Society in transformation : early Iron Age mixed farming communities in the lower Thukela Basin, Zululand
This dissertation is the result of a field-project conducted in the lower Thukela Basin over a twenty-month period in 1984 and 1985. The dissertation sets out to document a regional survey of Early Iron Age sites in a part of the Lower Thukela Basin and report on the excavations and analysis of material from two sites, Mamba and Wosi. On the basis of the archaeological evidence iron smelting practices are discussed and the nature of first millennium mixed-farming, valley bottom settlements reported on. The ceramic finds are described and compared with other known samples from this period and are chronologically placed in the light of recent classificatory suggestions. Some arguments are submitted as to the changing nature of the archaeological record through time. In response to appeals made at the 1985 conference of the Southern African Association of Archaeologists (Hall 1985a; Lewis-Williams 1985) I have, subsequent to the conducting of the field-work, attempted to inform myself more widely of prevailing applications of social theory in the interpretation of the southern African pre-colonial historical record. The latter part of this dissertation is my attempt at such an application and further, an attempt at testing specific theories and models against the field-data collected. Unless otherwise acknowledged, all of the field-work reported on is my own. I remain indebted however to those who have gone before and provided the necessary frameworks on which much of my interpretation is based.
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