Upload
winfred-ford
View
214
Download
0
Tags:
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
The Cape Khoisan Debate
The Question
• At the time of contact with Europeans, where there two separate cultures and economies at the Cape? – Khoekhoe herders and San hunter-gatherers?
The Main Protagonists
• Carmel Schrire (Rutgers)– Khoi and San mixed from the start (one culture:
two economies)– Richard Elphick’s cycles
• Andrew Smith (UCT)– Khoi and San separate cultures into colonial
times (two cultures: two economies)
ConventionalView
• SE Bantu speakers brought first livestock (Iron Age migrations)
• Khoekhoe in middle Zambezi learned ceramic technology and herding skills
• They spread south and west
Sheep and LSA Pottery DistributionKlein 1986
Early LivestockSealy & Yates 1994
Migration routes
Sealy & Yates 1994
Khoisan Languages
insouthern Africa
• Two main subdivisions– Khoe-Kwadi
– Non-Khoe
Linguistic Model Gueldemann 2008
Kwadi
Proto-Khoe-Kwadi
Proto-Khoe-Kwadi
Pre-Khoe (500 BC – AD 500)mix of Khoe and Non-Khoe
Pre-Khoekhoe•Drying Kalahari, some herders went south to become
•even more “Khoisanized” pastoralists
Nama 17th c.
Summary of Linguistic Evidence
• Migrations models are plausible• Khoe and non-Khoe different language
families, Proto-Khoe were shepherds• Proto-Khoe had words for sheep, livestock
enclosures, and making butter by shaking a container.
• But had neither cattle nor goats.
Summary of Ethnographic Evidence
• Ethnographic evidence shows that Khoe language, society and ideology deeply different from Non-Khoe
• We can be sure proto-Khoe and non-Khoe different people, and Proto-Khoe were shepherds
Conclusion 1
• Linguists and Ethnographers: Khoe and Non-Khoe distinct populations– But 1st millennium AD archaeology no clear
evidence for Khoe-speakers migration from East Africa yet
Conclusion 2• Gueldemann 2008 model suggests hybridization
of Early Khoe with Non-Khoe all along route of infiltration
– LSA archaeology in SW Cape shows no evidence of two cultures/two economies; Khoekhoe/San.
– Only hunter-gatherer-fishers occasionally with livestock
ConventionalView Wrong?
• Radiocarbon dates indicate first sheep at SW Cape three centuries before arrival of Bantu speaking farmers
• SE Bantu words for sheep and cattle are from Khoe language
Questions for next generation
• Suggest a research question to move the Khoisan Debate forward.