Related Papers
Journal of Archaeological Science
Archaeological excavations at Bosutswe, Botswana: cultural chronology, paleo-ecology and economy
2008 •
James Denbow, Nonofho Ndobochani
Excavations at the site of Bosutswe on the eastern edge of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana have uncovered over 4 m of deposit ranging in age from CE 700 to 1700. Our research has produced quantitative and qualitative measures of the material and ecological dimensions that structured the everyday actions and behaviors through which social identities were constituted, maintained, and transformed during the period when the polities of Toutswe, Mapungubwe, Great Zimbabwe and Khami rose to power. By examining the material dimensions that underlay shifting relations of production, exchange, and social stratification we are able to contextualize the social judgments that ascribed value to material goods and food ways, while specifying the ways these were used to create and naturalize social relationships and power differentials. Stable isotope analyses, combined with evidence of vitrified dung, further enable us to suggest changes in herd management strategies used by the inhabitants of the site to compensate for ecological changes brought about by long-term occupation, while at the same time enabling them to economically tie subordinates to them as social divisions became more rigidly defined after CE 1300. The cultural and economic changes that took place at Bosutswe thus directly impact our understanding of the social transformations that immediately preceded contemporary configurations of ethnicity in Botswana.
Archaeological survey near Tsabong, Kgalagadi District, southwestern Botswana
2023 •
Michaela Ecker
Southern African Field Archaeology 7: 63-71
The archaeology and symbolic dimensions of a thirteenth century village in eastern Botswana
1998 •
John Kinahan
The Journal of African History
THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF SOUTHERNMOST AFRICA FROM c. 2000 BP TO THE EARLY 1800s: A REVIEW OF RECENT RESEARCH
2005 •
Peter Mitchell
ABSTRACT Southernmost Africa (here meaning South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland) provides an excellent opportunity for investigating the relations between farming, herding and hunting-gathering communities over the past 2,000 years, as well as the development of societies committed to food production and their increasing engagement with the wider world through systems of exchange spanning the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. This paper surveys and evaluates the archaeological research relevant to these communities and issues carried out in the region since the early 1990s. Among other themes discussed are the processes responsible for the emergence and transformation of pastoralist societies (principally in the Cape), the ways in which rock art is increasingly being incorporated with other forms of archaeological data to build a more socially informed view of the past, the analytical strength and potential of ethnographically informed understandings of past farming societies and the important contribution that recent research on the development of complex societies in the Shashe-Limpopo Basin can make to comparative studies of state formation.
Azania
1999 •
Adria LaViolette, Jeffrey Fleisher
African Archaeological Review
Book Review Late Pleistocene and Holocene Hunter-Gatherers of the Matopos: An Archaeological Study of Change and Continuity in Zimbabwe (Societas Archaeologica Upsaliensis, Studies in African Archaeology 10). By N. J. Walker. Uppsala, 1995 134 Figures, 24 Plates, 122 Tables. ISSN 0284-5040. ISBN ...
1997 •
Peter Mitchell
Quaternary Science Reviews
Thriving in the Thirstland: New Stone Age sites from the Middle Kalahari, Botswana
2022 •
David Nash
This paper documents the abundance of Stone Age finds in the Middle Kalahari, both through earlier publications and newly documented sites. Results of several decades of Stone Age research are presented through a variety of projects and placed within the context of previous archaeological investigations in the region. We argue for the importance of open-air sites in constructing a more representative picture of prehistoric behaviour in the interior of southern Africa.
Journal of Archaeological Science
Archaeology, Palaeoenvironment, and Chronology of the Tsodilo Hills White Paintings Rock Shelter, Northwest Kalahari Desert, Botswana
2000 •
Richard Milo
Benjamin Smith
The Archaeofauna from Xaro on the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana
Elene Taljaard, Prof. Shaw Badenhorst, Wynand Johannes van Zyl, james denbow
We report on the fauna from the sites of Xaro 1 and Xaro 2 located on the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana. Carbon isotopes from two human graves at Xaro Lodge located approximately 500 m south of Xaro 1 suggest an economy oriented toward wild plants, fish and game similar to that of the modern baNoka, or ‘River Bushmen’. The faunal remains from Xaro 1 and 2 corroborate this suggestion.Pottery from the Early Iron Age, radiocarbon dates from the Later Iron Age, and glass beads from the European trade indicate there were two occupations at both sites, one belonging to the 18th and 19th centuries and an earlier one containing ceramics consistent with a first millennium AD date. The fauna from both occupations is dominated by fish and Chelonia (likely tortoise or terrapin). The people also hunted a variety of game animals, most of which are associated with aquatic conditions. Sheep remains were recovered from the later occupation of Xaro 1.
