Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Re-constructing Tswana Townscapes: Toward a Critical Historical Archaeology

  • Chapter
African Historical Archaeologies

Part of the book series: Contributions to Global Historical Archaeology ((CGHA))

Abstract

The types of questions asked by the British archaeologist Thurstan Shaw as he endeavoured to interpret the remains his team had uncovered at the site of Igbo Isaiah in eastern Nigeria during the 1959-60 field season, are not unusual. Archaeologists the world over ask themselves similar questions as they ponder over assemblages of artefacts and faunal remains, stare long and hard at sections through deposits, and pace across the length and breadth of the sites they are excavating. Interpreting some archaeological remains seems easy, almost self-evident. It is difficult not to recognise shards of baked clay for what they are — the surviving fragments of a shattered pot. However, other questions, even quite simple ones, can be surprisingly hard to answer definitively. How was the pot made? What was it used for? How was it obtained? Who in the society might have used it? Was anyone not permitted to use it? Why was it decorated, or left undecorated? How did it break? How did it come to be lying here, where we uncovered it? And so on.

“Throughout the excavation, one of the questions uppermost was always: ‘What does thie deposit represent? Is it a burial? Is it a buried cache? Was it in a building of some sort? Or does it represent something entirely different?’” (Shaw 1970: 263)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Agorsah, K. 1990. Ethnoarchaeology: the search for a self-corrective approach to the study of past human behaviour. African Archaeological Review 8: 189–208.

    Google Scholar 

  • Andah, B.W. 1995. Studying African societies in cultural context. In P.R. Schmidt and T.C. Patterson (eds) Making Alternative Histories: the practice of archaeology and history in non-Western societies: 149–181. Santa Fe: School of American research Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aukema, J. 1989. Rain-making: a thousand year old ritual? South African Archaeological Bulletin 44: 70–72.

    Google Scholar 

  • Balfour, A.B. 1895. Twelve Hundred Miles in a Waggon. London: Edward Arnold.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barrow, J. 1806. A voyage to Cochinchina in the Years 1792 and 1793, etc., to which is annexed An Account of a Journey to Leetakoo, the Residence of the Chief of the Booshuana Nation, etc. London: Cadell & Davies.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beaumont, P. and Vogel, J.C. 1984. Spatial patterning of the ceramic Later Stone Age in the northern Cape Province, South Africa. In M. Hall, G. Avery, D.M. Avery, M.L. Wilson and A.J. Humphreys (eds) Frontiers: Southern African Archaeology today: 80–95 Oxford: BAR, International Series 207.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blackbeard, M. 1985. Memoirs of Samuel Blackbeard (1930). Botswana Notes and Records 17: 187–191.

    Google Scholar 

  • Borjeson, L. and Lane, P.J. 1996. Preliminary archaeological investigations at Phalatswe (Old Palaype), Central District, Botswana: The 1995 season. Nyame Akuma 45: 2–10.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bradlow, E. and Bradlow, F. (eds) 1979. William Somerville ‘s Narrative of his Journeys to the Eastern Cape Frontier and to Lattakoe, 1799–1802. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society.

    Google Scholar 

  • Breutz, P.-L. 1956. Stone kraal settlements in South Africa. African Studies 15:157–175.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bryce, J. 1898. Impressions of South Africa. New York: The Century Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burchell, W. 1953 [1822]. Travels in the Interior of South Africa. London: The Batchworth Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Caister, D. 1982. Archaeological perspectives on settlement patterns in south east Kweneng District. In R.R. Hitchcock and M.R. Smith (eds) Settlement in Botswana: 87–91. Gaborone: Botswana Society/Heinemann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, J. 1974 [1815]. Travels in South Africa, Undertaken at the Request of the Missionary Society. Cape Town: Struik.

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, J. 1822. Travels in South Africa. Being a narrative of a second journey, 2 vols. London: Westley Burchell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, J. 1824. Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa, 2 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cobbing, J. 1988. The Mfecane as alibi: thoughts on Dithakong and Mbolombo. Journal of African History 29:487–519.

