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.

scholarly journals Communities and Conservation: Marula Trees (Sclerocarya birrea subsp. caffra) Under Communal Management at Matiyane Village, Limpopo Province, South Africa

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 194008291982896 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ndidzulafhi Innocent Sinthumule ◽  
Leonard Colbert Mbhoni Mzamani
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Limpopo Province ◽  
Rural Populations ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Sclerocarya Birrea ◽  
Communal Areas ◽  
The Village

Sclerocarya birrea subsp. caffra (Marula) is widely used throughout its natural distribution range by rural populations to meet livelihoods requirements. Every part of the tree, including the fruits, branches, stem and roots, provides goods and services of high cultural, social, and economic importance. Its usefulness and unique properties have encouraged local people to retain S. birrea in communal areas. However, there is a paucity of data quantifying the role of local communities in conserving S. birrea. This study quantifies the role of local communities in protecting S. birrea in 300 randomly selected households in Matiyane Village, Limpopo Province, South Africa. The study found that the majority of the respondents (92%; N = 276) are positive about the conservation of S. birrea. Most importantly, the respondents play a significant role in the protection of S. birrea in the village. Management strategies and factors responsible for the protection of S. birrea in communal land are discussed.

scholarly journals Parts and Wholes: The Role of Animals in the Performance of Dolenjska Hallstatt Funerary Rites

Arts ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Adrienne C. Frie
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Faunal Remains ◽  
Mortuary Practice ◽  
Animal Sacrifice ◽  
Animal Bones ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Funerary Rites ◽  
The Sacrifice

There is a rich iconographic tradition demonstrating the importance of animals in ritual in the Dolenjska Hallstatt archaeological culture of Early Iron Age Slovenia (800–300 bce). However, the role of animals in mortuary practice is not well represented iconographically, though faunal remains in graves indicate that their inclusion was an integral part of funerary performance. Here, animal bones from burials are compared to images of animal sacrifice, focusing on the ritual distinctions between the deposition of whole animal bodies versus animal parts. It is proposed that human–animal relationships were a key component of funerary animal sacrifice in these multispecies communities. The deposition of whole horses may have been due to a personal relationship with the deceased human. In turn, the sacrifice of an animal and division of its parts may have been essential for the management of group ties with the loss of a community member. Particular elements such as teeth, horns, and claws may have served as amulets—perhaps indicating that these were personal items that had to be placed in the grave with the deceased or that the deceased needed continued protection or other symbolic aid.

Hillforts at War: From Maiden Castle to Taniwaha Pā

2007 ◽  
Vol 73 ◽  
pp. 25-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Armit
Keyword(s):  
Social Isolation ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
The Military ◽  
Efficiency Consideration

Following Wheeler's excavations at Maiden Castle, the multivallate hillforts of Wessex came to be seen as responses to a specific form of warfare based around the massed use of slings. As part of the wider post-processual ‘rethink’ of the British Iron Age during the late 1980s and 1990s, this traditional ‘military’ interpretation of hillforts was increasingly subject to criticism. Apparent weaknesses in hillfort design were identified and many of the most distinctive features of these sites (depth of enclosure, complexity of entrance arrangements, etc) were reinterpreted as symbols of social isolation. Yet this ‘pacification’ of hillforts is in many ways as unsatisfactory as the traditional vision. Both camps have tended to view warfare as a detached, functional, and disembedded activity which can be analysed in terms of essentially timeless concepts of military efficiency. Consideration of the use of analogous structures in the ethnographic record suggests that, far from being mutually exclusive, the military and symbolic dimensions are both essential to a more nuanced understanding of the wider social role of hillforts in Britain and beyond.

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