the digging stick

~ .THE DIGGING STICK Volume 19, No 1

ISSN 1013-7521

April 2002

ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND ROCK ART SURVEY OF THE MAKGABENG PLATEAU, CENTRAL LIMPOPO BASIN Ed Eastwood 1, Johnny van Schalkwyk2 and Benjamin Smith 3 Since the beginning of the last century various writers have portrayed the Makgabeng Plateau as isolated, enigmatic and mysterious, and all have remarked on the exceptional natural beauty of the area. The plateau is underlain by aeolian sediments, thought to be the remains of an almost 2 000 million-year-old pre-Cambrian desert, which contain fossilised cyanobacteria the precursors of life on earth. Steepsided conglomerate spires tower over the northern parts of the plateau, and its rugged topography and diverse arid mountain plant communities combine to form an intriguing landscape. Today, the plateau is surrounded by fair. . Iy large populations San pamtmgs of leopards, zebras,

from the 1980s onward one of us (Johnny van Schalkwyk) has been excavating farmer sites and collecting ethnographic data. Khoisan peoples (San hunter-gatherers and Khoekhoe herders) began settling in the Makgabeng when Early Iron Age farmers began to move into the area in about AD 700. Eventually, from the 13th century onwards, the area was settled by SothoTswana, and later by Venda groups. Then, at the beginning of the 19th century, the Hananwa, a Northern Sotho group, settied here and eventually dominated the area. White settlement began in the 1840s l1li .r1£1III1 with the establishment of Schoemansdal in the " Soutpansberg and a kudu. and a rabb/~. ~ C?py. of this was soon followed

panel, traced by Jean Humphreys, was pamted by Patncla Vmmcombe

of Hananwa, Nde- and reproduced in Revil Mason's book, Prehistory of the Transvaal by missionary actbele and Koni setivity in the Bloutlements and the big game of yesteryear is gone berg/Makgabeng area. Relations between from the nearby plains. missionaries and local communities were initially fairly amicable. Then, from the 1890s onward Apart from its enduring natural beauty, the there were serious attempts by President Kruger plateau is proving to be fertile ground for of the ZAR to smash African independence in the archaeologists and rock art researchers alike. Archaeological excavation began in the 1950s, region, culminating in the Maleboho War in 1894. when Jean Humphreys excavated a shelter, and 1. Director, Palaeo-Art Field Services, PO Box 168, Louis Trichardt, 0920. [email protected] 2. Archaeologist, National Cultural History Museum, PO Box 28088, Sunnyside, 0132. [email protected] .. za 3. Director, Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, PO Wits, 2050. [email protected]

From 1916 until the 1970s the rock art of the Makgabeng was referred to by investigators such as Noel Roberts, Adrian Boshier, Revil Mason, Harald Pager, and Jalmar and lone Rudner. More recently, in the 1990s, over 60 rock art sites were documented, mainly on the

South African Archaeological Society

western plateau, by two of us (Johnny van Schalkwyk and Benjamin Smith). The main aim was to document the Northern Sotho finger paintings of the area, not the San art. However, the whole plateau has never been methodically surveyed and neither has the San art been paid much attention until the present, ongoing survey, which has concentrated on the eastern plateau. The rock art survey runs concurrently with archaeo-anthropological investigations. The Makgabeng Plateau is one of four distinct rock art areas of the Central Limpopo Basin, the others being the Soutpansberg, the LimpopoShashe Confluence Area and north-eastern Venda. To date over 460 rock art sites have been documented in the region. The present survey of the Makgabeng began in May 2001 and is expected to continue for another three to four years. During fieldwork on the eastern plateau over 120 new sites have been discovered in about a fifth of the plateau's surface area, suggesting a rich harvest of sites awaiting discovery in future surveys. BOTS\NANA

Northern Sotho finger paintings of dots and sable antelope

Geometric forms include dots, squares, triangles and circles. In the present survey several "new" image classes were discovered, namely battle axes, battle shields, aprons and handprints. Khoekhoe Herder Finger Paintings. One of the most intriguing aspects of the rock art traditions of the Makgabeng is a distinct geometric form of art. Unlike the human and animal subjects of hunter-gatherer paintings, the geometric art is composed entirely of forms such as circles, rayed circles, concentric circles, circle-and-dot motifs, circle-and-cross motifs, rows of finger lines, rows and clusters of finger dots and handprints. These are most commonly painted in red pigment, sometimes in red and white, and occasionally only in white. Geometric paintings are found from south-central Africa to the Cape and it is now known that they were made by Khoekhoe herders. In a forthcoming paper, Benjamin Smith and Sven Ouzman [National Museum, Bloemfontein] infer authorship of the geometric and hand-printed paintings based on dating, excavation sequences, archaeolinguistic data and distribution. Khoekhoe paintings are usually non-representational (bar the handprints), but one image class depicts aprons, an excursion of the artists into representational art.

