Kweneng is an extensive agglomeration of Late Iron Age stone-walled structures in the central interior of southern Africa. Its oldest structures are from the 16th century, while its main occupation dates to the 18th and the early 19th... more
Kweneng is an extensive agglomeration of Late Iron Age stone-walled structures in the central interior of southern Africa. Its oldest structures are from the 16th century, while its main occupation dates to the 18th and the early 19th centuries. Stone towers are distinctive architectural features of Kweneng. In order to place the stone towers of Kweneng in context, a classification of the various types of Late Iron Age stone platforms is presented in this paper. The spatial distribution and different characteristics of the numerous stone towers confirm the idea that Kweneng was built in three phases. Two questions are addressed: who built the towers and what for? As concerns their function, it had previously been suggested that the stone towers were granary bases. This remains a valid hypothesis and the evolution in the architectural complexity of granary bases may reflect increased centralised control of grain stores during the course of the Little Ice Age. On the basis of oral histories and the architectural character of the stone-walled compounds in which the towers are found, their builders can be identified as Bakwena. Interestingly, the stone towers are always paired with another type of structure, the corbelled stone hut. These latter structures seem to be a foreign architectural element at Kweneng. The pairing of the stone towers and the corbelled stone huts may have symbolised the interaction of two different cultures.
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Unusually large ash heaps are a remarkable Late Iron Age feature of Kweneng, near Johannesburg. They are not randomly distributed across the site. What can a spatial analysis of their distribution tell us about their significance? Our... more
Unusually large ash heaps are a remarkable Late Iron Age feature of Kweneng, near Johannesburg. They are not randomly distributed across the site. What can a spatial analysis of their distribution tell us about their significance? Our results show that the prominent ash heaps of Kweneng are principally associated with only one of the three styles of stone-walled architecture found at this site. They also show that the ash heaps were associated with wealth in cattle. Furthermore, there is a clear spatial association with stone lined avenues or roads, possibly cattle drives. The spatial analysis indicates that the prominent ash heaps of Kweneng were not seen as ordinary household rubbish dumps. We propose that they were a cultural innovation that by the terminal phase of occupation at Kweneng had become a significant part of a vast stage where the extraordinary wealth of this Sotho-Tswana city was displayed. Built of a supernaturally potent substance, the prominent ash heaps elevated and displayed the elite of Kweneng along the route of the cattle processions, which daily celebrated the wealth of the polity.
Online view-only version at https://rdcu.be/c0TZe
Online view-only version at https://rdcu.be/c0TZe
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This is a report on test pits excavated in two compounds in Kweneng North, South Africa. The results suggest that the compounds were abandoned peacefully, unlike the catastrophic abandonment of compounds in Kweneng Central and Kweneng... more
This is a report on test pits excavated in two compounds in Kweneng North, South Africa. The results suggest that the compounds were abandoned peacefully, unlike the catastrophic abandonment of compounds in Kweneng Central and Kweneng South. Samples, however, are small and the results need to be verified with further work.
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Research Interests: Archaeology and Antiquity
In southern African archaeology, the equation of pottery styles with archaeological 'cultures' and their attribution to the antecedents of contemporary ethnic groups has been a common practice for a long time.... more
In southern African archaeology, the equation of pottery styles with archaeological 'cultures' and their attribution to the antecedents of contemporary ethnic groups has been a common practice for a long time. Ethnoarchaeological studies from other parts of Africa and beyond have shown that the matter is complex and that stylistic and technological boundaries in ceramic distributions can reflect different kinds of social boundaries under different circumstances. To expand on these findings and make them locally relevant, a large-scale ethnoarchaeological study of 41 potters in southeastern Botswana aims for a better understanding of ceramic technological style and boundary relations. Here, we present and explain only the results concerning the boundaries in the forming and shaping stage of ceramic vessel manufacture. We conclude that learning networks explain the visible boundaries in the technological style of forming and shaping pots in southeastern Botswana today; language and ethnic affiliation do not. Boundaries in the other stages in the operational sequence of pottery manufacture, such as clay sourcing and preparation , vessel surface treatment and decoration, firing and finishing, will be presented in a series of further publications.
