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the effects of European contact on African tribalism, ethnicity, and identity. The marrying of the two sets of principles promises to yield interesting results.
See also
Africa, South, Prehistory; Australia, Historical
References
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Brink, Y. 1997. “Figuring the Cultural Landscape: Land, Identity, and Material Culture at the Cape in the Eighteenth Century.” South African Archaeological Bulletin 52, no. 166: 105–112.
Cox, G., and J. Sealy. 1997. “Investigating Identity and Life Histories: Isotopic Analysis and Historical Documentation of Slave Skeletons Found on the Cape Town Foreshore, South Africa.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 1, no. 3: 207–224.
Hall, M. 1991. “High and Low in the Townscapes of Dutch South America and South Africa: The Dialectics of Material Culture.” Social Dynamics 17, no. 2: 1–75.
———. 1999. “Virtual Colonization.” Journal of Material Culture 4, no. 1: 39–55.
Hall, M., D. Halkett, P. Huigen van Beek, and J. Klose. 1990. “A Stone Wall out of the Earth that Thundering Cannon Cannot Destroy? Bastion and Moat at the Castle, Cape Town.” Social Dynamics 16, no. 1: 2–37.
Hall, M., and A. Markell. 1993. “Introduction: Historical Archaeology in the Western Cape.” South African Archaeological Bulletin (Goodwin Series) 7: 3–7.
Malan, A. 1998. “Beneath the Surface, behind the Doors: Historical Archaeology of Households in Mid-eighteenth Century Cape Town.” Social Dynamics 24, no. 1: 88–118.
Markell, A. 1993. “Building on the Past: The Architecture and Archaeology of Vergelegen.” South African Archaeological Bulletin (Goodwin Series) 7: 71–83.
Schrire, C., K. Cruz-Uribe, and J. Klose. 1993. “The Site History of the Historical Site at Oudepost I, Cape.” South African Archaeological Bulletin (Goodwin Series) 7: 21–32.
Sealy, J., A. Morris, R. Armstrong, A. Markell, and C. Schrire. 1993. “An Historic Skeleton from the Slave Lodge at Vergelegen.” South African Archaeological Bulletin (Goodwin Series) 7: 84–91.
Walton, J. 1965. Homesteads and Villages of South Africa. Pretoria: Van Schaik.
Werz, B. 1993. “Maritime Archaeological Project, Table Bay: Aspects of the First Field Season.” South African Archaeological Bulletin (Goodwin Series) 7: 33–39.
Winer, M., and J. Deetz. 1990. “The Transformation of British Culture in the Eastern Cape, 1820–1860.” Social Dynamics 16, no. 1: 55–75.
When the first world prehistories came to be written in the mid-nineteenth century, traces of Stone Age peoples were known from Europe, Egypt, and southernmost Africa. The prehistory of the rest of the globe was then largely terra incognita. The fact that there were stone artifacts recorded from the ends of the African continent should have been reason enough to expect that an important part of the human story was played out on that continent, but it has taken more than a century of observation for that idea to be amply confirmed. Much of the information on the prehistory of southern Africa considered here comes from the Republic of South Africa, but reference is made to the independent states of Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique, countries that share common boundaries with the Republic of South Africa. Proximity means there have been strong links in the development of archaeology in this part of the continent.
South Africa is an elevated subcontinent of plateaus, escarpments, and mountains where surface soil mantles tend to be thin. It lies mainly south of the African woodland savannah and has a significant extratropical area. The vegetation cover is shrub and grassland with thicket and open woodland in the more tropical areas; there are only relict patches of Afro-alpine forest. Archaeological exposures are generally good, and the landscape is littered with traces of the presence of prehistoric peoples as befits a region that has seen changing populations over some 2 million years.
It was the remarkable wealth of stone artifacts in South Africa and a Victorian yen for collecting
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