ZIMBABWE

_____ l SOUTH AFRICA

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Map of the Central Limpopo Basin rock art region showing the location of the Makgabeng Plateau

There are three main painting traditions in the Makgabeng, as follows. Northern Sotho Finger Paintings. These consist of anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and geometric designs with white as the dominant colour. Because the art is fairly recent and the people who live near the sites are only a few generations removed from the painters, it has been possible to relate the symbolism depicted in the art to modern forms of ritual and the use of symbolism. Intriguingly, the paintings include images of trains, wagons, white people and even a camel. Other subjects depicted are 'spreadeagles' and animals such as elephant, rhinoceros, giraffe, zebra, sable antelope, kudu, gemsbok, ostrich and carnivores, all of which appear to have symbolic resonances in male initiation rites. The Digging Stick

Typical Khoekhoe paintings of rayed concentric circle motifs

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San Hunter-gatherer Fine-line Paintings. In contrast to the Khoekhoe finger paintings, San art was produced using fine brushes, quills or sticks, although there are a few partially finger-painted images. The San paintings of the Makgabeng are generally well preserved and image classes include men and women, and animals such as elephant, giraffe, kudu, hartebeest, eland, impala, aardvark, sheep, felines and zebra. One image class is especially intriguing: paintings of loincloths and aprons. In a forthcoming publication it is argued that the loincloth/apron motif is diagnostic for Khoespeaking San hunter-gatherer rock art in southern Africa.

A fine depiction of a San female apron juxtaposed with female figures, a hunter, an antelope and a zebra

toward studies of interaction between huntergatherers, herders and farmers. As the Makgabeng Plateau forms part of a larger regional corpus of rock art, results from the surveys will contribute towards an understanding of inter and intra-regional rock art studies. The archaeological and rock art surveys will also serve as a basis for eventual environmental impact studies. Interest is being shown by local and provincial governments to develop the area as a tourist venue, and by the South African Heritage Resources Agency as a National Heritage Site. The surveys will ensure that archaeological sites are given the protection they deserve.

,

San paintings of people, a lion and other animals, and Khoekhoe paintings of aprons

Acknowledgements The rock art and archaeological surveys are supported by the James A Swan Fund, the National Research Foundation, the National Cultural History Museum and the University of the Witwatersrand. We are indebted to the late ChiefCollin Maleboho and the small community of people at Thabananthlana ga Masebe for their permission to work on Hananwa ancestral land.

The three painting traditions of farmer, herder and hunter-gatherer are all well represented in the Makgabeng and co-occur differentially. Roughly, about half the sites contain either North Sotho or San paintings, while the other half are a combination of two or even three of the traditions together. The co-occurrence of the three painting traditions, and certain common image classes, suggest that there was some cultural interaction between the three groups. Many geometric forms, for example, are shared between herder and farmer arts, while many animal images, such as ostriches, elephant, giraffe, kudu and gemsbok, are common to hunter-gatherer and farmer rock paintings.

3 000 Egyptian mummified hawks A monumental tomb has been discovered in the al-Mozawaka area off al-Kharga city in the New Valley, Egypt. The tomb dates back to the Roman age, almost 2 100 years ago, and contains some 3 000 mummified hawks, which are in good condition and will be restored and displayed in a special museum.

The only image class found in all three traditions is the apron motif. Interestingly, the apron motif also appears in Northern Sotho beadwork and mural design and is linked to age-group status and initiation. Although the significance of the apron motif in Khoekhoe and San thought and beliefs are not well understood at present, this cross-cultural image promises to contribute

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Many of the news snippets featured in The Digging Stick havetheirorigin in PaleoNews, a compendiumofarchaeological and other scientific news from the international press circulated electronically twice a week by South African Amateur Society of Palaeontologists' enthqsiast Tinus de Beer. If you would like to be added to the listof recipients, send your request to [email protected].

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FROM HUNTING TO HERDING IN SOUTH-EASTERN BOTSWANA Karim Sadr1 and Ina Plug 2 Because hunters and gatherers became herders so late in southern Africa, their archaeological remains are relatively well preserved. Bushmen at Kalahari cattle posts, for example, may have experienced this transition only in the last century, while the Khoekhoe are an older, and perhaps, the original southern African example. In contrast, in many other parts of the world this economic transition took place so long ago that it is now difficult to reconstruct the sequence of events. Thus, the southern African examples can shed useful light on the global origins of food production. The development matters since it was the first step towards a sedentary life and ultimately the complex civilisations we all live in now.

obstacle of becoming herders could thus have been to consider livestock exempt from sharing. That is just what is suggested by the archaeological sequence from two excavated rock shelters near Thamaga in the Metsemotlhaba river valley of south-eastern Botswana's Kweneng District (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Thamaga in south-eastern Botswana

