UNESCO Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Editor G. Mokhtar)

Southern Africa: hunters and food-gatherers
San to even out the year's resources, but some comments in Lichtenstein,
who recognized the importance of ecology, illustrate the point.
He described how 'even the leanest, most wretched figures imaginable'
could become quite different beings simply by 'changing their quarters'. 65
Both the Kung and the G/wi of the Kalahari restrict their use of
certain resources to those times of the year when less uniformly available
alternative cannot be found. As may be expected, the value of a resource
is intimately related to the number of alternatives available, and also to its
palatability, nutritional value and ease of collection. It seems likely that
San groups farther south would have used their resources in a similar way,
restricting the sets of foods gathered so that an even supply was maintained.
Few instances of this are, as yet, documented in the archaeological record,
but one example may be found in the differences in the supply of small
game such as dassies and tortoises in coastal and inland sites in the
western Cape. At inland sites such as De Hangen, tortoises and dassies
are the most common animals represented, yet at the coastal site of Elands
Bay Cave both are extremely uncommon by comparison. 6 6 This may in part
reflect seasonal variation in availability, especially in the case of the hibernating
tortoise, but probably also results from the presence at the coast of a
range of small-animal alternative foods such as fish,crayfish and sea-birds.
Other examples among plant foods remain so far undetected, though they
may be reflected in the different composition of the plant remains at inland
sites such as De Hangen and Diepkloof in the western Cape. 67
It has been shown repeatedly 68 that hunter-gatherer groups tend to move
in units of variable size in order to increase the efficiency of their use of
resources: fissioninto small family groups when resources are spread thinly,
and fusion into larger gatherings when the type of subsistence requires
the use of considerable manpower, or when resources are highly concentrated
and thus capable of supporting large gatherings. This pattern also
serves to maintain the kinship web between neighbouring groups who use
the occasional large gathering to pass on news, exchange items, technological
innovations and perhaps women, through whom the web of kinship
obligations is traced. In times of catastrophes, these obligations are a lifeline
allowing one group to survive by temporarily using another's resources.
Moreover, personal difficulties can be solved by one or other party leaving
a group and either temporarily or permanently joining another in which
there are relatives. Though the recognition of these features remains a goal
of archaeological research, the most explicit information about them, at
present, comes from historical records and, perhaps questionably, from rock
art.
65. H. Lichtenstein, p. 45.
66. J. E. Parkington, 1972.
67. J. E. Parkington, unpublished PhD.
68. R. B. Lee and I. Devore.
655