Doctoral Dissertation Research: Pastoralism's Legacy: Zooarchaeological Investigations in the Southwest Cape, South Africa

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

The earliest written impressions of indigenous herdsmen in southern Africa attest to the vast size of their herds. When a settlement was founded at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, herders reportedly drove 20,000 cattle and sheep into the area. A century later, farms covered the Cape and the indigenous herders' way of life was nearly over. While European settlement rapidly transformed this landscape, the Europeans themselves had landed on a human-modified landscape that had witnessed a long period of hunter-gatherer occupation and the arrival of pastoralists and their herds 2000 years ago. Supervised by Donald K. Grayson, Carol J. Frey will examine the role of pastoralists in structuring prehistoric biotic communities in this region. Ecologists and conservationists increasingly recognize that the shapes and courses of modern ecosystems are plotted by the legacy of prior human land-use and long-term community dynamics. Further, they recognize that even small-scale human societies are vital components of these histories. Understanding the anthropogenic impacts of small-scale societies requires long-term analysis of ecological change and human responses to that change. This research begins by predicting community dynamics which can be impacted by the introduction of herding economies, including species richness and diversity, competitive interactions and predator-prey interactions. Tracking change in biotic communities involves assessing the live condition, relative abundances and population dynamics of the animals in those communities. Using vertebrate faunal assemblages from two archaeological sites in the southwestern Cape, South Africa (Die Kelders and Kasteelberg), biotic change, and human responses to that change, will be measured using a range of zooarchaeological techniques, including skeletal morphometry, demographic profiling, prey type abundances and skeletal element abundances. While the results will be of interest to archaeologists concerned with human history and prehistory in southern Africa, they will be equally relevant to those more generally interested in the development of pastoralist economies, as well as to those interested in understanding the impacts of herders on today's landscapes. This project aims to establish ways of examining long-term ecological change through analysis of archaeological animal populations. If successful, these methods will be applicable to modern, historic, or ancient contexts, and will allow ecological change to be studied long after it has occurred. With some adjustment, the methods will be applicable to virtually any terrestrial animal species. The theory and methodology used here are not based in value judgments about human-caused ecological changes; positive, or biodiversity-enhancing, impacts are just as probable as negative ones. Anthropologists armed with this toolkit will be able to contribute to understanding the human dimension of conservation efforts in countries where such small-scale communities reside. Given today's international conservation and land-management issues, it is increasingly important turn our attention to the places where history and ecology merge, and where small-scale human societies are crucial agents of change.