Currently, the dominant idea is that becoming herders is hard (Smith 1990, 1992; Boonzaier et a/1996). Hunters share meat, herders keep it to themselves. Perhaps only a few hunters ever bridged this gap: the socially important habit of sharing meat may have held the rest back. Following this line of thinking, about 2 000 years ago the first livestock must have reached the Cape by the migration of one such rare group of hunters-turned-herders rather than by a process of diffusion, since that would have entailed repeated transformations of hunters to herders. The original migrating herders, perhaps the Khoekhoe, may have overcome their sharing ethic in an unusual circumstance, perhaps as low-class subjects in ranked Iron Age societies where they learned the virtues of hoarding private property. This all makes sense if sharing really is such a robust obstacle. But there are reasons to think it is not. Until recently, egalitarian foragers in the central Kalahari, for example, owned goats to insure against famine (Tanaka 1976; Kent 1993). They had clearly found a way to herd livestock and remain foragers who share meat. Also, among ethnographically known Bushmen, not all meat was subject to sharing (Marshall 1976). Hypothetically at least, one way around the

The Ostrich and Radiepolong shelters were excavated in 1996 with generous support from the University of Botswana. Ostrich is a small shelter that receives its name from a faint painting of four ostriches. It was occupied briefly sometime in the last 300 years, probably in the th th 18 or 19 century. This was the period of contact between resident foragers and the Bakwena farmers and herders. Radiepolong Shelter, 4 km south of Ostrich, has a sequence of intermittent occupation beginning about 4 000 years ago. Its final occupation was contemporary with that of Ostrich shelter.

1. School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, PO Wits, 2050, South Africa. [email protected] 2. PO Box 21022, Valhalla, 0137. [email protected]

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The animal bones excavated from the rock shelters document the transformation of local foragers into food producers: hunters becoming herders. Although the samples of identified bones are small, they present a coherent pattern (Fig. 2) and show that through time the proportion of livestock (sheep, some cattle and goat) increased relative to game. Significantly, the proportion of hunted large and medium game (chiefly hartebeest, warthog, and springbok) changed little. Instead, what compensated for the increase in the proportion of livestock was a sharp drop in small and very small animals (mainly duiker, steenbok, spring hare, tortoise).

Fig. 2: Trends in the animal bones from Ostrich shel ter (Ost) and the five layers from Radiepolong (R1 Ra R4 RS - R5). Ostrich has two dates of 50 -Large = MediulTJ 140 and 290 40 years ago; R1 30 has a date of 200 20 years ago; R2 10 has three dates 0 08T R1 R2 Ra R4 RS of 660, 820 and 850 years ago; R3 has three dates of 2 150, 3 000 and 3 150 years ago; R4 has a date of 4 100 and R5 has a date of 4 170 years ago. The proportions of tortoise are calculated relative to all bones of animals smaller than 0.5 kg. Ost R1 R2 Ra R4 RS Since tortoise bones vastlyoutnumber all other species, they would mask the trends if combined with the graphs for larger animals. For more details on the bone samples see article by Sadr and Plug in the South African Archaeological Bulletin, Vo156, Nos 173 & 174, Oec 2001. 50~-------------------

This pattern allows the hypothesis that foragers in south-eastern Botswana considered livestock equivalent to socially unimportant smaller game, rather than to the meat of "significant" large and medium game. Being small and relatively easy to obtain, smaller game was not subject to sharing among ethnographically known Bushmen and was thus of little social value despite the fact that it provided most of the protein (Marshall 1976). The closely correlating trends suggest that livestock may have been as reliable and effortless to obtain as smaller game. Indeed, livestock probably had to have been even more reliable in order to replace the hunting and gathering of smaller game. By considering livestock small meat, the foragers of southeastern Botswana may have avoided the obligation to share their domestic animals. They may have adequately met their ritual and social obligations as foragers by the continued hunting and sharing of large and medium game (e.g. Marshall 1976; Yellen 1977). The unchanging proportion of large and medium game at the Thamaga rock shelters thus suggests continuity in hunter-gatherer customs, even while privately owned livestock gained in economic importance.

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References

1. Boonzaier, E, Malherbe, C, Smith, A, and Berens, P. 1996. The Cape herders: A history of the Khoikhoi of southern Africa. Cape Town and Johannesburg: David Philip. 2. Kent, S. 1993. Variability in faunal assemblages: The influence of hunting skills, snaring, dogs and mode of cooking on faunal remains at a sedentary Kalahari community. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 12:323-385. 3. Marshall, L. 1976. The !Kung of Nyae Nyae. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 4. Smith, A B. 1990. On becoming herders: Khoikhoi and San ethnicity in southern Africa. African Studies 49:51-73. 5. Smith, A B. 1992. Pastoralism in Africa. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. 6. Tanaka, J. 1976. Subsistence ecology of central Kalahari San. In: Lee, R, and DeVore, I (eds.). Kalahari hunter-gatherers: Studies of the !Kung San and their neighbors: 98-120. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 7. Yellen, J E. 1977. Cultural patterning in faunal remains: Evidence from the !Kung Bushmen. In: Ingersoll, 0, Yellen, J E, and Macdonald, W (eds). Experimental Archaeology 271-331. New York: Columbia University Press.

