Engaging the dynamics of identity and exchange in Kalahari prehistory

Engaging the dynamics of identity and exchange in Kalahari prehistory
By concentrating mainly on occupation sites, archaeologists researching exchange
between foragers and agropastoralists in southern Africa have overlooked
the spaces in which much of the exchange itself likely took place.
Foraging and farming communities existed side-by-side for centuries in
Southern Africa after the iron-using farmers migrated in from further north
beginning in the early first millennium A.D. How they coexisted has been a
subject of continued interest in the archaeology of the area. However, in
many places in Southern Africa, the spaces between sites have not been wellexamined.
Clearly contested ground, the Kalahari Desert is a locus of the
debate over the provenance of contemporary hunter-gatherer social and cultural
identity and practice. This paper will address the question of whether
models of interaction developed by previous studies accurately reflect the
socioeconomic dynamics indirectly observable in the archaeological record
of the Kalahari. It furthermore will address the underlying, yet often implicit,
issue of broader theoretical questions of the relationships between group
identity, technology, and economy in the archaeological record.