Archaeology
Case studies
Hunter-gatherer/farmer interaction in the Shashe-Limpopo confluence area: Balerno Main Shelter
Balerno Main Shelter
Balerno Main is a large shelter situated about 10km south of Pont Drift, in the Shashe-Limpopo confluence area (SLCA). The site is of importance because it reflects one of several responses by hunter-gatherers to the spread of farmers into the area during the last 2,000 years.
The shelter is located in an area with a 3-4km radius where no archaeologically contemporaneous farming settlements occur. This small gap between Balerno Main and its neighbouring farmer settlements provided a space where hunter-gatherers could maintain their way of life, sheltered to some degree from the presence of Zhizo, K2 and Mapungubwe-period farmers on the landscape, and affording them the choice of when, where and whether to interact. In addition to providing hunter-gatherers with a space to retreat to during the contact period, Balerno Main functioned as an aggregation site throughout most of its occupation.
Daga flooring
Balerno Main was first occupied by hunter-gatherers from about 11,000 B.C. until 6,230-6,060 B.C., and was reoccupied from 340-100 B.C. until about 1,300 A.D. The living area of the site appears to have comprised the shelter itself as well as the mostly flat area extending in front of it. Both engraved and painted images are found inside the shelter, including a faded painting of a giraffe, engraved “nested u-shapes” and an engraved rhinoceros. Some of the engravings had been painted, but the paint is difficult to see.
Artefacts found at the site include: stone tools; animal bone fragments; bone tools; ostrich eggshell; Achatinid land snail shell; ostrich eggshell, shell, bone and glass beads; colouring material (ochre and specularite); and pottery fragments. Judging by the presence of these artefacts, it is likely that a wide variety of activities were carried out here, including wood and bone working, bead-making, production of tools for hunting, hide-scraping, mat-making, and the production of clothes and bags. The wide variety of activities taking place contrasts with the narrower range identified at smaller shelters nearby. This is one strand of evidence that suggests that Balerno Main was used as an aggregation site.
Excavation section view
A gradual increase in artefact frequencies from the pre-contact period suggests an intensification of activities at the shelter. This increase may have been due to larger numbers of hunter-gatherers occupying the site, perhaps as a result of intensified aggregation. Throughout the contact period, the gradual increase in artefact frequencies may also have been due to surplus goods being made for trade with farmers, though actual trade may have occurred at sites lying closer to farmer settlements. During dispersal phases, hunter-gatherers may have alternated between occupying smaller shelters and settling at sites near local farmer settlements on a temporary or seasonal basis.
Unlike other, smaller shelters, Balerno Main – as an aggregation site – was used fairly constantly throughout the Zhizo period (900-1,000 A.D.) right up until the end of the Mapungubwe period (1,220-1,300 A.D.), despite the changes taking place in the SLCA farmer societies. After this time, use of the shelter by hunter-gatherers ceased.
Evidence of later farmer occupation between 1,600 A.D. and 1,800 A.D. occurs in the form of a thick dung crust, daga flooring and circular daga features that covered a significant portion of the shelter floor. The circular daga features might be associated with ancestral rites. If so, the shelter was clearly of significance to the later farmers. It is, however, possible that even though Late Iron Age farmers using the shelter during this period were ignorant of an earlier hunter-gatherer occupation or use of the shelter (and thus did not associate the art in the shelter with hunter-gatherers), they considered the site to be a source of power.
– Contributed by Bronwen van Doornum, Natal Museum