Ca. Bollong et al., KHOIKHOI AND BUSHMAN POTTERY IN THE CAPE COLONY - ETHNOHISTORY AND LATER STONE-AGE CERAMICS OF THE SOUTH-AFRICAN INTERIOR, Journal of anthropological archaeology, 16(3), 1997, pp. 269-299
Early travelers in the southwest and south of the Cape Colony, and lat
er explorers in the north, saw Khoikhoi pastoralists making and using
large, reddish or black, coil-built cooking vessels with shoulder lugs
and incised necks with everted rims. In these, they boiled meat and u
sed some as drums. Smaller serving bowls were also seen. Travelers on
the east and north frontiers of the Colony saw Bushman hunter-gatherer
s using flat-bottomed cooking bowls tempered with grass and decorated
with punctate motifs. They boiled meat, soups, bones, skins, locusts,
and seed mush in these, converted some to drums, and used others in gi
ft exchanges. Few later sherd collectors made full use of these ethnoh
istoric sightings, but developed their own labeling systems. Most thou
ght that the Bushmen of the interior learned pot making through contac
t with coastal Khoikhoi. Why the two wares differed in every respect,
however, could not be explained. Recent multidisciplinary studies in t
he northeast frontier area verify those differences, but also show tha
t both wares were introduced together before 700 A.D., by herders. The
reafter the use of Khoi ware dwindled, then disappeared when the herdi
ng economy collapsed,leaving only grass-tempered bowls in general use.
Thus ''Bushman'' pottery in the northeastern Cape appears to have its
prehistoric roots in ancestral Khoi technology. (C) 1997 Academic Pre
ss.