Alexander Antonites

Glass beads from Mutamba: patterns of consumption in thirteenth-century southern Africa

Mutamba is a settlement located on the northern slopes of the Soutpansberg in South Africa. Radiocarbon and material culture suggest contemporaneity with regional developments of social complexity primarily concentrated in the Shashe-Limpopo Confluence Area around the important site of Mapungubwe. The spatial location of Mutamba on the apparent political and economic periphery of Mapungubwe means that it is well suited to investigate patterns of distribution between centres of political influence and their larger hinterlands. It is proposed that trade goods followed variable patterns of distribution and consumption shaped by patterns in taste preference. In addition, this study suggests that, far from being deprived of trade goods, hinterland communities actively participated in regional networks of trade and exchange.

Mobility and African archaeology: an introduction

Ceri Z. Ashley, Alexander Antonites and Per Ditlef Fredriksen Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Pretoria, Faculty of Humanities, Private Bag X20, Hatfield, Pretoria, 0028, South Africa; Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, PO Box 1019, N-0315 Oslo, Norway; Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch, 7701 South Africa

The mobilities turn and archaeology: new perspectives on socio-political complexity in thirteenth-century northern South Africa

ABSTRACT This paper applies insights from the ‘mobilities turn’ (Hannam et al. 2006) or ‘new mobilities paradigm’ (Sheller and Urry 2006) to the archaeology of social complexity in thirteenth-century southern Africa. To date, research on this topic has typically tended to emphasise the role of mooring and place, with movement only regarded parenthetically. In contrast, the mobilities turn views mobility as a fundamental way of existing in the world, whereby movement, as well as stillness, are practices imbued with representation and meaning. This interpretive frame is brought to bear on new research conducted on a concentration of sites in the Maremani Nature Reserve, as well as previously published material from the sites of Stayt and Mutamba, South Africa. Our results illustrate the manner in which political power intersects with the mobility of people, objects and ideas and show how the mobility of people and things was active in the creation of communities at multiple spatial and conceptual scales. The diverse communities that occupied the Middle River Limpopo Valley were co-constituted within a complex network in which peripheral sites played an important role in maintaining political centres. The paper explores how communities articulated with the ‘imagined’ community of Mapungubwe through shared practices and material culture.