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Résumé/Abstract Les fouilles et les collectes de surface menées par le Centre de Recherche sur le Désert Oriental (CeRDO) sur les rives du Ouadi Elei (Désert Nubien) ont révélé un village des IVe-Ve millénaires av. J.-C. auquel sont... more
Résumé/Abstract Les fouilles et les collectes de surface menées par le Centre de Recherche sur le Désert Oriental (CeRDO) sur les rives du Ouadi Elei (Désert Nubien) ont révélé un village des IVe-Ve millénaires av. J.-C. auquel sont associées des tombes. Les vestiges fauniques suggèrent une population pastorale, alors que les fragments céramiques indiquent un contact avec l'Egypte prédynastique et la Nubie. Parmi les découvertes les plus significatives, un bracelet et une fosse, qui pourrait avoir servi à l'extraction minière, ...
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The twenty-fifth volume of the impressive series of monographs Africa Praehistorica, edited by Rudolph Kuper and published by the Heinrich Barth Institute in Köln, is a detailed report of Heiko Riemer's project at the site of El... more
The twenty-fifth volume of the impressive series of monographs Africa Praehistorica, edited by Rudolph Kuper and published by the Heinrich Barth Institute in Köln, is a detailed report of Heiko Riemer's project at the site of El Kharafish, which was excavated within the framework of the ACACIA research programme that focused on human response to climate change in northeastern and southwestern Africa during the Holocene. The excavation and survey work conducted between 2002 and 2006 throw new light on dating and ...
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... in TA Dowson and D. Lewis-Williams (eds.), Contested Images: Diversity in Southern AfricanRock ... Current Anthropology, 31 (1990), 10946; EN Wilmsen and JR Denbow, 'Paradigmatic history of San ... and herders at the... more
... in TA Dowson and D. Lewis-Williams (eds.), Contested Images: Diversity in Southern AfricanRock ... Current Anthropology, 31 (1990), 10946; EN Wilmsen and JR Denbow, 'Paradigmatic history of San ... and herders at the Cape over the last 2000 years: a critique', South African ...
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Pre-colonial stone-walled structures (SWS) are some of the most visible and accessible archaeological remains in southern Africa. Great Zimbabwe is the best known, but there are many tens or even a few hundreds of thousands of other SWS... more
Pre-colonial stone-walled structures (SWS) are some of the most visible and accessible archaeological remains in southern Africa. Great Zimbabwe is the best known, but there are many tens or even a few hundreds of thousands of other SWS scattered throughout the subcontinent. What is their origin? Did this architectural style and concept arise from a single source or several independent ones? There are different views on these matters and they are described in the first section of this article. In the second part, I suggest that one of the ...
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Abstract: Grinding hollows are found on rocks throughout much of Africa. Several sub-types exist, and Nick Walker has recently proposed the term'ellipsoids' to describe those... more
Abstract: Grinding hollows are found on rocks throughout much of Africa. Several sub-types exist, and Nick Walker has recently proposed the term'ellipsoids' to describe those polished grooves, which are U-shaped in cross-section and have a canoe-shaped longitudinal profile. They are the result of a to-and-fro grinding action. Found on horizontal surfaces, ellipsoids are considered utilitarian objects, and many possible grinding functions have been attributed to them. Over a hundred such ellipsoids are recorded on the hill ...
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Résumé/Abstract Un précédent article suggérait que vers le milieu du 2 e millénaire av. J.-C. la population Pan Grave/Medjaou s' était déplacée vers le sud et s' était emparée de l'Atbai.... more
Résumé/Abstract Un précédent article suggérait que vers le milieu du 2 e millénaire av. J.-C. la population Pan Grave/Medjaou s' était déplacée vers le sud et s' était emparée de l'Atbai. Une hypothèse avait été envisagée que les Medjaou en colonisant la région avaient déplacé les populations indigènes. Hors le style de céramique, aucun changement significatif du système culturel de l'Atbai ne peut être attribué à une invasion des Medjaou autour de 1500 av. J.-C. Les Medjaou auraient pris possession de la superstructure ...
