UNESCO Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Editor G. Mokhtar)

Southern Africa:
hunters and
food-gatherers
J. E. PARKINGTON
Note by the International Scientific Committee
The International Scientific Committee would have preferred this chapter
like all the others to have been presented within the chronological
framework strictly laid down for Volume II. It therefore requested the
volume editor to put this point to the author. The latter did not consider
it possible to make any radical alteration to his text. The Committee is
therefore publishing it in the form agreed after discussion with the author.
It nevertheless maintains serious reservations regarding the method used,
particularly in paragraph i, and regarding the resulting confusion for the
reader, who is presented at one and the same time with information on
the Palaeolithic and the contemporary periods.
Recent research has shown that iron-using peoples had moved south of the
Limpopo by at latest the fourth or fifth century of our era. ' Although much
detail remains unpublished, it seems clear that the iron age inhabitants
of the Transvaal and Swaziland were agriculturalists and herdsmen, and
manufactured pottery similar to that known from Zimbabwe, Zambia and
Malawi at about the same time. 2 It is not known whether the apparently
rapid diffusion of iron age peoples continued farther south at the same pace,
but the earliest dates for iron-working in Natal are somewhat later, around
— 105o. 3 Nor is it yet possible to say at what time the iron-using groups
reached the most southerly extent of their distribution, around the Fish
river in the eastern district of the Cape. Despite these uncertainties, which
will no doubt be the focus of much further work, it is known that the iron
age populations disrupted and displaced indigenous groups of huntergatherers
who were largely ignorant of metal-working, stock-breeding and
plant domestication. Only in areas unsuitable for occupation by mixed
farmers, such as the rugged Drakensberg escarpment, were hunters able to
1. P. B. Beaumont and J. C. Vogel, pp. 66-89; R. J. Mason, 1973, p. 324; M. Klapwijk,
1974. PP- '9-23-
2. See Chapter 27 of this volume.
3. O. Davies, 1971, pp. 165-78.