The faunal remains from the two rock shelters in south-eastern Botswana indicate that in the transition to herding, foragers could get around the obstacle of sharing meat. This theory certainly still has its problems: the Thamaga samples are small and alternative interpretations are not easily dismissed. But if hunters could readily incorporate livestock without reneging their social obligations as suggested by the bones from Ostrich and Radiepolong shelters, then the first sheep could also have reached southern most Africa by diffusion, rather than by the migration of the Khoekhoe.

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THOMAS BAINES' "LOST" ROCK ART SITE A 152-year-old mystery solved Sven Ouzman

around a cheerful fire, with a group of Mahouri seated arou nd another at the other end of the cave." (Kennedy 1964:29-30).

Colonial rock art research in the Free State began on 5 March 1850. This was when artist and explorer John Thomas Baines copied a rare Bushman rock painting of a black rhinoceros in a rock shelter somewhere between present-day Smithfield and Reddersburg. Important as this site is, its precise location was not known until a few months ago. In 1999 Johan Loock, Trans !Garib Branch Patron, suggested that we find this site, which had been "lost" for a centuryand-a-half. What followed was an intense three-year, detective-style search. Establishing distances and landmarks was vital to our success. Fortunately, Baines used a trochometer and was a meticulous diarist. He records that after leaving Grahamstown with Joseph McCabe on his Lake Ngami-bound Expedition on 8 February 1850, they reached Aliwal North on 28 February and stopped "for washing our tolerably abundant stock of soiled garments of all denominations". Five days later, after passing Rouxville and skirting Smithfield heading north, Baines writes:

After studying maps, analysing the diary, making enquiries and doing good old-fashioned foot searching, we tasted success. Retracing the expedition's route, we were able to relocate 'Kliphuis' in a now deserted and hauntingly desolate area about 30 km south-east of Reddersburg. A more populous area then, it was from a farmstead near here that expedition member Roman went to buy wheel grease. Amply demonstrating the antiquities of Free State hospitality, the good dame [lady] would not accept payment and gave "a dish of butter too

"At twenty minutes past three we came to a range of high mountains stretching nearly east and west, and, turning eastward along their southern face, halted at a quarter to four in a kloof called Klip huis - or Rock house - from two or three caves in the layers of rock which shewed themselves at intervals along the face of the hill, and had formerly been the haunt of wild Bushmen. We visited one rather high up in a kloof and found several drawings of different animals. I copied one of a black rhinoceros, said by my companion [McCabe] to be a very good representation of the animal for which it was designed, but unfortunately, like many more of the few sketches I had the opportunity of making, it is in the missing book. We spread our bedding as usual under the wagon but a heavy shower falling in the night compelled us to take refuge inside; and the people in the Bushman's cave, where, looking out in an interval of the shower in th the morning of Wednesday, March 6 , 1850, I saw them busily engaged in preparing breakfast

Fig. 1: 'Cave - Mahouri's people', Brenthurst Library collection MS. 049/14/14.

good to grease the wheels with." Shortly thereafter, the expedition outspanned in a small kloof with unusually sweet water. One of two sketches Baines made here (both of which are housed in the Brenthurst Library, by whose kind permission Fig. 1 is reproduced) shows the wagons and kloof. The second sketch shows the interior of the "Bushman cave" and demonstrates Baines' gift of capturing the essential elements of a place. His sketch exactly matches a low rock-painted shelter that Trans !Garib members and friends scrambled into on 27 October 2001. We were able to find the precise spot - within 100 mm where Baines sat and sketched, and we re-enacted the "Breakfast in the cave", this time

1. Rock Art Department, National Museum, PO Box 266, Bloemfontein, 9300, South Africa. [email protected].

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with a camera (Fig. 2). In high spirits we set off to find the 'lost' rhino rock painting. After only a few minutes' walk we espied a small stone-walled rock shelter near the kloof's rim. Another short scramble - this time prickly - was rewarded with more paintings! Cattle and anvil-shaped Sotho shields! Red human figures and antelope. Where was the rhino? Had it faded to nothing? No! There it was in white next to a Sotho shield. Elation, even though we realised that people such as those who had built a stone wall - had "found" this "lost" site before us. It is doubtful, though, that they realised the site's importance in the history of southern African rock art research. We did and savoured the moment.