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... confidence is that the discrepancy in radiocarbon dates indicates that the initial source of ... the invisibility of Khoekhoe pastoralists may be that migrations are hard to detect archaeologically ... In their new homeland, their... more
... confidence is that the discrepancy in radiocarbon dates indicates that the initial source of ... the invisibility of Khoekhoe pastoralists may be that migrations are hard to detect archaeologically ... In their new homeland, their economic impact as expert cheese-makers and veterinarians ...
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BACKGROUND The Makgabeng is a semi-arid but wooded sandstone plateau rising about 200 metres above the surrounding plain (Fig. 1). It is situated in the mixed savanna biome (Scholes 2004) in South Africa's Limpopo Province. Acocks... more
BACKGROUND The Makgabeng is a semi-arid but wooded sandstone plateau rising about 200 metres above the surrounding plain (Fig. 1). It is situated in the mixed savanna biome (Scholes 2004) in South Africa's Limpopo Province. Acocks (1975) classifies the vegetation as sourish mixed bushveld. The area receives 300-500 mm of rain per annum and numerous streams cut through the plateau.
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BACKGROUND The Makgabeng is a semi-arid but wooded sandstone plateau rising about 200 metres above the surrounding plain (Fig. 1). It is situated in the mixed savanna biome (Scholes 2004) in South Africa's Limpopo Province. Acocks... more
BACKGROUND The Makgabeng is a semi-arid but wooded sandstone plateau rising about 200 metres above the surrounding plain (Fig. 1). It is situated in the mixed savanna biome (Scholes 2004) in South Africa's Limpopo Province. Acocks (1975) classifies the vegetation as sourish mixed bushveld. The area receives 300-500 mm of rain per annum and numerous streams cut through the plateau.
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Diverse classification systems exist for stone-walled structures on the Highveld. Although they all adhere to the aim of the typological method, generally their types are inadequately described; consequently, their application does not... more
Diverse classification systems exist for stone-walled structures on the Highveld. Although they all adhere to the aim of the typological method, generally their types are inadequately described; consequently, their application does not produce replicable results. In the main, the evidentiary base of the classification systems has been the low-resolution aerial photograph, in which architectural details are not visible. Higher resolution LiDAR imagery in tandem with ground surveys show much diversity in architectural details at Kweneng. These details help to refine the existing classification systems. In adding cost surface analysis, detailed maps of the stone-walled structures can produce testable hypotheses to interpret the use and organisation of space within these compounds. Furthermore, the architectural detail allows the precolonial stone-walled structures to be seriated, perhaps into a chronological sequence.
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In 2006 and 2007 a team of local residents and archaeologists from Wits University excavated the rock shelter Seroromeng in the Makgabeng Plateau, Limpopo Province of South Africa. This is the final report of those excavations.
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This is a brief article describing the pre-colonial Batswana capital of Kweneng. It is published in the newsletter of the South African Archaeological Society and is aimed at the general public.
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A team of local residents and archaeologists from Wits University excavated the rock shelter Mphekwane in the Makgabeng Plateau, Limpopo Province of South Africa, between 2004-2007. This is the final report of those excavations.
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South African stone-walled compounds of the 16th to 19th centuries AD can be digitally reconstructed with LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data. The reconstructed compound can be subjected to spatial analysis with geographic... more
South African stone-walled compounds of the 16th to 19th centuries AD can be digitally reconstructed with LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data. The reconstructed compound can be subjected to spatial analysis with geographic information system (GIS) software. Standard routines such as viewshed and least cost path analyses can shed light on the social organisation within these residential compounds. We illustrate this procedure through a reconstructed compound at Kweneng, a precolonial Batswana capital in today's Gauteng Province. The spatial analysis reveals the growth pattern of the compound, as well as the ranking of its inhabitants and suggests new hypotheses to explain some of the enigmatic architectural features at this site. Other survey and mapping techniques do not allow such detailed reconstruction and spatial analysis.
