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1 results

  • The glass beads of Kaitshàa and early Indian Ocean trade into the far interior of southern Africa

  • James Denbow, Carla Klehm, Laure Dussubieux
  • Journal:
    Antiquity / Volume 89 / Issue 344 / April 2015
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    08 April 2015, pp. 361-377
    Print publication:
    April 2015

  • The later African Iron Age saw a shift to centralised polities, as seen in the expansion of hegemonies such as Great Zimbabwe. During this period, trade with the interior of Africa became increasingly centrally controlled. Excavations at the site of Kaitshàa, on the edge of the Makgadikgadi saltpans in Botswana, have revealed how a small settlement based on prehistoric salt trading was able to take its place in the Indian Ocean trade network before such centralised polities arose. Using compositional analysis of glass beads, the authors argue that this site in the central Kalahari Desert exemplifies the role of heterarchy and indigenous agency in the evolving political economy of the subcontinent.