Fig. 2: Re-creation of Baines's "Cave - Mahouri's people" sketch. Feet by Feely.

Looking for "lost" rock art sites is important not just for the thrill of (re )discovery. We also gain valuable information about factors affecting preservation. For example, within the last three years, "Bushman's cave" has suffered a collapse of part of its wall at the spot where the "Mahouri" are depicted. We also learn of colonial attitudes towards the Bushmen and rock art. It is perhaps appropriate that the first non-Bush man to copy Free State rock art was himself an artist and we could do worse than heed his dictum - "I am

simply an artist telling what I have seen as truthfully as I know it." Note: Because these two sites have limited access control and have suffered from vandalism, their precise location is not being divulged here.

Reference

Kennedy, R F (ed). 1964. Journal of residence in Africa 1842 - 1853, by Thomas Baines. Volume 2: 1850 - 1853. Cape Town: The Van Riebeeck Society.

THE CAPE GALLERY

60 Church Street Cape Town 8001 TellFax (021) 423-5309 E-mail: [email protected] Web-sites: www.capegallery.co.za www.capeinfo.com!capegallery

Rock art image from a shelter near Clanwilliam in the Westem Cape copied by Murray Schoonraad

Gallery Hours: Mon - Fri 9.30 am - 5.00 pm Sat 9.00 am - 1.00 pm Mastercard Visa Amex Diners Club Arrangements can be made to freight your purchases home.

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The Cape Gallery deals in fine art H'ork by SA artists and stocks a selection ofpaintings depicting South African rock art.

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A "STILL BAY" MIDDLE STONE AGE POINT FROM SWAZILAND John Masson

Some years ago the Senior Warden at Malolotja Nature Reserve, the late Ralph Girdwood, found a delicately shaped and flaked Middle Stone Age bifacial point in a road-side borrow pit. The location of the pit is marked on Farm 964 on the 1:50,000 Topographical Sheet (Motjane). Despite a number of subsequent visits to the site, no further examples of this highly distinctive artefact were recovered. This treasured find has been carefully packed away in a drawer of the Warden's office for most of the intervening years.

bedrock on which lie a mixture of river cobbles, ESA bifacial and unifacial implements and flakes, and some unworked MSA flakes. River cobbles and ESA and MSA material are also found in ploughed lands upslope, resting directly on the talc schist bedrock. Indications are that the MSA material comes from the soil horizon, while the river cobbles and ESA material come from the top of the ferruginous material (perhaps originally river sand) since neither are stained from prolonged interment in this material, as is the case with the talc schist bedrock.

Malolotja Nature Reserve lies in the north-west of Swaziland in the ancient Swaziland System of metamorphic rocks (quartzites, banded ironstones, schists, cherts, etc), which over geological time have been dispersed as cobbles and pebbles by river erosion along the river terraces and valleys of the area. These gravels were selected by ESA and MSA peoples for tool making - in the main, the fine grained quartzites by the former and the even finer grained cherts, usually black, by the latter. The point under discussion is of black chert with fine veins of milky quartz. It has been handdrawn to scale (see illustration alongside). The butt is rounded and shows part of the bulb of percussion. A distinctive feature is the very fine fish-scale pressure flaking, especially towards the tip and on the left (facing) lateral. Such precision workmanship "is truly impressive" (Henshilwood and Sealy, 1998). This leads to the suggestion that artefacts upon which so much "artistic" labour has been lavished were status symbols rather than utilitarian artefacts (Deacon and Deacon, 1999:100). It would certainly have been a waste of skilled workmanship to have hafted it as a spear point.

------______~__ Sent Although MSA material is discretely scattered over the landscape of north-west Swaziland, the only archaeological investigations have been at Ngwenya mountain to the south of the borrow pit and the Komati valley to the north. The Ngwenya results were obtained in the course of dating pigment mining at Lion Cavern in 1967, which yielded a date of about 43 250 BP (Dart and Beaumont, 1971), which would put the mining relatively late in the MSA sequence. However, because of the exploitation of the site for a specific mining purpose, typical MSA material was sparse. The Komati valley site, which was partly exposed and bisected by a deeply cut

It may be useful to describe the location and "stratigraphy" of the borrow pit. It lies on the lower slope of a river terrace about 15 m above the meandering Umbuluzi River. The grassland soil cover is about 250 mm deep and merges into a ferruginous sand that in turn becomes a deep red clay in the bottom of the dip, about 1 m to 1,5 m from the surface, hence the existence of the borrow pit. This red clay rests on a talc schist 1. PO Box 906, Mbabane, Swaziland.