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The Highveld covers a quarter of South Africa's central plateau and is one of the most ex tensively investigated archaeological landscapes in Africa. Cattle-herding, farming com munities first occupied these grasslands sometime between... more
The Highveld covers a quarter of South Africa's central plateau and is one of the most ex tensively investigated archaeological landscapes in Africa. Cattle-herding, farming com munities first occupied these grasslands sometime between the 15th and the 17th cen turies. A surge in the importance of cattle pastoralism among the so-called Late Iron Age populations of southern Africa seems to have caused this "grassland rush." With it came a boom in the construction of dry-laid, stone-walled structures, an innovation the success of which is evidenced by the tens of thousands of ruins visible on aerial imagery of the High veld. In places their agglomeration reaches urban proportions. Sotho-Tswana culture dominated this grassland rush by assimilating the many Nguni-as well as Khoesan-speak ing communities that had also moved into the Highveld. The Highveld's cultural land scape was rearranged by the southern African civil wars of the 1820s-the Difeqane, as it is known in the Tswana language. Shortly thereafter, the arrival of white settlers in the late 1830s heralded the beginning of the colonial period. Archaeologists in the Highveld have largely aimed to illustrate the historical record and oral traditions pertaining to the Sotho and Tswana communities. More usefully they can focus on questions that these records cannot answer. For example, archaeology can help to fill the many gaps in the records; it can investigate the history of things-such as the changing regional settlement patterns and the diffusion of technological innovations-about which the records are silent, and it can test hypotheses to explain the evolution of social and political complexity in the precolonial Highveld. In this way archaeology can help to balance the mostly "top-down" political view provided by the oral traditions and historical records with a "bottom-up" view of social, technological, and architectural de velopments among the precolonial farming communities of the Highveld. Summary The Highveld covers a quarter of South Africa's central plateau and is one of the most
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This unpublished paper is a brief report on the excavation at the open-air site Kasteelberg E (KBEo), carried out by a joint team from the Universities of Botswana and Cape Town in November 2000. KBE is located near the feasting... more
This unpublished paper is a brief report on the excavation at the open-air site Kasteelberg E (KBEo), carried out by a joint team from the Universities of Botswana and Cape Town in November 2000. KBE is located near the feasting localities of KBA and KBD. Similarities in all aspects of material culture suggest that KBE represents part of the hilltop feasting activities during the first millennium AD.
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KBA is an open-air archaeological site on the summit of Kasteelberg, west coast of South Africa. Excavations in the 1980s and 1990s by a team from the University in Cape Town indicated the presence of sheep and pottery around 1800 years... more
KBA is an open-air archaeological site on the summit of Kasteelberg, west coast of South Africa. Excavations in the 1980s and 1990s by a team from the University in Cape Town indicated the presence of sheep and pottery around 1800 years ago. A small, three by one metre trench excavated at KBA in 2000 by a joint team from the Universities of Botswana (UB) and Cape Town (UCT) provides no evidence for such an early occupation of the Kasteelberg hilltop by pastoralists. The UB/UCT trench showed that the principal occupation of the site dates from the seventh to the twelfth centuries AD. Beneath this main occupation layer,
faint traces point to an earlier occupation, which may indeed be
associated with the early first millennium AD dates obtained in
the UCT excavation. But these faint traces could have been left behind by local hunters-with-sheep rather than by immigrant pastoralists.
faint traces point to an earlier occupation, which may indeed be
associated with the early first millennium AD dates obtained in
the UCT excavation. But these faint traces could have been left behind by local hunters-with-sheep rather than by immigrant pastoralists.
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LiDAR imagery has revealed a precolonial Tswana capital, Kweneng, just south of Johannesburg. How could such an extensive town have gone unnoticed for two centuries? Tests reveal that vegetation obscured many of the ruins. Another reason... more
LiDAR imagery has revealed a precolonial Tswana capital, Kweneng, just south of Johannesburg. How could such an extensive town have gone unnoticed for two centuries? Tests reveal that vegetation obscured many of the ruins. Another reason is that Kweneng lies in a historical blind spot, and the memory of the place does not seem to have survived the Difeqane civil wars of the early 19th century. A third important reason is that an earlier generation of archaeologists who examined aerial photographs of this area in the 1960s failed to record the extraordinarily dense concentration of ruins at Kweneng.
Research Interests: History and Archaeology
The Neolithic concept has a long history in world archaeology. This paper critically examines the concept as it is used, and avoided, in South Africa.
