Smith's Evidence

Smith’s pottery argument

• Cape pottery is too technically sophisticated to have been independently invented by local hunters and parallels east African pottery

Ceramic index

• At sites Smith identifies as herder there are higher ratios of pot sherds to lithics

• Uses at Kasteelberg

Minimal flock argument

• A single sheep bone implies a minimum viable flock of ~60 animals nearby, because you cannot maintain a sustainable breeding herd with fewer

• Orton (2015) criticises this - a single bone does not indicate this

OES bead size argument

• From Witklip data

• Beads under 5mm = hunter sites; larger beads = herder site

Kinahan’s (1996) Critique of bead argument

• Variation in bead size within assemblages is generally larger than variation between assemblages

• The Geduld sequence is constructed largely from bead measurements, making it circular to then use beads to test the sequence.

Ideaological barrier thesis

• Smith argues the shift from sharing wild animals to owning domestic ones required a conceptual leap too large for hunter-gatherers to make without sustained pastoralist contact

Challenge to Ideological barrier thesis

• McGranaghan (2015) challenges this using /Xam ethnography

• Shows herding idioms, animal relationships, and resource ownership concepts were already present in hunter-gatherer thought.