin and iron which were smelted by agriculturalists in the precolonial period. In this region however, tin seems to be the major attraction given that Rooiberg is still the only source of cassiterite in southern Africa to have provided evidence of mining before European colonization. This paper reports the results of archaeological and archaeometallurgical work which was carried out in order to reconstruct the technology of metalworking as well as the cultural interaction in the study area and beyond. The ceramic evidence shows that from the Eiland Phase (1000–1300 AD) onwards there was cross borrowing of characteristic decorative traits amongst extant groups that later on culminated in the creation of a new ceramic group known as Rooiberg. In terms of mining and metal working, XRF and SEM analyses, when coupled with optical microscopy, indicate the use of indigenous bloomery techniques that are widespread in pre-colonial southern Africa. Tin and bronze production was also represented and their production remains also pin down this metallurgy to particular sites and excludes the possibility of importing of finished tin and bronze objects into this area.

The frequency of butchery marks on goat (Capra hircus) remains from pastoral Khoekhoe villages at Gobabeb, Namibia

Indago ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Shaw Badenhorst ◽  
Jackson S. Kimambo
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Capra Hircus ◽  
Faunal Assemblages ◽  
Large Size ◽  
Middle Iron Age

Khoekhoe pastoralists living in Gobabeb, in the arid Kuiseb River Valley of central-western Namibia, keep goats (Capra hircus). Several decades ago, palaeontologist C.K. Brain collected modern skeletal remains of goats from these villages. The goats were butchered using pocketknives with metal blades. We investigated the frequency of butchery marks on a sub-sam- ple of this collection, representing 60% of the total assemblage. Most specimens in the collection are weathered. Moreover, most goat specimens from Gobabeb lack butchery evidence and even the use of magnification only marginally increased this number. We compared our results with the frequency of butchery marks documented from Early and Middle Iron Age samples from South Africa, a time when sheep dominated faunal assemblages and were slaughtered using metal knives. The frequency of specimens with butchery marks in the goat sample from Gobabeb is higher than that recorded for the Early and Middle Iron Age samples. The higher frequency of butchery marks on the goat remains from Gobabeb may relate to aspects such as the butchering method and style, as well as the large size of the specimens themselves.

scholarly journals Multi-proxy analyses of a mid-15th century ‘Middle Iron Age’ Bantu-speaker palaeo-faecal specimen elucidates the configuration of the ‘ancestral’ sub-Saharan African intestinal microbiome

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riaan F. Rifkin ◽  
Surendra Vikram ◽  
Jean-Baptiste Ramond ◽  
Alba Rey-Iglesia ◽  
Tina B. Brand ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Environmental Pollutants ◽  
Taxonomic Composition ◽  
Limpopo Province ◽  
Intestinal Microbiome ◽  
Faecal Specimen ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Middle Iron Age ◽  
Tyrolean Iceman

ABSTRACTThe archaeological incidence of ancient human faecal material provides a rare opportunity to explore the taxonomic composition and metabolic capacity of the ancestral human intestinal microbiome (IM). Following the recovery of a single desiccated palaeo-faecal specimen from Bushman Rock Shelter in Limpopo Province, South Africa, we applied a multi-proxy analytical protocol to the sample. Our results indicate that the distal IM of the Neolithic ‘Middle Iron Age’ (c. AD 1485) Bantu-speaking individual exhibits features indicative of a largely mixed forager-agro-pastoralist diet. Subsequent comparison with the IMs of the Tyrolean Iceman (Ötzi) and contemporary Hadza hunter-gatherers, Malawian agro-pastoralists and Italians, reveals that this IM precedes recent adaptation to ‘Western’ diets, including the consumption of coffee, tea, chocolate, citrus and soy, and the use of antibiotics, analgesics and also exposure to various toxic environmental pollutants. Our analyses reveal some of the causes and means by which current human IMs are likely to have responded to recent dietary changes, prescription medications and environmental pollutants, providing rare insight into human IM evolution following the advent of the Neolithic c. 12,000 years ago.

Iron Age and Roman Enclosed Settlement at Winchester Road, Basingstoke

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-97
Author(s):  
Richard Massey ◽  
Matt Nichol ◽  
Dana Challinor ◽  
Sharon Clough ◽  
Matilda Holmes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Field Boundary ◽  
Crop Processing ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Middle Iron Age ◽  
Grave Goods

Excavation in Area 1 identified an enclosed settlement of Middle–Late Iron Age and Early Roman date, which included a roundhouse gully and deep storage pits with complex fills. A group of undated four-post structures, situated in the east of Area 1, appeared to represent a specialised area of storage or crop processing of probable Middle Iron Age date. A sequence of re-cutting and reorganisation of ditches and boundaries in the Late Iron Age/Early Roman period was followed, possibly after a considerable hiatus, by a phase of later Roman activity, Late Iron Age reorganisation appeared to be associated with the abandonment of a roundhouse, and a number of structured pit deposits may also relate to this period of change. Seven Late Iron Age cremation burials were associated with a contemporary boundary ditch which crossed Area 1. Two partly-exposed, L-shaped ditches may represent a later Roman phase of enclosed settlement and a slight shift in settlement focus. An isolated inhumation burial within the northern margins of Area 1 was tentatively dated by grave goods to the Early Saxon period.<br/> Area 2 contained a possible trackway and field boundary ditches, of which one was of confirmed Late Iron Age/Early Roman date. A short posthole alignment in Area 2 was undated, and may be an earlier prehistoric feature.

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