Hunting and the social lives of Southern Africa’s first farmers

Perspectives on human–animal relationships are changing in archaeology and related disciplines. Analytical models that distinguish foraging from food production remain popular, but scholars are beginning to recognize greater variability in the ways people understood and engaged with animals in the past. In southern Africa, researchers have observed that wild animals were economically and socially important to recent agropastoral societies. However, archaeological models emphasize cattle keeping and downplay the role of hunting among past farming groups. To address this discrepancy and investigate human–wild animal interactions over the last ~ 2000 years, we examined zooarchaeological data from 54 southern African Iron Age (first and second millennium AD) farming sites. Diversity and taxonomic information highlights how often and what types of animals people hunted. Comparisons with earlier and contemporaneous forager and herder sites in southern and eastern Africa show that hunting for social and economic purposes characterized the spread of farming and rise of complex societies in southern Africa. The long-term cultural integration of wild animals into food-producing societies is unusual from a Global South perspective and warrants reappraisal of forager/farmer dichotomies in non-Western contexts

Aardvark and people: can a shy species be widely known in a localised area?

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.The increase in human populations has led to humans sharing space with wild animals even in the natural habitats of the animals. Conflicts may arise when people and wildlife attempt to fulfill their needs which can be detrimental to one or both parties, and this type of conflict is called human-wildlife conflict (HWC). The human needs include people hunting wild animals for consumption of the animal and trading in animal body parts.Hunting is one of the factors that decreases populations of numerous animal species, and it occurs in many parts of the world e.g. in Africa, Asia and South America, where it contributes to extinction of species. The conservation and management of burrowing animals is a major challenge due to their elusive and nocturnal behaviour. The aardvark is an African medium-sized, burrowing mammal whose conservation status has not been updated recently due to the difficulties associated with studying nocturnal animals. Aardvarks may play a significant ecological role in the ecosystems in which they occur, such as by changing the landscape through their digging activities, or through affecting the dispersal of seeds. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore the influence of humans on population trends and activity patterns of aardvarks outside protected areas, and to determine people’s perceptions about the animal. The study was conducted in Ncunjane village in Msinga Local Municipality, KwaZulu-Natal Province of South Africa. To understand people’s perceptions about aardvark in their community, I used a semistructured questionnaire survey. I asked personal information of the participants (sex, level of education and age), and questions related to people’s perceptions about the aardvark, such as people’s knowledge, myths, and their uses of the animal or its body parts. To determine activity patterns of the animal, I focused on aardvark foraging activities in a semi- arid savanna ecosystem that is also used as a communal rangeland over eight months between 2020 and 2021. I measured and quantified aardvark foraging holes using 53 50 m × 10 m transects where there was evidence of aardvark activity. In addition, I quantified aardvark burrowing of dens in the dry, wet and early dry seasons using walking transects guided by a research assistant who knows the area. I found that people have different perspectives about aardvark with the majority (78%) of respondents having strongly positive perceptions. The positive perceptions arise from aardvark not causing physical harm to people, and fleeing away upon sighting people. I found that aardvarks were mainly hunted for meat while some animal body parts were sold to traditional healers for traditional medicine. All seasons consisted of a greater number (> 51%) of old than new and very old foraging holes.The surface area of new, old, very old holes differed significantly with season (P < 0.0001) and the depth of new, old and very old holes also varied with season (P < 0.0001). In addition, the contents of foraging holes varied with age of the hole and season in that new holes lacked evidence of plant life across seasons. Aardvark dens were used by other animals such as spiders, wild cats, Cape porcupines and snakes. Hence, an increase in aardvark holes can be associated with significant landscape heterogeneity for vegetation and animal life. Aardvarks in Ncunjane fed close to their dens presumablyto mitigate against human predation through hunting threats, which may directly affect the extent of aardvark digging activities. These results show that aardvarks may be categorised as ecosystem engineers as the burrows provide shelter for other animals, also, their effects on other animals are disproportionate to their abundance. These results highlight that aardvarks are threatened by human uses and may decline in abundance in the area. Finally, aardvarks remain poorly studied in landscapes shared with humans. Further studies to assess aardvark numbers in human-dominated landscapes are required which can raise awareness and play a significant role in conservation of aardvarks

Mesopredator release and the effectiveness of camera traps for estimating mammal abundances in the Eastern Cape, South Africa

