A southern African archaeological database of organic containers and materials, 800 cal BC to cal AD 1500: Possible implications for the transition from foraging to livestock-keeping.

Although evidence of organic materials has consistently been reported in the archaeology of southern Africa little attention has been given to how this evidence, so slight in comparison to pottery and lithics, might be used to understand the transition from foraging to livestock-keeping in southern African Archaeology. We have compiled a geo-referenced, radiocarbon database of these organic, material culture remains, with particular reference to containers made of ostrich eggshell, wood, gourd, tortoise shell, twine, and leather over a 2300-year period to capture the periods before and after the appearance of livestock. We have mapped the organic materials for the period 800 cal BC to cal AD 1500 and explored the subsistence base of those who used them. This distribution is compared to that of pottery and livestock remains-conventionally the two archaeological markers of pastoralists. The paper interrogates what this might add to the vexed question of how the practice of livestock-keeping and pottery-making spread into and through the region (the hunter-herder debate). Our analysis suggests that ostrich eggshell containers can be used as a proxy for hunter-gatherers. By comparing areas of bead manufacture with those that have evidence only of bead use, we show the areas to which items may have travelled, along already established hunter-gatherer exchange networks. Our results suggest that hunter-gatherers widely and quickly adopted pottery across southern Africa in a process of cultural diffusion and local innovation, and that this was possibly the main mechanism for the dispersal of livestock at 2100 years ago.

The archaeological evidence for the appearance of pastoralism and farming in southern Africa.

This paper is a response to the growing reference to archaeological evidence by linguists and geneticists interested in the spread of early farmers and pastoralists in southern Africa. It presents two databases. The first contains the archaeological evidence for pastoralism and farming in southern Africa, for the period 550 BC to AD 1050. This is the first time that the seven different types of archaeological evidence that have traditionally been used to identify both spread events are presented together at this scale. This was stimulated by our interest in investigating the antiquity of an early 'Iron Age package' relative to the spread of single archaeological traits. The analysis shows that the package appears approximately 700 years after sites containing pottery, cattle and sheep, without agriculture, appear in the drier parts of the sub-continent. It post-dates the appearance of earlier sites with pottery associated with farmers, metal-working and cultivation in the eastern half of the sub-continent. While poor preservation undoubtedly explains the absence of some parts of the package, the analysis suggests that other explanations should be considered. The second database is a quantitative, spatial study of archaeological publications on southern African farming and pastoralism for the period 1950 to 2016, covering the same geographical area and archaeological timeframe. This is presented as a proxy for research-intensive areas in attempt to show the gaps in archaeological fieldwork and knowledge.