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Stonewalled architecture first appeared on the South African highveld some five or six centuries ago in the landscape between Johannesburg and the Vaal River. The style of these oldest stonewalled structures is referred to as Type N. This... more
Stonewalled architecture first appeared on the South African highveld some five or six centuries ago in the landscape between Johannesburg and the Vaal River. The style of these oldest stonewalled structures is referred to as Type N. This paper describes Type N structures and the relevant archaeological details, before presenting their distribution patterns as observed in the remote sensing survey of a 9000 km 2 study area in the northern highveld, between Johannesburg and the Vaal River. Combined with previous studies of the Type N structures in the southern highveld, these data allow a reappraisal of the Type N cultural expression. In this landscape, the rank-size distribution of Type N structures shows a hierarchy centred on the Suikerbosrand Hills. This suggests a degree of cultural continuity with the early nineteenth century Tswana capital that formed at their foot. The archaeological period described in this paper-that of the Type N cultural expression-can thus be considered the formative phase of a sequence leading to complex, urbanised state level organisation in this part of the world. RÉSUMÉ L'architecture en pierre fit son apparition sur le highveld sud-africain il y a cinq ou six siècles entre Johannesburg et la rivière Vaal. Le type des structures les plus anciennes a été nommé Type N. Cet article décrit les structures de Type N et les données archéologiques pertinentes, puis présente leur distribution telle qu'elle a été observée au travers d'un relevé par télédétection d'une zone d'étude de 9000 km 2 située dans le nord du highveld entre Johannesburg et la rivière Vaal. Une fois ces données combinées aux études précédentes sur les structures de Type N dans le sud du highveld, une réévaluation de l'expression culturelle de Type N devient possible. Dans ce paysage, la répartition par taille des structures de Type N manifeste une hiérarchie centrée sur les collines Suikerbosrand. Ceci suggère une certaine continuité culturelle avec la capitale Tswana du début du dix-neuvième siècle qui se créa à leur base. La période archéologique décrite dans le présent article-celle de l'expression culturelle de Type N-peut donc être considérée comme la phase formative d'une séquence qui conduisit à une organisation complexe et urbanisée, au niveau de l'État, dans cette partie du monde. ARTICLE HISTORY
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Kweneng is an extensive aggregation of stone-walled ruins that represent a pre-colonial Tswana capital. It is located 30 km south of today's Johannesburg. The Molokwane architectural style predominates at this site. This style dates from... more
Kweneng is an extensive aggregation of stone-walled ruins that represent a pre-colonial Tswana capital. It is located 30 km south of today's Johannesburg. The Molokwane architectural style predominates at this site. This style dates from around the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries AD. The northern sector of Kweneng contains some structures in an architectural style from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries AD. Scattered here and there on the fringes of Kweneng are Type N compounds, which represent the oldest architectural style in this region and date to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries AD. With a long sequence from formation to collapse, Kweneng will shed light not only on the birth of complex urban society in this region, but also in more distant times and places where the evidence might be considerably less intact. This preliminary report introduces the site and the principal features of its built environment.
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Kasteelberg is a prominent hill and a famous archaeological locality on the west coast of South Africa. It has abundant evidence of pre-colonial herding practices. In this paper, I describe the Later Stone Age hilltop site of KBDe and its... more
Kasteelberg is a prominent hill and a famous
archaeological locality on the west coast of South Africa.
It has abundant evidence of pre-colonial herding practices.
In this paper, I describe the Later Stone Age hilltop
site of KBDe and its excavated remains. I argue that
KBDe is merely one part of an extensive site that covers
the summit of Kasteelberg, and which includes the previously
published locality KBA. From the late seventh to
the mid-eleventh centuries AD, the hilltop was used as a
location for conspicuous feasts. Hilltop settlements often
broadcast higher social status, and Kasteelberg may be
the oldest example of such signalling in South Africa.
archaeological locality on the west coast of South Africa.
It has abundant evidence of pre-colonial herding practices.
In this paper, I describe the Later Stone Age hilltop
site of KBDe and its excavated remains. I argue that
KBDe is merely one part of an extensive site that covers
the summit of Kasteelberg, and which includes the previously
published locality KBA. From the late seventh to
the mid-eleventh centuries AD, the hilltop was used as a
location for conspicuous feasts. Hilltop settlements often
broadcast higher social status, and Kasteelberg may be
the oldest example of such signalling in South Africa.
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The process that brought ceramic technology to the west coast of South Africa is important because it is associated with the arrival of livestock in these parts. The site of Kasteelberg G (KBG) has a highly resolved cultural sequence that... more
The process that brought ceramic technology to the west coast of South Africa is important because it is associated with the arrival of livestock in these parts. The site of Kasteelberg G (KBG) has a highly resolved cultural sequence that spans the last two millennia BC and AD, which allows us a detailed view of the arrival of ceramics into a Later Stone Age community on the west coast of South Africa. The distributions of other finds indicate that the appearance of pottery in the sequence of KBG was not paralleled by any perceptible changes in the lithic industry and marine shellfish preferences of its inhabitants, but there were important changes in the other faunal preferences and ostrich eggshell bead sizes. This mix of change and continuity is compatible with the proposition that small-scale population movement (infiltration) may have played a role in bringing ceramics to the west coast. However, the study must be broadened considerably before the hypothesis can be properly tested.
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Chapter from book (in Italian) with a summary of the main finds from the CeRDO project in the Eastern Desert and Red Sea Hills of north-eastern Sudan in the early 1990s. Many of the finds relate to ancient gold mining in this area.
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Unpublished report of fieldwork in the Eastern Desert and Red Sea Hills of northeastern Sudan carried out by the Eastern Desert Research Centre (CERDO), under the direction of Alfredo and Angelo Castiglioni.
Unpublished report of fieldwork in the Eastern Desert and Red Sea Hills of northeastern Sudan carried out by the Eastern Desert Research Centre (CERDO), under the direction of Alfredo and Angelo Castiglioni.
Unpublished report of fieldwork in the Eastern Desert and Red Sea Hills of northeastern Sudan carried out by the Eastern Desert Research Centre (CERDO), under the direction of Alfredo and Angelo Castiglioni.
Urban sprawl destroys archaeological sites. This paper examines the current urban sprawl of Johannesburg and its effect on the Iron Age and colonial ruins between the Witwatersrand Ridge and the River Vaal. Freely available satellite... more
Urban sprawl destroys archaeological sites. This paper examines the current urban sprawl of Johannesburg and its effect on the Iron Age and colonial ruins between the Witwatersrand Ridge and the River Vaal. Freely available satellite imagery and other relevant spatial data are analysed with open source Geographical Information System (GIS) and statistical software, in order to measure the damage done to archaeological sites. Among other things, this will improve the analysis of past settlement patterns.
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Previous remote sensing studies of South African Iron Age stone-walled ruins revealed considerable variation in how different analysts subjectively classify the ruins into one or another of several architectural types. In our previous... more
Previous remote sensing studies of South African Iron Age stone-walled ruins revealed considerable variation in how different analysts subjectively classify the ruins into one or another of several architectural types. In our previous studies, such high disagreement in classifying individual ruins co-existed, curiously, with similarity in the regional site distribution maps produced by the different analysts. Here, we propose and test two hypotheses to explain this anomaly and to help reduce inter-analyst variations in classifying the ruins. We find support for both hypotheses. Our results indicate that in going forward with our settlement pattern studies, we should use only the sites identically classified by two experienced analysts. These sites will be treated as a representative sample and spatial statistical techniques will be used to approximate the whole population.
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In South Africa, air photos were used in the 1960s and 1970s to plot distribution maps of pre-colonial stone-walled structures in order to study the peopling of this landscape. Different architectural styles of stone-walled structures... more
In South Africa, air photos were used in the 1960s and 1970s to plot distribution maps of pre-colonial stone-walled structures in order to study the peopling of this landscape. Different architectural styles of stone-walled structures were attributed to different cultures, who shared a mixed agricultural and pastoralist economic base and a cattle centered world-view. New technologies such as Google Earth satellite imagery as well as Geographic Information System software justify revisiting these structures as they facilitate more complex analyses ...
