Alternative Views on the Acquisition of Livestock by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa: A Rejoinder to Smith, Yates and Jacobson

Kinahan, John

doi:10.2307/3888846

Cited by 19 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…[7,10,13]), and bead diameter has since been informally used a chronological marker at archaeological sites throughout southern Africa. The idea that larger beads are associated with herders has persisted for decades without being systematically tested as new sites and assemblages have been discovered, leading some to caution against its continued use a chronological proxy [14,15]. Furthermore, the bead size hypothesis has been not been evaluated in other parts of the continent, such as eastern Africa, where a similar transition from foraging to mobile herding began some two thousand years earlier.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ostrich eggshell bead diameter in the Holocene: Regional variation with the spread of herding in eastern and southern Africa

Miller

Sawchuk

2019

PLoS ONE

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Despite their ubiquity in Holocene African archaeological assemblages, ostrich eggshell (OES) beads are rarely studied in detail. An exception is in southern Africa, where there is a proposed relationship between OES bead diameter and the arrival of herding ~2000 years before present. In 1987, Leon Jacobson first observed that beads from forager sites in Namibia tended to be smaller than those associated with herder sites. Studies examining bead size around the Western Cape have generally confirmed Jacobson’s findings, though the driving forces of the diameter change remain unknown. Since this time, diameter has become an informal way of distinguishing forager and herder assemblages in southern Africa, but no large-scale studies of OES bead variation have been undertaken. Here we present an expanded analysis of Holocene OES bead diameters from southern, and for the first time, eastern Africa. Results reveal distinct patterns in OES bead size over time, reflecting different local dynamics associated with the spread of herding. In southern Africa, OES diameters display low variability and smaller absolute size through time. While larger beads begin to appear <2000 years ago, most beads in our study remained smaller. In contrast, eastern African OES bead diameters are consistently larger over the last 10,000 years and show no appreciable size change with the introduction of herding. Notably, larger beads thought to be associated with herders in southern Africa fall within the range of eastern African beads, indicating a potential connection between these regions in the Late Holocene consistent with genetic findings. Regional differences in bead size are subtle, on the order of millimeters, yet offer a potentially important line of evidence for investigating the spread of herding in sub-Saharan Africa. In order to understand the meaning of these changes, we encourage additional studies of OES bead assemblages and urge researchers to report individual bead diameters, rather than averages by level.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ostrich eggshell bead diameter in the Holocene: Regional variation with the spread of herding in eastern and southern Africa

Miller

Sawchuk

2019

PLoS ONE

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“…There is a consensus that Khoikhoi domesticates must have been introduced from north of the Equator as they do not have wild progenitors in southern Africa [13] – [14] . More debate surrounds the origins, timing, hypothetical routes by which domesticates would have spread southwards [13] , [15] – [17] , and the mechanisms involved in their introduction to southern Africa [9] , [10] , [14] , [18] – [22] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Proponents of cultural diffusion argue that stock and herding skills were initially introduced by pastoralists to neighboring hunter-gatherers who then passed on the knowledge of herding and live animals to other nearby hunter-gatherer groups through exchange networks [9] , [10] , [14] , [18] , [19] , [24] . Mid- to late-twentieth-century Kalahari hunter-gatherers who kept small flocks of goats while continuing to rely on wild food [25] – [27] are often presented as analogues for past small-scale herder-forager groups responsible for the introduction of stock into southernmost Africa.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Diffusion Was the Main Driving Mechanism of the Neolithic Transition in Southern Africa

et al. 2014

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It is well known that the Neolithic transition spread across Europe at a speed of about 1 km/yr. This result has been previously interpreted as a range expansion of the Neolithic driven mainly by demic diffusion (whereas cultural diffusion played a secondary role). However, a long-standing problem is whether this value (1 km/yr) and its interpretation (mainly demic diffusion) are characteristic only of Europe or universal (i.e. intrinsic features of Neolithic transitions all over the world). So far Neolithic spread rates outside Europe have been barely measured, and Neolithic spread rates substantially faster than 1 km/yr have not been previously reported. Here we show that the transition from hunting and gathering into herding in southern Africa spread at a rate of about 2.4 km/yr, i.e. about twice faster than the European Neolithic transition. Thus the value 1 km/yr is not a universal feature of Neolithic transitions in the world. Resorting to a recent demic-cultural wave-of-advance model, we also find that the main mechanism at work in the southern African Neolithic spread was cultural diffusion (whereas demic diffusion played a secondary role). This is in sharp contrast to the European Neolithic. Our results further suggest that Neolithic spread rates could be mainly driven by cultural diffusion in cases where the final state of this transition is herding/pastoralism (such as in southern Africa) rather than farming and stockbreeding (as in Europe).

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“…In southern Africa, the 'hunter-herder' debate is about whether the spread of novel traits was associated with the migration of people (demic diffusion) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] or by local innovation or their adoption by hunters and gatherers (cultural diffusion) [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. The paper is situated within this debate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Lander

Russell

2020

PLoS ONE

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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 livestockkeeping 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.

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Alternative Views on the Acquisition of Livestock by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa: A Rejoinder to Smith, Yates and Jacobson

Cited by 19 publications

References 14 publications

Ostrich eggshell bead diameter in the Holocene: Regional variation with the spread of herding in eastern and southern Africa

Ostrich eggshell bead diameter in the Holocene: Regional variation with the spread of herding in eastern and southern Africa

Cultural Diffusion Was the Main Driving Mechanism of the Neolithic Transition in Southern Africa

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

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