    Google Scholar 

  • Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J.L. 1991. Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, colonialism, and consciousness in South Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Comaroff, J.L. and Comaroff, J. 1997 Of Revelation and Revolution: the dialectics of modernity on a South African frontier. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Currie, R.G. 1993. Luni-solar 18.6- and 10–11 year cycle signals in South African rainfall. International Journal of Climatology 13: 237–256.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dahlberg, A., Segobye, A.K. and Widgren, M. 1995. The utilisation of land and resources in the past: a study of Old Palapye settlement. Unpublished paper presented at the 10th Congress of the Pan African Association for Prehistory and Related Studies, Harare, June 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  • David, N. and Kramer, C. 2001. Ethnoarchaeology in Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Denbow J.R. 1984. Cows and kings: a spatial and economic analysis of a hierarchical Early Iron Age settlement system in eastern Botswana. In M. Hall, G. Avery, D.M. Avery, M.L. Wilson and A. J.B. Humphreys (eds) Frontiers: Southern African Archaeology today: 24–39. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dreyer, J. 1999. Tlokwa history: report on an archaeological survey of stone-walled sites in the north-eastern Free State. Southern African Field Archaeology 8: 46–56.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eldredge, E.A. 1992. Sources of conflict in Southern Africa, c. 1800–30: the ‘Mfecane’ reconsidered. Journal of African History 33: 1–35.

    Google Scholar 

  • Evers, T. 1984. Sotho-Tswana and Moloko settlement patterns and the Bantu Cattle Pattern. In M. Hall, G. Avery, D.M. Avery, M.L. Wilson and A J. Humphreys (eds) Frontiers: Southern African Archaeology today: 236–247. Oxford: BAR, International Series 207.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gulbrandsen, Ø.1993.the rise of the north-western tswana kingdoms:on the dynamics of interaction betweet internal relations and external forces.Africa63:550–582.

    Google Scholar 

  • H.V.P. 1895. A freehand sketch. The New Budget, 2nd October 1895.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, M. 1984. The myth of the Zulu homestead: archaeology and ethnography. Africa 54: 65–71.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, S. 1995. Archaeological indicators for stress in the Western Transvaal region between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. In C. Hamilton (ed.) The Mfecane Aftermath: reconstructive debates in Southern African History: 307–21 Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, S. 1998. A consideration of gender relations in the Late Iron Age “Sotho” sequence of the Western Highveld, South Africa. In S. Kent (ed.) Gender in African Prehistory: 235–258. Walnut Creek: Altimira Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamilton, C. (ed.) 1995. The Mfecane Aftermath: reconstructive debates in Southern African History. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harris, W.C. 1844 he wild sports of southern Africa: being the narrative of an expedition from the Cape of Good Hope, through the territories of the chief Moselekatse, to the tropic of Capricorn, 4th Ed. London: John Murray.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hartley, G. 1995. The battle of Dithakong and ’Mfecane’ theory. In C. Hamilton (ed.) The Mfecane Aftermath: reconstructive debates in Southern African History: 395–416. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvey, P.H. and Pagel, M.D. 1991. The Comparative Method in Evolutionary Biology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hawkes, C. F. C. 1954. Archaeological theory and method: some suggestions from the Old World. American Anthropologist 56: 155–168.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hepburn, J.D. 1970 [1895]. Twenty Years in Khama’s Country. London: Frank Cass & Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hodder, I. 1982. The Present Past. London: Batsford.

    Google Scholar 

  • How, M. 1954. An alibi for Mantatisi. African Studies 13: 65–76.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huffman, T.N. 1982. Archaeology and ethnohistory of the African Iron Age. Annual Review ofAnthropology 11: 133–150.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huffman, T.N. 1986. Archaeological evidence and conventional explanations of Southern Bantu settlement pattern. Africa 56: 280–298.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huffman, T.N. 1993. Broederstroom and the Central Cattle Pattern. South African Journal of Science 89: 220–226.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huffman, T.N. 2001. The Central Cattle Pattern and interpreting the past. Southern African Humanities 13: 19–35.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huffman, T.N. 2002. Regionality in the Iron Age: the case of the Sotho-Tswana. Southern African Humanities 14: 1–22.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hughes, W. 2000. Critical Thinking: An Introduction to Basic Skills, 3rd edition. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview.

