Royden Yates

The social impact of pastoralism in the southwestern Cape

Abstract In this paper we suggest that the social and ecological impact of the appearance of domestic animals in the western Cape is visible in a number of different kinds of archaeological observations. Looking at the changes in site distributions through time, at the location of painted sites in relation to other occupied localities, at the kinds of subsistence evidence now accumulating, and at the literature on ritual and stress we see a relatively coherent response emerging. We suggest, as a working hypothesis, that the intrusion of pastoralists increased stress on residual hunter-gatheres and stimulated both ecological and social responses, two of the latter being an intensification of ritual and an increase in painting.

A unified lithic taxonomy based on patterns of core reduction

The authors and three students met for workshops on several occasions in Cape Town and Stellenbosch with the goal of defining a taxonomic system for chipped stone artefacts that can be applied to materials from the Early, Middle and Later Stone Age. The motivation for defining a ‘unified taxonomy’ stems from the need to develop a system for classifying multicomponent surface assemblages. The proposed taxonomy revises southern African systems by applying ideas and methods from European approaches to lithic technology. Given that much confusion exists on the classification of cores and core reduction, the lithic workshops focused on this class of artefact. Most of the variation encountered when examining material from Anyskop, Blombos, Geelbek, Hollow Rock Shelter and Klasies River Mouth could be placed within the taxa of Inclined, Parallel and Platform cores. These categories form the basis of the proposed taxonomy with the additional taxa of Initial, Multidirectional, Indeterminate Broken, Bipolar and Other being necessary for a small proportion of the cores that fall outside the range of the three main taxa. Blind tests using assemblages of cores from Blombos, Geelbek and Anyskop yielded a satisfactory degree of reproducibility and lend credibility to the proposed taxonomy. This paper also considers other key variables of cores including: the morphology of end products, degree of reduction, numbers of striking and removal surfaces, and degree of platform preparation.

Late Holocene coastal change in the southwestern Cape, South Africa

Abstract Radiocarbon-dated elevated marine deposits and the record of anthropogenic and natural debris in archaeological deposits on the west coast of South Africa indicate that significant coastal remodelling has taken place in the past 4300 years in response to sea level change. Geological and archaeological investigation of elevated deposits of sub-fossil shell, abandoned lagoons, and washover bars has shown that many of these features relate to a mid Holocene high stand of the sea of about +2–3 m above modern mean sea level. The detailed course of local late Holocene sea level change cannot be resolved from these elevated geological deposits but information from archaeological sites provides valuable indirect evidence of the effects of coastal change in response to minor fluctuations in relative sea level.

Nets and fully recurved bows: rock paintings and hunting methods in the Western Cape, South Africa

One of the prevailing emphases in southern African rock painting research is the attempt to understand the meaning of the painting in its social context. Lewis-Williams (1981, 1983) has shown convincingly that much of the painted record is consistent with the cognitive system reflected in the ethnographies of modem Kalahari San peoples and, more fragmentarily, contained in nineteenth century historic accounts from both the Cape and Lesotho. More specifically he argues that many, if not all, of the paintings reflect trance experiences painted by those who had been in trance, perhaps as a means of communicating their visions to a wider audience. Painted caves, he suggests, contain sets of experiences rendered in a series of metaphorical images: visual symbols of the potency of the eland, the efforts of a trancer to lead a rain animal to parched hunting grounds, the identification of a girl at puberty with the fat eland, the lines of potency connecting people, animals and events. There is, thus, a non-literal thread running through souther African rock painting, a dimension revealed largely through ethnographic and historic enquiry. We suggest that recognition of this level of meaning does not exhaust the potential information

Colonial Era Paintings in the Rock Art of the South-Western Cape: Some Preliminary Observations

Rock paintings which include images of colonial material culture occur in the south-western Cape as elsewhere in southern Africa. Previous studies ofthe south-western Cape material have been descriptive and the imagery treated as colonial only in a very general sense. This paper attempts to situate colonial era rock art of the south-western Cape within a broad chronological framework of local rock painting and colonial history. It is argued that, unlike colo? nial era painting in some ofthe eastern parts ofthe country, the south-western Cape images were produced fairly late in the history ofthe local colonial frontier. A number of pieces of evidence lead us to infer non-literal levels of meaning for these paintings. Important precolonial elements are present and the paintings are thus presumed not to be merely de? scriptive of events that passed in the region. A substantial understanding of these aspects of the paintings, however, awaits more detailed study.

At the Transition

Southern Africa is a subcontinent of contrasts, not only in climate and ecology, which encompass summer, year-round, and winter rainfall regimes and a variety of distinct biotic communities, but also in extent of archaeological coverage. While some areas (the Western and Eastern Cape Provinces of South Africa) have been quite intensively investigated, others (e.g., Botswana, Mozambique, and northern Namibia) remain largely unexplored. Our chapter reflects this difference. In general terms, the northern half of the subcontinent is a savanna region populated by browsing and mixed feeding ungulates. The east is mostly covered by grasslands suitable for large, gregarious grazers, while the west trends into sparsely vegetated scrub or desert with a reduced diversity of large game: browsers are found in large numbers in a heathland (fynbos) along the southwestern margins of the subcontinent. We use these broad ecozonal distinctions (De Vos 1975) as a framework for our discussion.