The history, form and context of the 19th century corbelled buildings of the Great Karoo
The major objective of this thesis was to record, document and describe the corbelled buildings of the Great Karoo, a form of 19th century vernacular architecture. The thesis builds on the pioneering descriptive work of James Walton in the 1960s. Description of these structures lays the foundation for a more contextual interpretation of them. This focuses on the 19th century trekboer small stock farmers who occupied these buildings, and whose cultural history dates back to their 18th century movement onto the VOC Cape frontier that resulted in ongoing interaction with indigenous people and the Karoo habitat. The thesis specifically suggests that these corbelled buildings were an outcome of these cultural exchanges and interactions with Khoe and southern Sotho-speaking farmers. The research examines evidence for the chronology of these structures between the 1820s and 1870s, reasons for their discrete distribution in the Karoo and the engineering of construction.
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