    Google Scholar 

  • Humphreys, A.J.B. 1993. The significance of place names in archaeological research, with particular reference to the Northern Cape. African Studies 52: 43–53.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacobs, N.J. 1999. Environment, production and social difference in the Kalahari Thornveld, C1750–1830. Journal of Southern African Studies 25: 347–373.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnston, J. 1969 [1893]. Reality versus Romance in South Central Africa. London: Frank Cass & Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kinsman, M. 1995. ‘Hungry wolves’: the impact of violence on Rolong life 1823–1836. In C. Hamilton (ed) The Mfecane Aftermath: reconstructive rebates in Southern African History’. 363–393. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Landau, P. 1993. When rain falls: rainmaking and community in a Tswana village, c. 1870 to recent times. International Journal of African Historical Studies 26: 1–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lane, P.J. 1994/5. The use and abuse of ethnography in the study of the southern African Iron Age. Azania 29–30: 51–64.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lane, P.J. 1998. Engendered spaces and bodily practices in the Iron Age of Southern Africa. In S. Kent (ed) Gender in African Prehistory: 179–203. Walnut Creek: Altimira Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis-Williams, J.D. 1981. Believing and Seeing: symbolic meanings in Southern San rock paintings. London: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis-Williams, J.D. and Dowson, T.A. 1989. Images of Power: understanding Bushman Rock Art. Johannesburg: Southern Book Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lister, M.H. (ed.) 1949. Journals qf’A.G. Bain. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, No. 30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Loubser, J.H.N. 1985. Buffelshoek: an ethnaoarchaeological consideration of a Late Iron Age settlement in the southern Transvaal. South African Archaeological Bulletin 40: 81–87.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mackenzie, J. 1971 [1871]. Ten Years North of the Orange River, from 1859–1869. London: Frank Cass & Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maggs, T.M.O’C. 1976. Iron Age Communities of the Southern Highveld. Pietermaritzburg: Natal Museum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maggs, T.M.O’C. 1992. ‘My father’s hammer never ceased its song day and night’: the Zulu ferrous metalworking industry. Natal Museum Journal of Humanities 4: 65–87.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maggs, T.M.O’C. 1994/5. The Early Iron Age in the extreme south: some patterns and problems. Azania 29/30: 171–178.

    Google Scholar 

  • Manson, A. 1995. Conflict in the Western Highveld/Southern Kalahari c. 1750–1820. In C. Hamilton (ed.) The Mfecane Aftermath: reconstructive debates in Southern African History: 351–361. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mason, R.J. 1986. Origins of Black People of Johannesburg and the southern western central Transvaal, AD 350–1880. University of the Witwatersrand Archaeological Research Unit: Occasional Papers 16.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mathers, E.P. 1891. Zambesia, England’s El Dorado in Africa. London: King, Sell & Railton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mathibidi, N. 1996. Landscape history in Botswana: a study of the layout of setdement and the spatial organisation of Bangwato society at Old Palapye. Unpublished B.A. dissertation: University of Botswana.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moffat, R. 1842. Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa. London: John Snow.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morris, D. 1990. Dithakong: “the place of ruins”. In P. Beaumont and D. Morris (comp.) Guide To Archaeological Sites in the Northern Cape: 148–154. Kimberley: McGregor Museum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Motlotle, N. 1995. Archaeological research at Modipe Hill, Kgatleng District: oral traditions. Botswana Notes and Records 27: 57–60.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nash, D. J. and Endfield, G.H. 2002. A nineteenth century climate chronology for the Kalahari region of central southern Africa derived from missionary correspondence. International Journal of Climatology 22: 821–841.

    Google Scholar 

  • Omer-Cooper, J.D. 1966. The Zulu Aftermath: a nineteenth-century revolution in Bantu Africa. London: Longmans.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parsons, Q.N. 1977. The economic history of Khama’s country in Botswana, 1844–1930. In Q.N. Parsons and R. Palmer (eds) The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa: 113–143. Berkeley: The University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parsons, Q.N. 1982. Settlement in east-central Botswana, c. 1800–1920. In R.R. Hitchcock and M.R. Smith (eds) Settlement in Botswana: 115–128. Gaborone: Botswana Society/Heinemann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parsons, Q.N. 1995a. Prelude to Difaqane in the interior of southern Africa c. 1600-c. 1822. In C. Hamilton (ed) The Mfecane Aftermath: reconstructive debates in Southern African History. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press: 323–349.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parsons, Q.N. 1995b. ‘The time of troubles’: Difaqane in the interior. In C. Hamilton (ed) The Mfecane Aftermath: reconstructive debates in Southern African History: 301–306. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pearson, N. 1995. Archaeological research at Modipe Hill, Kgatleng District: survey and excavation 1992 to 1995. Botswana Notes and Records 27: 21–40.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pearson, N. 1996. Survey and excavation work at the late Iron Age site of Modipe Hill, Kgatleng District, Botswana. In G. Pwiti and R. Soper (eds) Aspects of African Archaeology. Papers from the l(f h Congress of the Pan African Association for Prehistory and Related Studies : 565–571. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pistorius, J.C.C. 1992. Molokwane: an Iron Age Bakwena village. Johannesburg: Preskor.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pistorius, J.C.C. 1997. Mmatshetshele the settlement of a displaced group in the Bankeveld. South African Journal of Ethnology 20:191–206.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pistorius, J.C.C. 2001. Late Iron Age sites on the Mmatshetshele mountain in the Central Bankeveld of the North West Province, South Africa. South African Archaeological Bulletin 56: 46–56.

