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THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF A ROCK SHELTER AND A STONE CIRCLE AT KUIDAS SPRING, NORTH-WEST NAMIBIA by ANZEL VELDMAN MA DISSERTATION submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree MASTER OF ARTS in ANTHROPOLOGY in the FACULTY OF HUMANITIES at the UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG SUPERVISOR: PROFESSOR MARLIZE LOMBARD Submission date: October 2014 I Affidavit II Acknowledgements The completion of this study was not possible without the assistance of various people and institutions. I am particularly grateful to my supervisor Prof. Marlize Lombard who did not only provided financial support, but also a great deal of encouragement. The study was funded through a grant awarded to Prof. Lombard by the NRF African Origins Platform Programme, as well as micro-TRACKS (Tracing Ancient Cognition and Knowledge Systems with micro-methods). I thank Dr. Shaw Badenhorst from the Ditsong National Natural History Museum for the analyses of faunal remains and for reading all the draft chapters. Also, for the financial support he obtained through the National Research Foundation and the University of the Witwatersrand. I received support from various staff at the National Museum of Namibia. The Director Me. Esther Moombolah-/Goagoses and Me. Foussy Kambombo from the Archaeology Department. Also, Mr. Solomon April and Me. Alma Nankela from the National Heritage Council. The efforts of staff from the Oxford accelerator mass spectrometry laboratory do not go unnoticed. I am especially grateful to the Chief Curator, Dr. Eugene Marais who introduced Kuidas Spring to me and who helped me to survey the site. To the excavation team, Justin Bradfield, Victoria Williams and Shaw Badenhorst, thank you for sharing the “Namib dust, smelly feet and warm beer” experience with me. I am also appreciative of Andre, Henk and Bertus Schoeman, the owners of Skeleton Coast Safaris and special thanks to Janson Kasaona and his family for helping us out whenever we needed you. I am grateful for all the comments and suggestions made by proof readers, Gerrit Düsseldorp, Justin Bradfield, Shaw Badenhorst and Eugene Marais. To my family, friends and other colleagues, thank you, for the encouragement and support. It has been an honour doing this study and I have truly learnt a lot. III Summary of the study Stone circle open-air settlements occur in Namibia and South Africa. Stone circles were occupied during the past 2000 years. It is during this time that livestock and pottery reached southern Africa via a process of either migration/diffusion or both. In southern Africa people have different subsistence strategies such as hunting, gathering and/or herding. In an anthropological context it is sometimes possible to differentiate between people based on linguistics, settlement layouts and ideology. Prior to the introduction of domestic goats/sheep and pottery, people with hunter-gatherer practices inhabited southern Africa. However, to differentiate between the „original‟ hunter-gatherer population, immigrant herders and hunter- gatherers that accepted livestock based on the archaeological record remains challenging. It has been proposed that hunter-gatherers abandoned rock shelters after acquiring caprines and built stone circle settlements to have more space for their flocks. Kuidas Spring is an archaeological site with rock shelters, stone circles, cairns and rock art. I excavated one rock shelter, a stone circle and a cairn, all features date within the last 2000 years. I conducted a typological and technological analyses of the lithics and ostrich eggshell beads. Based on the outcome there seems to be no differences between artefact assemblages. In addition no remains of caprines or cattle were found. The current evidence from Kuidas Spring suggest that it was a seasonal encampment that could have been utilised by both hunter-gatherers and herders, the latter probably reached Namibia through a process of migration and diffusion. IV TABLE OF CONTENTS Affidavit............................................................................................................................ I Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................... II Summary of the study...................................................................................................... III List of tables..................................................................................................................... VI List of figures.................................................................................................................... IX List of abbreviations........................................................................................................ XI Chapter 1 Introduction..................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Research context and location.................................................................................. 1 1.2 Summary of the archaeological sequence in Namibia............................................ 2 1.3 Kuidas Spring environmental and geological background.................................... 3 1.4 Theoretical context of the study............................................................................... 5 1.5 Chapter summary...................................................................................................... 7 Chapter 2 Current debates about the introduction of herding to southern Africa..................... 8 2.1 The spread of early herding communities............................................................... 8 2.2 The Kalahari debate.................................................................................................. 9 2.3 Migration versus diffusion........................................................................................ 11 2.4 Risk management as an interpretative framework................................................ 19 2.5 Chapter summary...................................................................................................... 20 Chapter 3 Archaeology of the hunter-gatherer and herder debate.............................................. 21 3.1 Archaeological sites and assemblages associated with the introduction of herding in southern Africa.............................................................................................. 21 3.2 Stone circles in southern Africa................................................................................ 27 3.3 Who constructed and occupied stone circles?......................................................... 31 3.4 Rock art...................................................................................................................... 35 3.5 Chapter summary...................................................................................................... 37 Chapter 4 Methods: excavation and artefact analysis.................................................................. 38 4.1 Excavation methodology applied at Kuidas Spring............................................... 38 4.2 Lithic analysis............................................................................................................ 41 4.2.1 Brief background to lithic analysis.......................................................................... 41 4.2.2 Examples of lithic analysis and their interpretative potential in the southern African hunter/herder context............................................................................................ 45 4.2.3 Lithic analysis applied in this study......................................................................... 46 4.3 Non-lithic artefact analysis....................................................................................... 48 4.3.1 Brief background to ostrich eggshell analysis......................................................... 48 4.3.2 Examples of ostrich eggshell analysis in southern Africa....................................... 49 4.3.3 Ostrich eggshell analysis applied to this study........................................................ 50 4.3.4 Pottery, copper and rock art..................................................................................... 51 4.3.5 Analysis of faunal and organic remains.................................................................. 51 4.3.6 Accelerator Mass Spectrometry dating of KS1......................................................... 51 4.4 Chapter summary...................................................................................................... 52 V Chapter 5 Results of the Kuidas Spring archaeological excavations............................................ 53 5.1 The stratigraphy and age