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androgynous feline-headed statuette from Germany, thought to be around 32 000 years old.

track, was excavated by David Price Williams and colleagues in 1977. The report noted the occurrence of some bifacial "Still Bay" points, which, if they were indeed part of the assemblage, suggests a late phase of the MSA, formerly known as the Later Pietersburg. In my recollection, none of the "Still Bay" points were in any way comparable in craftsmanship and finish to the one illustrated.

Together with Christopher Chippindale at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge University, Ta90n conducted the first rigorous world-wide survey of prehistoric therianthrope images. They surveyed nearly 5 000 examples of rock art, most from northern Australia, Europe and South Africa, and recorded the frequency and types of therianthropes portrayed, and reviewed their age. Because many images have not been radiocarbon dated, the team also assessed artistic style and content, such as portrayals of extinct animals, and looked at whether motifs were superimposed on top of each other.

In contrast to the negative local evidence on age and use, Henshilwood and Sealy have unearthed at Blombos Cave a well-preserved and stratified setting for a positive answer to the place (an'd role) of the enigmatic "Still Bay" point in the archaeological record. Perhaps that should read "places and roles". They conclude by urging readers "to watch this space". I hope that this will not be too far in the future, because I am now 76, going on for 77 years old!

Ta90n and Chippindale say that belief in therianthropes was common in the distant past. Although they comprised only about one per cent of the works studied, the researchers found examples world-wide, indicating that today's fascination with hybrids such as werewolves is nothing new. Early humans were just as fascinated by supernatural "composite" beings who exist between the everyday and spirit worlds.

References

1. Dart, R A, and Beaumont, P B. 1971. On a further radiocarbon date for ancient mining in Southern Africa. South African Journal of Science, Jan 1971. 2. Deacon, H J and Deacon, J. 1999. Human beginnings in South Africa. Cape Town and Johannesburg, David Philip. 3. Henshelwood, C, and Sealy, J. 1998. Blombos Cave: Exciting new finds from the Middle Stone Age. The Digging Stick, Vo!. 15, No.i. 4. Price Williams, D, and Lindsey, N E (eds). 1977. Hlalakahle/Kufika. 5. Stone Age sites in north western Swaziland. Archaeological Research Association, Preliminary Volume I. London and Swaziland, City University.

Sven Ouzman of the National Museum in Bloemfontein says it is notoriously difficult to date rock art, so he is sceptical of the claim that therianthropes were the first beings ever portrayed. "[But] what Paul and Chris's paper does do is set up a testable hypothesis."

Stone Age hand axes found on Cape sea bed When Cape Town maritime archaeologist Bruno Werz was excavating a 17th century wreck in Table Bay, he was astonished to find a Stone Age hand axe lying in the sediment - probably just where it had been dropped 300 000 to 1,4 million years ago. It turns out that this is the oldest human artefact found on the seabed, where it was used, anywhere in the world. Underwater artefacts discovered previously, in the Mediterranean, date to about 45 000 years. Near the hand axe, Werz found fossil rhino bones and a rhino tooth. Later two more hand axes were found in the vicinity.

ARC.HAEOLOGICAL BRIEFS Animal-headed humans appear in earliest art Paintings of mythical animal-human hybrids are among the oldest surviving art ever produced. New research suggests that minotaurs, satyrs, werewolves and even Egypt's animal-headed gods are latecomers to the art scene compared with the therianthropes carved by the earliest artists on bone and painted on stone. "They go back to the dawn of humanity, to the first fully modern people," claims rock art expert Paul Ta90n of the Australian Museum in Sydney. He has found that in Australia and South Africa there are dozens of animal-headed people in rock paintings and carvings more than 10 000 years old. Some may be far older. The oldest was an

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According to Werz, at the time the axes were dropped by Stone Age people, the sea level around South Africa was about 10 m lower than at present and there are indications that there was a river delta where Table Bay now is. ~.-.

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IN SEARCH OF BUSHMAN TRADITIONS recognition. I was truly shocked at the pox-like infestation that has encroached upon the natural grandeur of this southern end of the Drakensberg. The greatest tragedy is that these sandstone valleys can never revert to the way they used to be - short-term'financial investment has marred our priceless inheritance forever. I had a very Jungian-type dream in which Bushman heads popped out of all the holes dug for tree-planting and gazed wistfully out across the changed vista, but quite speechless.

Pat Vinnicombe, in her end-of-2001 round robin letter, wrote of an interruption to her work at Wits' Rock Art Research Institute during 2001. Her fascinating report of interaction with a rainmaker, a herbalist, sangoma and healers in three countries was brought to the editor's attention by Val Ward of the Natal Branch. Here follows an edited version of Pat's report.

"I had spent only a month in Johannesburg when the work schedule was interrupted by participation in the making of a film I had agreed to help with years ago. My Swiss friend Peter Ammann, a Jungian analyst who is very absorbed by Bushman art and the significance of 'wilderness' in our psyche, has long been lobbying for funding for a film he scripted. I had lost all hope of his dream coming to fruition, but there, suddenly, it was all happening!

