10 - Farmers and Foragers: the First Millennium

Summary

This chapter looks at the establishment of farming communities in the east of southern Africa within the broader context of agropastoralist expansion south of the Equator and the spread of Bantu languages. Much of the literature on this topic depends heavily on analysis of ceramic design and arguments linking variation in this to variation in broad ethnolinguistic affiliations. The cultural-historical framework based on this is discussed, but alternative methods of ceramic classification are also explored, while the antiquity and utility of the Central Cattle Pattern settlement structure and its cognitive associations are critically assessed. In their dependence on a direct historical approach that is projected far back into the past both questions provide an agriculturalist counterpoint to the use of Bushman ethnography for understanding archaeological hunter-gatherer societies. Beyond these more theoretical concerns, Chapter 10 also emphasises the role of metallurgy, the social relations and subsistence base of early farming societies, the start of their engagement with Indian Ocean trade networks, and their interactions with pre-existing forager communities.