Settled farmers

For climatic reasons the Northern Cape was marginal to the main areas of agriculturist settlement in southern Africa, and Tswana settlement appears to have been largely limited to the north eastern part of the province. Oral evidence recorded in the early nineteenth century indicates a more extensive westerly distribution in the late eighteenth century. The traveller R.J. Gordon met a mixed Khoi-Tswana group known as Geisiqua, on the Orange River, near modern Upington, in 1779. He illustrated what he termed a “Moetjoeanaa” – i.e. Tswana settlement.

The idea of a “Central Cattle Pattern”, derived from recent ethnographic studies, applies to archaeological sites dating back as far as Earlier Iron Age times in South Africa. Homes were arranged around a central cattle kraal, where grain storage pits were located and where important people (mainly men) were buried. This layout, in turn, symbolizes relationships between people (including gender, family relationships, and status), as well as between the spirit and real worlds  – the sacred forces. People achieved status, success and power through their wealth in cattle. Cattle were central to marriage customs:  bridewealth was an exchange of cattle for wives. In this way cattle underlay family relations and political power. It has been said that cattle-owning elders “would rather starve to death than eat one of their cows”.

Petrus Borcherds, at Dithakong (near Kuruman) in 1801 recorded that: “The herding of cattle, the milking of cows and everything thereto related are also important activities. With the arrival of the oxen from the fields, one may spy an orator mounting a high place or rock, and, with his hands on his hips, he addresses his favourite cow or ox with much praise.”

Farmers used pots (and baskets) to store food, and seed for the following year’s crop. Pots were also used for cooking and for storing water and beer. Ochre and specularite were sometimes transported in pots. At some Iron Age sites skeletons and burials of infants have been found inside pots. The manner in which pots have been made, decorated and used has changed through time. Archaeologists have reconstructed the cultural history of various periods and regions using pottery. Pots reflect time and place, and the pottery makers and their communities, in complex ways.

Iron hoes for agricultural work were of particular importance to early farmers. Iron was also used to make weapons. Metal items were exchanged in trade with groups who had no access to metal ore, or who did not practise metal-working.

Production and working of copper and iron was practised in southern Africa by Early Iron Age farmers before AD 500. Metal ores were smelted in a furnace at high temperatures. The smelting operation was regarded with respect, and often fear, and was practised with elaborate ritual. Reproductive symbolism associated with smelting was often reflected in furnace design.

Smelted metal was reheated in a forging, or smithing process, and worked by beating or cutting to make agricultural implements, spears, knives, and a range of other tools or ornaments. Copper wire made by drawing, or pulling the hot metal through a hole, was used to make jewellery such as bangles.

Mining in Africa predates the Iron Age however, as the earliest mining was for minerals used in cosmetics and body paint, including ochre and specularite. Specularite workings at Blinkklipkop and Doornfontain near Postmasburg in the Northern Cape were probably exploited over many thousands of years. Excavations there revealed that existing deposits were mined from about 1200 years ago, by nomadic herders who made stone tools and pottery, and kept cattle and sheep or goats. In Setswana this mine is called Sibihlong or Tsantsabane. Both names refer to the glittering mineral found there.