"The next film venue was near Bulwer (halfway between Underberg and Pietermaritzburg), where the shooting centred around a traditional healer (sangoma) named Mabi, who attributes his special powers to Bushman spirits. With considerable logistical support from Frans Prins and Jane Bedford (who specialises in Zulu beadwork and has close ties with Mabi), a special feast for the ancestors was arranged at Mabi's kraal. This was attended by throngs of people from the surrounding countryside and included no less than a dozen other sangoma, men and women, all resplendent in their long beaded headdresses decorated with bladders from sacrificial animals, gaily coloured garb and decorated fly-whisks. The attendant ceremonies included gory sacrifices of a cow and two sheep, which were eaten, and a sheep that was burnt to cinders and offered wholly to the spirits. Mabi performed a moving curing ceremony and further strengthened the powers of the attendant sangoma by anointing them with the gall of the sacrificial animals. A few drops were put on the tongue as well. The powerful singing and dancing, in which everyone participated, both lifts the soul and rattles it before setting you down in the world of reality again.

"The film team met up in Durban; Peter Amman as director, a very experienced German camera man and his younger assistant, and a Swiss sound expert who had spent a lot of time in the Sahara. We drove to the Maclear district of the north-eastern Cape, where the focus of our attention was a Xhosa rainmaker with Bushman ancestry. Frans Prins, an anthropologist from Natal Museum, has been seeking out Africans with knowledge of the earlier San huntergatherers, and gleaned amazing information. Musudugeni was one of Frans' most recent contacts and he, with a Xhosa translator, came with us to a very well preserved painting site, Storm Shelter, that was recently written up in National Geographic. As it happened, Musudugeni did not add a great deal to the interpretation of the paintings, but his approach to the rainmaking spirits that reside in the painted rocks and associated water was most revealing.

"The following day the ashes were collected from the sacrificial sheep and Mabi with his retinue sprinkled the remains into running water at the foot of a tiered waterfall. Special scented herbs were then burnt in an adjacent painted rock shelter. No doubt the spirits were pleased and appeased, but we were all exhausted, having filmed till late at night two days in succession.

"We then moved on to my home area, Underberg, where we met up with my brother John and filmed sites on the farm. The greatest thrill was a 2,5 hour helicopter flight over the Drakensberg valleys that took me 2,5 years to search and record! Although the basic topography remains forever unchanged, the border with Lesotho is now criss-crossed with vehicle access tracks, a result of measures taken to combat stock raids. Worse still, the timber industry s mania for planting pine trees has changed the ambience of the open veld out of all

"The crew then moved north to the Kamberg area where we met up with a Zulu herbalist who also ascribes great power to the Bushmen and to the eland antelope that was so important to them,

1

The Digging Stick

10

Vo119(l) April 2002

both materially and symbolically. A string of porters helped haul the heavy equipment, plus generator, to a high shelter with plentiful painted eland and we were blessed by a large herd of real eland that came wandering down the valley below us. Even more dramatic was a thick mist that suddenly enveloped the mountains and made getting all the equipment back down the escarpment in the dark quite hazardous. Fortunately, the porters, all local men, knew the terrain well and coped cheerfully. "By this time we had been joined by Megan Biesele from the United States, a folklorist and fluent speaker of the Ju/hoansi (!Xam) Bushman language, who arranged the Namibian leg of our trip. We flew to Windhoek, and were soon heading north to Bushmanland in 4 x 4 vehicles. Megan had negotiated for the film crew to work closely with two Bushman couples whose core territory is Gautcha Pan in the Nyae Nyae region. This is the area, and the people, with whom the Marshall family worked 50 years ago. Since I had saturated myself in the Marshall films and publications when seeking to elucidate the significance of the Drakensberg paintings, I felt I was arriving at a new place that was already well known to me.

"We then moved our centre to the Tsodillo Hills in Botswana, another area I have dreamed of visiting since my teenage years. The Bushmen of this region are now sadly being ousted from their land by migrant Bantu cattle-keepers and, in order to retain some measure of independence and recognition, the Bushmen too have become the owners and keepers of domestic stock. Transition, and accelerated adaptation, are in the making. The Tsodillo Hills themselves were grand beyond expectation, with scores of rock paintings hidden in sheer and inaccessible places. The evening we arrived the pink schistose rocks were reflecting the sunset light with an eerie luminosity that made very believable the local myths that this was the creation centre for all animal life. "Heartfelt thanks to Peter Ammann, together with his sponsors and talented crew, for creating the forum for such a memorable cUlmination of life's experiences. But Peter, poor man, has had the traumatic responsibility of cutting down the many hours of film to fit into a television documentary slot and is still busy with all associated technicalities and logistics of translation, captions, sound, etc."