    Google Scholar 

  • Porr, M. 1999 Archaeology, analogy, material culture, society: an exploration. In L.R. Owen and M. Porr (eds) Ethno-Analogy and the Reconstruction of Prehistoric Artefact Use and Production: 3–15. Tubingen: Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reid, A., Lane, P., Segobye, A., Borjeson, L., Mathibidi, N. and Sekgarametso, P. 1997. Tswana architecture and responses to colonialism. World Archaeology 28: 96–118.

    Google Scholar 

  • Salmon, M.H. 1982. Philosophy and Archaeology. New York: Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schapera, I. 1942. A short history of the BaNgwaketse. African Studies 1 (1): 1–27.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schapera, I. 1943. Native Land Tenure in Bechuanaland Protectorate. Alice: Lovedale Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schapera, I. (ed) 1951. Apprenticeship at Kuruman. Being the journals and letters of Robert and Mary Moffat. London: Chatto & Windus.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schapera, I. 1965. Praise Poems of Tswana Chiefs. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schapera, I. 1971. Rainmaking Rites of Tswana Tribes. Leiden: Afrika-Studiecentrum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schmidt, E. 1993. Peasants, Traders and Wives: Shona women in the history of Zimbabwe, 1870–1939. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Segadika, P. 1997. Political Strategies in the Landscape: a landscape approach to the investigation of the archaeology of the Tswapong area, east-central Botsawana, late nineteenth to early twentieth century AD. Unpublished MA thesis, University of Wales, Lampeter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shaw, T. 1970. Igbo-Ukwu: An Account of Archaeological Discoveries in Eastern Nigeria. 2 vols. London: Faber.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shillington, K. 1985. The Colonisation of the Southern Tswana. Braamfontein: Ravan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, A.B. 1993. Different facets of the crystal: early European images of the Khoikhoi at the Cape, South Africa. In M. Hall and A. Markell (eds) Historical Archaeology in the Western Cape: 8–20. Cape Town: South African Archaeological Society, Goodwin Series 7.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stahl, A.B. 1993. Concepts of time and approaches to analogical reasoning in historical perspective. American Antiquity 58: 235–60.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stahl, A.B. 2001. Making History in Banda: anthropological visions of Africa’s past, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Steward, J. 1942. The direct historical approach to archaeology. American Antiquity 7: 337–43.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, M. O.V. 1984. Southern Transvaal stone walled sites: a spatial consideration. In M. Hall, G. Avery, D.M. Avery, M.L. Wilson and A.J. Humphreys (eds) Frontiers: Southern African Archaeology today: 248–51. Oxford: BAR, International Series 207.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thomas, N. 1991. Out of Time: History and evolution in anthropological discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trigger, B.G. 1989. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trouillot, M.R. 1995. Silencing the Past. Boston: Beacon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tyson, P.D. 1986. Climatic Change and Variability over Southern Africa. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Waarden, C. 1989. The granaries of Vumba: structural interpretation of a Khami period commoner site. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 8: 131–157.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Waarden, C. 1998. The Later Iron Age. In P. Lane, A. Reid and A. Segobye (eds) Ditswa Mmung: the archaeology of Botswana: 115–160. Gaborone: Pula Press/Botswana Society.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vogel, J.C. and Fuls, A. 1999. The spatial distribution of radiocarbon dates for the Iron Age in southern Africa. South African Archaeological Bulletin 52: 97–101.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallis, J.P.R. (ed) 1945. The Matabele Journals of Robert Moffat 1829–1860, vol. 1. London: Chatto & Windus.

    Google Scholar 

  • Whitelaw G. 1994. KwaGandaganda: settlement patterns in the Natal Early Iron Age. Natal Museum Journal of Humanities 6: 1–64.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wylie, A. 1985. The reaction against analogy.Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 8:63–111

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. British Institute in Eastern Africa, Kenya

    Paul Lane

Authors
  1. Paul Lane
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, UK

    Andrew M. Reid

  2. The British Institute in Eastern Africa, Nairobi, Kenya

    Paul J. Lane

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2004 Springer Science+Business Media New York

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Lane, P. (2004). Re-constructing Tswana Townscapes: Toward a Critical Historical Archaeology. In: Reid, A.M., Lane, P.J. (eds) African Historical Archaeologies. Contributions to Global Historical Archaeology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8863-8_10

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8863-8_10

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-306-47996-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-8863-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation