Southern African Humanities

This paper reports the analysis of the faunal remains recovered from re-excavation of Holocene Later Stone Age deposits at Moshebi’s Shelter, Lesotho. The assemblage includes a range of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and molluscs, but no domestic livestock. Some of the most common taxa, notably mole rats and vlei rats, are likely to be natural intrusions, but most of the others were probably hunted by the site’s hunter-gatherer occupants, with an emphasis on small- and medium-sized antelope and rock hyrax. Overall, the animals present reflect an open grassland environment with wooded microhabitats available in nearby valleys. Of the species identified, zebra was not observed in highland Lesotho in the nineteenth century, but is known there earlier in the Holocene. Bushpig, on the other hand, either suggests an enhanced presence of woodland or thicket vegetation relative to today, or contact

We report further details on four partial human skeletons from KwaZulu-Natal previously selected for genetic analysis. Dating and genetic results indicate that they derived from agriculturist communities of the mid-second millennium AD. Morphological and genetic analysis shows that three individuals were female; identification of the fourth as female comes from genetic analysis only. All four were adults at death, three older adults and one younger. Genetically, all four individuals cluster strongly with Bantu-speaking populations with West African roots, a result supported by craniometric data for the one individual with a complete and well-preserved cranium. All nevertheless display some admixture with Khoe-San populations. We show that three of the women, and probably the fourth, carried genetic resistance to the Plasmodium vivax malaria parasite, while two had some protection against Trypanosoma brucei gambiense-induced sleeping sickness. The unusual rock-shelter burial locations of three of the women suggest that their deaths required ritual ‘cooling’. Lightning and violence are possible causes. We argue that this multipronged approach is necessary for the development of detailed and nuanced understandings of the past and of the individuals who lived in the region centuries ago.