AFRICA, SOUTH | Kalahari Margins

This article discusses the later prehistory of the Kalahari margins from approximately 100 BCE to CE 1700. Current evidence indicates that around BCE 100 some foragers in the northern Kalahari began to incorporate domesticated cattle and sheep into their foraging lifestyle. In some cases they also began to use, and possibly manufacture, pottery – the latter possibly suggesting that herder-foraging may have permitted greater sedentism. After CE 500 agropastoral settlements of metallurgists established themselves in the better watered parts of the country. Exchange networks focused on luxury commodities linked these Early Iron Age communities across the region. After CE 1000 differences in wealth, as measured in control over livestock, developed along the eastern margins of the Kalahari as large, long-term villages became the economic and political focal points for smaller satellite communities. After CE 1200, more rigid class distinctions become evident in this region as the elite used differences in housing, ceramics, diet, and access to luxury goods to distinguish themselves from subaltern peoples. After CE 1500 there is tentative evidence, in the form of stone-walled settlements situated in defensive locations, that competition between communities intensified just before the historic period.