ABOUT THE PROJECT
The Letaba Archaeology Project explores the complex intersection of local experience and extra-local stimuli. Communities that inhabited the Letaba region in north-eastern South Africa during the first millennium AD have been typecast as transitory and socially and economically marginal. However, ongoing research in the Letaba region underscores the need to revisit these notions. The area, located within the modern-day boundaries of the Kruger National Park, is now recognised for having some of the earliest glass trade beads in the southern African interior, as well as imported pottery originating from the Persian Gulf. These Indian Ocean Rim trade items co-occur with evidence for intensive big game hunting, copper and iron smelting and smithing, and a rapid population increase.
©Michelle van Aswegen
©Michelle van Aswegen
Through an analysis of consumption patterns, subsistence strategies, craft production, and socio-political organisation over time, our project studies local transformations and changes along the Letaba River during the first millennium AD. Elsewhere in southern Africa, the onset of international trade is often seen as a direct impulse for the development of social complexity. The Letaba Archaeology Project focuses instead on the local reactions by Letaba communities as an example of the myriad alternative ways a society can react to transformative impulses like trade.
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The Letaba Archaeology Project is funded by the South African National Research Foundation with support from the University of Pretoria, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Ditsong Museums of South Africa and the Heritage Division of the South African National Parks.
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©Daniël du Plessis