"And through Megan, the group accepted me readily. N!xai, who features in The Gods must be crazy as well as John Marshall's ethnographic film, N!Xai, the story of a Bushwoman, even gave me her name! Her husband, !Kunta, who was learning the trance dance in the early Marshall films, is now one of the most experienced and respected healers. Indeed, we were privileged to be present at an electrifying performance of the healing dance; the women clapping and singing in the centre of the circle, the men rhythmically stamping round them until they finally fall into trance. Experiencing the caring participation of the group, the fluttering palpitation of the healer's hands and the shrieks as the sickness and aggression is expelled, left a marrow-chilling sensation. The synchronising build-up of intense energy followed by catharsis, wave upon wave, was a truly profound experience, stemming, I feel sure, from the creative core of humankind's existence. A privilege never to be forgotten. -

9 OOO-year-old rice seeds in China Chinese archaeologists have found primitive rice seeds and ancient farm tools in central China, further north than the long-believed origin of rice in the Yangtze River valley in southern China. The find shows that about 9 000 years ago people living in central China's Henan Province had developed advanced rice-growing technologies. Finds include relics of rice grains, carbon- . ized rice and whole sets of farm tools such as stone shovels, sickles, axes, knives and rollers. By the shape of the grains, scientists concluded that the seeds were in the process of evolution from primitive rice to round-grained nonglutinous rice. -=0=

"After filming a husband and wife team tracing animal tracks across the dry caked mud of the Gautcha Pan and stalking gemsbok through the Kalahari bush land, there were recordings of music-making and story-telling, as well as interVoI19(J) April 2002

views on a wide range of subjects during which I was able to pose some of the questions that have plagued me for years. The full translations of these discussions by Megan are mind-blowing, th like finding a new volume of the turn-of-the-(20 )century Bleek and Lloyd material that also played a pivotal role in helping explain the Drakensberg art.

11

The Digging Stick

DEVELOPMENTS AT THE BRANCHES

BOOK REVIEW

Transgariep now Trans !Garib

The Rock Art of Honey Hunters. Eva Crane, International Bee Research Association, Cardiff, UK. £9.50.

At the 12th AGM of the Transgariep Branch of the South African Archaeological Society it was decided to change the Branch's name from "Transgariep" to "Trans !Garib". Earlier in 2001, ethno-linguist Nigel Crawhall pointed out that Gariep is "an Afrikaans bastardisation of the Khoekhoegowap word Kai !Garib, the Great River, the old name for the Orange." He advised that the Khoe and San Language Body had protested to the government the abuse of their languages by the misnaming of the Gariep Dam.

Or Crane is to be congratulated on having created a register of close on 400 rock art sites in four continents that include paintings or petroglyphs of bees or honeycombs and/or related activities. The main features revealed by that register are collated in this book, which is adequately illustrated in black and white. The world's richest collection of rock art related to honey and bees is in Africa south of the Sahara, particularly in Zimbabwe and KwaZuluNatal. Ever since the visit to Zimbabwean sites by the German anthropologist Frobenius, certain paintings the subject of which he did not recognise, have been known by his made-up title of 'formlings'. It is now clear, however, that most, if not all, of these paintings depicted honeycombs, many with bees. Only six sites from Australia are included, which probably indicates a lack of relevant reports rather than a paucity of sites. I recall that the first site I visited in the vicinity of Laura, Cape York, had a painting of a stingless bees' nest.

A poll of members resulted in 22 votes in favour and two votes against the name change. Those opposed correctly pointed out that Gariep is a corruption of a KhoeKhoe word, but that it is now an English/Afrikaans word, what linguists call a loan word. Proponents of the change held that place names are frequently taken over by one group from another. The pronunciation and spelling of such words might change in the process. The borrowed word became the property of the language as much as it once was the property of the language from which it was borrowed. This was a perfectly normal process and no offence need be taken. Transgariep was, however, an archaic term and denoted all of Africa across the Orange River. The branch could do with a new name that more clearly marked the area in which the branch functioned. More correct would have been for the branch to be called 'The Central Branch', but this was very unimaginative

This book is a good example of the valuable knowledge to be revealed by a study of a particular theme in rock art. One hopes that it will be widely studied and that it will act as an inspiration for studies of other important themes. Belt Woodhouse

Boxed set of Bushman Paintings

All objections, options and proposals considered, the weight of members' opinion was that the branch enter 2002 as the Trans !Garib Branch.

Mrs Anne Roos would like to sell a boxed set of Bushman Paintings, by Helen Tongue, published in 1909. The asking price is R3 000. Enquiries to Janette Deacon, 49 Van Riebeeck St, Stellenbosch, 7600. Tel/fax 021 8871540. [email protected]

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