Remotely operated cameras (camera traps) have become an indispensable tool for many ecologists, particularly those studying rare and elusive animals. A plethora of camera trap makes and models are now commercially available, yet the effects of their varying design features on the quality and quantity of data recorded remains principally unknown. Better understanding of differing camera trap designs is needed before adequate management policies can be implemented, especially when the aim is to protect vulnerable and endangered species such as many carnivores. Habitat loss and human conflict has prompted worldwide declines of apex predator populations. Following this, many smaller predators have undergone population ‘explosions’ due to the lack of top-down forcing, a phenomenon known as mesopredator release. Land use changes in the Eastern Cape of South Africa have caused extensive degradation and fragmentation of the Subtropical Thicket Biome. In addition, coupled with anthropogenic persecution, apex predators including lions (Panthera leo), leopards (P. pardus), and brown hyaenas (Hyaena brunnea) have been extirpated from large areas of their historic range. Removal of these apex predators may provide opportunity for mesopredators, such as black-backed jackals (Canis mesomelas) and caracals (Caracal caracal), to be released from top-down forcing and possibly initiate trophic cascade effects. Therefore, using randomly distributed camera traps, my study aimed to explore the quality and quantity of data collected by different camera trap designs, and to investigate the mesopredator release hypothesis in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. A total of 2,989 trap nights was used to compare camera trap designs. Camera traps with narrow detection zones and fast trigger speeds (≤ 0.25 seconds) recorded a higher diversity of carnivores, but there was no significant difference in the relative abundances of carnivore species recorded by different camera trap models. A total of 19,659 trap nights was used to assess mesopredator relative abundance, occupancy, distribution and daily activity patterns at one site with, and one site without, apex predators. Consistent with the mesopredator release hypothesis, black-backed jackal relative abundance was significantly higher in the absence of apex predators, and this was supported by occupancy analyses. Further, black-backed jackal distribution was significantly concentrated in areas where apex predator activity was low, possibly indicating spatial avoidance. There was no significant difference in caracal relative abundance, occupancy, distribution, or daily activity between sites. These results provide the first indication of mesopredator release of blackbacked jackals in the Eastern Cape. The implications of black-backed jackal release including prey population structure, local extinctions, altered seed dispersal and disease dynamics are discussed

[untitled]

Panel: An Age of Migration, Diaspora, Exil

A comparative study of depression in Bantu, Khoisan and Chinese Wu – laryngeal settings and feature specifications

This paper aims to provide an overview of our current understanding of depressors by offering a comparative perspective of the types of depressors from Bantu, Khoisan and Chinese Wu. Depressor effects in Bantu/Khoisan, on the one hand, and Chinese, on the other, are hardly dealt with together leaving a more holistic approach untapped. This paper begins to bridge that gap by bringing together current findings to establish the full scope of depressor effects, from which future analyses can then build on. It is systematically observed that depressors in these languages are not restricted to voicing only. Rather, they range from voiced and breathy sounds – the most unmarked – to voiceless unaspirated sounds and even voiceless aspirated sounds as the most marked depressor type. The expansion of depressors to voiceless aspirated sounds is particularly interesting, since these sounds are traditionally assumed to correlate with a high pitch which is characteristic of high tone. Thus, the laryngeal configurations for voiceless depressors are examined and compared between Bantu, Khoisan and Chinese Wu. Proposed feature analyses for depressors are also discussed and compared.Keywords: depressors, Bantu, Khoisan, Chinese Wu, laryngeal specificatio

Introduction. Shrines, substances and medicine in sub-Saharan Africa: archaeological, anthropological, and historical perspectives

This is the final version of the article. Available from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record.Whereas shrines in Africa, and to a lesser extent their links with medicine and healing, have been extensively studied by historians and anthropologists, they have been largely neglected by archaeologists. Focus has been placed upon palaeopathology when medicine is considered in archaeological contexts. Difficulties certainly exist in defining medicine shrines, substances and practices archaeologically, yet research can take various forms - scapegoats and figural representations of disease; divination and diagnosis; trade and spread of medicinal substances, shrines, and amulets; syncretism of different traditions and materiality; the material culture associated with healing and medicinal substance; depictions in rock art; genetic research. A move beyond palaeopathology is required to begin to understand the archaeology of medicine shrines, substances, practices and healing in sub-Saharan Africa.The author is grateful to Peter Mitchell for providing references on Southern African images of healing, and Roberta Simonis for doing likewise for the Sahara, but the author is responsible for all inadequacies and inaccuracies in interpretation. The author is also grateful to the Wellcome Trust for providing the funding so that the conference from which most of these papers originated could be held. The author would also like to thank Rachel MacLean for reading a draft of this paper