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Smith et al. (1991) proposed a model to distinguish the archaeological sites of Khoekhoe pastoralists from those of San. This model was based on information gathered from sites scattered over hundreds of square kilometres and several... more
Smith et al. (1991) proposed a model to distinguish the archaeological sites of Khoekhoe pastoralists from those of San. This model was based on information gathered from sites scattered over hundreds of square kilometres and several millennia. Between 1999 and 2002 we re-examined Smith et al. s (1991) model by excavating six neighbouring contemporary sites on the hill Kasteelberg. In a previous survey, three of these sites had been provisionally identified as pastoralist sites and three as forager sites. Here we present a brief comparison of the materials from these six sites. Although there are clear differences between the two sets of sites, the hypothesis that one set represents Khoekhoe herders and the other Bushman hunter-gatherers is not supported. Rather, one set of sites seems to represent a more mobile, herder-forager adaptation with a preference for inland resources while the other set appears to represent a more sedentary herder-forager adaptation with emphasis on shoreline resources. It remains to be determined how the
occupants of the two sets of sites related to each other
occupants of the two sets of sites related to each other
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In the southern Gauteng Province of South Africa we have used Google Earth satellite imagery to survey some 8000 square kilometres of landscape to record Iron Age stone walled structures. Around 7000 such structures have been located but... more
In the southern Gauteng Province of South Africa we have used Google Earth satellite imagery to survey some 8000 square kilometres of landscape to record Iron Age stone walled structures. Around 7000 such structures have been located but we wonder how many, and which types of structures we have missed because of the relatively low resolution of Google Earth imagery, and how this might affect our interpretation of the archaeological sequence in the study area. Here we objectively compare three high resolution remote sensing views (low altitude aerial photograph, LiDAR grayscale visualization and LiDAR hillshade visualization) of a 49 hectare focus zone. We can confirm significant differences in the results from the different platforms, but each has its advantages. We then compare these results with our Google Earth survey within the same 49 ha focus area. Even though Google Earth imagery cannot match the high resolution views and fails to reveal significant detail which can negatively affect archaeological interpretations of the regional sequence of occupation, we conclude that for our large scale regional remote sensing survey in the southern Gauteng it remains the only viable option for now. LiDAR and high resolution aerial photographs should be deployed on smaller areas of high interest to obtain maximum information, but they are impractical for regional coverage.
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LiDAR coverage of Kwenneg shown in hillshade visualization against contour map of the Suikerbosrand area.
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Kweneng designates a dense aggregation of stone-walled structures in the western foothills of the Suikerbosrand massif, some 35 km south of central Johannesburg in South Africa. The hundreds of Molokwane-style homesteads, large livestock... more
Kweneng designates a dense aggregation of stone-walled structures in the western foothills of the Suikerbosrand massif, some 35 km south of central Johannesburg in South Africa. The hundreds of Molokwane-style homesteads, large livestock enclosures, monumental ash-heaps, stone towers and other impressive architectural features have been brought to light using Airborne Laser Scanning technology, and attest to the economic wealth and political importance of this pre-colonial capital during its classic phase of occupation. Earlier episodes of social, economic and political complexity in southern Africa (e.g., Mapungubwe, Great Zimbabwe…) were related to commerce in the Indian Ocean network. Of interest is that no evidence of any contact with the Indian Ocean, or indeed with Atlantic commerce, has been found in association with Kweneng and nearby ruins. With a complete architectural and settlement sequence from a formative phase in the sixteenth century to its peak in the early nineteenth century, Kweneng can shed light on the rise of urbanism among pre-colonial Batswana populations. This poster aims to introduce the viewers with the layout and architecture of Kweneng.
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Geometric morphometrics is an effective tool for analysing differences in lithic shapes. The statistical accuracy achieved by employing this technique is significantly higher than previous forms of traditional morphometrics. When applied... more
Geometric morphometrics is an effective tool for analysing differences in lithic shapes. The statistical accuracy achieved by employing this technique is significantly higher than previous forms of traditional morphometrics. When applied to images of Later Stone Age tanged arrowheads from southern Africa, this tool helped define stylistic boundaries. This study involved a sample of 72 tanged arrowheads from 22 sites, most of which are located in the upper Orange River Basin. Several analyses, including Principle Component Analysis and Canonical Variate Analysis, were conducted using the geometric morphometrics program “MorphoJ”. This particular free source software was especially useful in its ability to visualise the statistical results in numerous forms and from their interpretation in addition to drawing on the concepts of isochrestic and emblemic style, two major territorial units have been recognised in southern African pre-Colonial hunter-gatherer groups,