Cattle, diffusion and ideology

Traditional view on cattle in the cape

• Sheep significantly preceded cattle

• Cattle were assumed to arrive from Bantu-speaking agropastoralists in the Eastern Cape, not with original northern herding groups

Orton et al (2013)

• Cattle horn from a Namaqualand shell midden directly dated to ~1,625 BP

• Combined with Spoegrivier sheep at ~2,000 BP, suggests cattle and sheep may have arrived closer together than previously thought.

Orton et al (2013) main argument

• Toteng 1 sees a co-occurrence of sheep and cattle

• Argue that the technical demands of managing both sheep and cattle simultaneously make a migrationist explanation more plausible. 

Kinahan’s (1991) Namibia model

• Pastoralism in Namibia arose through local transformation of existing hunter-gatherer society.

• Rock art evidence suggests shamans played a key social role in facilitating the ideological shift.

Kinahan → Hungorob Ravine

• Show broad continuity in stone tools and animal exploitation over 4,500 years, with pottery appearing ~2,000 BP via exchange networks.

• A clear shift to pastoral settlement patterns only occurs within the last 1,000 years.

McGranaghan (2015) on the Bleek-Lloyd archive

• The /Xam already had conceptual frameworks for close human-animal relationships (dogs), idioms of herding, resource ownership (waterholes), and livestock in ritual contexts (sheep in New Maiden initiation).

McGranaghan argument (2015)

• Domesticated animals did not require an alien conceptual framework

• Undermining Smith's ideological barrier thesis

Deacon et al (1978) Boomplaas cave

• Upper deposits have calcined dung layers that show a higher commitment to sheep rearing, Cape Coastal Pottery, and stone tools.

• Broad continuity with underlying hunter-gatherer levels suggests the same people were using the cave

• Supports gradual local acculturation, not population replacement.