Our results show selective targeting of specific animals for tool manufacture at some sites, with a narrowing of the range of selected species during the first millennium AD contact period.

In this paper, we report on which animals were selected to make bone tools during the first millennium AD contact period in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa, and explore the extent to which this selection may have been influenced by the symbolic associations of specific animals. Whenever these two culturally distinct groups came into contact with each other there would be an assimilation of cosmogenic concepts of power and the adoption of certain symbolically important animals. In southern Africa, animals feature prominently in the cosmogenic narratives of both hunter-gatherer and Bantu-speaking farmer groups. In some cases, these symbolic attributes manifest in the technological domain, influencing the decision to use the bones of certain animals and not others for tool manufacture. We conclude that mechanical suitability was probably of primary concern and that probable symbolic connotations that were attached to certain species did not translate to the technological sphere to the same extent that they did in other parts of the world.Īnimal symbolism is a prominent feature of many human societies globally. We examine what this selectivity might suggest about mechanical suitability and symbolic associations of the species chosen to make tools. Our findings show that a narrower selection of species was selected for tool manufacture than for food, while, at some sites, certain antelope species were selected for tools that are not present in the unmodified faunal remains. We present the first ZooMS analysis of bone arrowheads from southern Africa. Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) is a technique that uses unique collagen biomarkers to fingerprint and identify species of origin from small amounts of bone or ivory. Worked bone studies therefore have focused on questions about manufacture and use, rather than on issues of raw material selection strategies. The identification to species of completely worked bone tools is impossible using standard skeletal morphological markers. KEY WORDS: African rhinoceros, archaeofauna, cultural and symbolic significance, farming communities,įigurines, folk taxonomy, historical ethnography, leadership, monoliths, praise poems, southern Africa. Power, danger and protection traditionally associated with African leadership. Monoliths adorning the centralĬourts of nineteenth-century Tswana towns, as well as the walls or courts of Zimbabwe culture and VendaĬapitals, most probably signified rhino horns, thereby architecturally encapsulating the key qualities of Rhino horns and bones also featured in rainmaking rituals. Rhino was the preserve of a chief and a special club of rhino horn was widely employed as a marker ofĬhiefly status. Well as a plethora of vernacular names and a complex folk taxonomy.

Referent in chiefly praise poems, the use of rhino figurines as didactic tools during initiation schools, as Sotho-Tswana society, the importance of this pachyderm was reflected in its appropriation as a leadership Mapungubwe gold rhino served as an emblem of sacred leadership in a class-based society. Upon the traits of both the more aggressive and solitary black rhino (Diceros bicornis) and the more sociableĪnd territorial white rhino (Ceratotherium simum) in their conceptualisation of the qualities of leadership. Southeastern Bantu speakers and had considerable time depth. A study of ethnobiological, archaeological, linguistic and historical ethnographic data shows that notionsĪbout the cultural and symbolic significance of the African rhinoceros were widely shared among

Rhinoceros symbolism