Related Papers
Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
Finding Russia in Botswana: AIDS, Archaeology, and the Power of the Ancestors
2017 •
Carla Klehm
The materialization of memory is one way in which the past becomes a powerful agent for negotiating the present. Today in Botswana, archaeological sites have become sites of memory where ancestors have been invoked for healing in response to the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS. This paper concentrates on one site, Khubu la Dintša, where a local community practiced an ancestral healing ceremony, phekolo, as a way to restore spiritual balance. Told through a set of narratives that integrate ethnographic interviews with one of the former church elders, Russia, the article chronicles the trajectory of the church, the perceived power and active role of the ancestors in this ceremony, and the complex web of morality and practicality in which alternative narratives emerge during a time of social disruption and later fall apart. This paper complements the others in this issue by focusing on how memory, place, time, and material culture are recursively engaged: a process that includes formal and accepted to marginal and even ephemeral viewpoints and holds lessons for how we as archaeologists approach and curate the past.
Culture and customs of Botswana
2006 •
james denbow
Series Foreword Preface Chronology Introduction Religion and Worldview Literature and Media Art and Architecture Cuisine and Traditional Dress Gender Roles, Marriage, and Family Social Customs and Lifestyle Music, Dance, and Theater Selected Bibliography Index
Journal of Archaeological Science
Archaeological excavations at Bosutswe, Botswana: cultural chronology, paleo-ecology and economy
2008 •
James Denbow, Nonofho Ndobochani
Excavations at the site of Bosutswe on the eastern edge of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana have uncovered over 4 m of deposit ranging in age from CE 700 to 1700. Our research has produced quantitative and qualitative measures of the material and ecological dimensions that structured the everyday actions and behaviors through which social identities were constituted, maintained, and transformed during the period when the polities of Toutswe, Mapungubwe, Great Zimbabwe and Khami rose to power. By examining the material dimensions that underlay shifting relations of production, exchange, and social stratification we are able to contextualize the social judgments that ascribed value to material goods and food ways, while specifying the ways these were used to create and naturalize social relationships and power differentials. Stable isotope analyses, combined with evidence of vitrified dung, further enable us to suggest changes in herd management strategies used by the inhabitants of the site to compensate for ecological changes brought about by long-term occupation, while at the same time enabling them to economically tie subordinates to them as social divisions became more rigidly defined after CE 1300. The cultural and economic changes that took place at Bosutswe thus directly impact our understanding of the social transformations that immediately preceded contemporary configurations of ethnicity in Botswana.
Foragers among farmers in the Early Iron Age of Botswana? Dietary evidence from stable isotopes
2010 •
Morongwa Mosothwane
African Archaeological Review
Iron Age Transformations at Mmadipudi Hill, Botswana: Identifying Spatial Organization Through Electromagnetic Induction Survey
2016 •
Carla Klehm, Eileen G Ernenwein
Mmadipudi Hill (CE 550–1200) is an Iron Age site in east-central Botswana approximately 3 km west of Bosutswe, a major Iron Age trade center at the eastern edge of the Kalahari Desert. A 5,000-m 2 electromagnetic induction (EMI) survey conducted in 2011 revealed a cattle post arranged in the Central Cattle Pattern, including a central animal kraal with at least three clusters of houses flanking the eastern edge. A test trench confirmed the presence of a Taukome daga structure , possibly a house, 100–150 cm in depth. The EMI survey is one of, if not the first, archaeogeophysical surveys conducted in Botswana. It has proven invaluable as a means to understand the settlement organization and to pinpoint excavations to gain a more detailed understanding of the material culture. The perspective it offered on thorn brush fencing would not have been possible through excavation alone. Although small in scope, the test excavation yielded Taukome and Toutswe artifacts related to the larger sets of issues the Bosutswe region faced as Indian Ocean trade transformed the local political economy. The nature of the relationships between Bosutswe and its surrounding communities likely evolved due to the rise of a prestige goods economy, growing inequality, and environmental degradation around CE 1200. The occupation at Mmadipudi Hill would have immediately preceded these changes. By determining the spatial organization of Mmadipudi Hill, this article begins a crucial first step towards exploring what the local settlement pattern looked like prior to CE 1200 and understanding what the relationships among sites may have been. Résumé Mmadipudi Hill (CE 550-1200) est un site datant de l'âge du fer dans le centre-est du Botswana, environ trois kilomètres à l'ouest de Bosutswe, un centre commercial majeur au cours de l'âge du fer, situé à l'extrémité est du désert du Kalahari. Une prospection en utilisant l'induction électromagnétique (EMI) menée en 2011 sur une superficie de 5000 mètres carrés a révélé un poste de bovins disposé dans " le motif bétail central " , y compris un kraal animalerie centrale avec au moins trois groupes de maisons adjacentes à la bordure orientale. Un sondage a confirmé la présence d'une surface de la maison Taukome, 100-150cm en profondeur. La prospection EMI est l'un des, sinon le premier prospection archeo-géophysique menée au Bo-tswana. Il a joué un rôle important en tant que moyen de comprendre la nature l'échelle du paysage du site, et de repérer les fouilles pour élucider une compréhension plus détaillée de la culture matérielle. La perspective qu'il offre sur l'escrime épine aurait pas été possible simplement par excavation. Bien qu'il soit petit, le sondage a révélé des artefacts de la Taukome et Toutswe, liées au questions importantes que la région Bosutswe confronté au moment quand le commerce de l'océan Indien transformé l'économie politique locale. La nature des relations entre Afr Archaeol Rev
Current Anthropology
Local Dynamics and the Emergence of Social Inequality in Iron Age Botswana
2017 •
Carla Klehm
Since the earliest class-based societies, social leveling mechanisms have limited, actively as well as unconsciously, social stratification. Understanding how such power structures have operated in the past and present requires the integration of social dimensions to the political economy in a way that does not assume that elites and/or urban centers drive the course of history. Here, the Middle and Late Iron Age in southern Africa (AD 900–1650) highlight the importance of these local dynamics in tandem with broader regional changes. At a time when protoglobal trade links Africa to the Middle East and Asia, cities emerged up to 1,000 km inland along with the material evidence for hereditary inequality. Yet the population at the trade center of Bosutswe at the eastern edge of the Kalahari responded flexibly to environmental and social variables, which, perhaps unintentionally, limited the consolidation of power in the hands of the elite. The following case study of Khubu la Dintša, a small agropastoral site near Bosutswe, reminds us that, even as hegemony exists, an emphasis on the social networks that tie together local and disparate groups results in not just daily patterns of behavior but also significant social change.
Antiquity
The glass beads of Kaitshàa and early Indian Ocean trade into the far interior of southern Africa
2015 •
james denbow
The Glass Beads of Kaitshaa
James Denbow, james denbow
The Archaeofauna from Xaro on the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana
Prof. Shaw Badenhorst
A New Look at the Later Prehistory of the Kalahari
James Denbow
