The Archaeology of Southern AfricaSouthern Africa has one of the longest histories of occupation by modern humans and their ancestors anywhere in the world, over three million years. Research in Southern Africa is central to many key debates in contemporary archaeology, including hominid origins, the origins of anatomically modern humans and modern forms of behaviour, and the development of ethnographically informed perspectives for understanding rock art, of which the sub-continent boasts one of the richest heritages in the world. This is the first attempt at synthesis of the sub-continent's past for over forty years. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Frameworks | 10 |
Origins | 39 |
Modern humans modern behaviour? | 71 |
Living through the late Pleistocene | 107 |
From the Pleistocene into the Holocene social and ecological models of cultural change | 137 |
Hunting gathering and intensifying Holocene social and ecological models of cultural change | 161 |
History from the rocks ethnography from the desert | 192 |
Early farming communities | 259 |
The Zimbabwe Tradition | 300 |
Later farming communities | 344 |
The archaeology of colonialism | 380 |
Southern African archaeology today | 413 |
Glossary | 429 |
| 432 | |
| 504 | |
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Common terms and phrases
A.B. Smith Acheulean African Archaeological Bulletin animals archaeological sites areas assemblages australopithecines Beaumont Biome bladelet bone Boomplaas Botswana Bushman Caledon Cape Town cattle century ceramics coast culture dating Deacon Denbow early East eastern Elands Bay Cave emphasise ethnography evidence excavations farming communities fauna Figure flakes fossil Fynbos Gariep Hall Holocene hominins Homo Howieson's Poort Huffman hunter-gatherers Iron Age Jerardino Journal Ju/'hoansi Kalahari Karoo Khoekhoe Khoekhoen Klasies River Klein KwaZulu-Natal late Pleistocene Later Stone Age Leopard's Kopje Lesotho Lewis-Williams Limpopo livestock Loubser Maggs Mapungubwe microlithic middens modern humans Namibia Natal Museum Northern Cape numbers ostrich eggshell beads paintings Parkington pastoralist patterns populations pottery radiocarbon Robberg rock art rock-shelters Rose Cottage Cave Sampson scrapers Sehonghong settlement social South Africa South Africa courtesy South African Archaeological south-western Cape southern Africa Sterkfontein stone tools suggest Swartkrans Thukela Basin Tradition Transvaal Valley Vogel Wadley Western Cape Zambezi Zimbabwe
Popular passages
Page 434 - Klasies Pattern': Kua ethnoarchaeology, the Die Kelders Middle Stone Age archaeofauna, long bone fragmentation and carnivore ravaging
Page 463 - G. Avery, K. Cruz-Uribe, D. Halkett. T. Hart, RG Milo. TP Volman, Duinefontein 2: an Acheulean site in the Western Cape Province of South Africa, Journal of Human Evolution 37 (1999) 153-190.