Let's go visit the ruins: oral tradition and settlement reconstruction: two Ndebele case studies

Abstract

This article emphasizes the importance of additional and ancillary research methods in settlement studies in South Africa. Settlement pattern studies are essentially multidisciplinary and raise interest in anthropology, architecture and archaeology. It appears however that researchers in these disciplines are careless as to applying alternative research methods which may be utilized during fieldwork. Two such methods prove to be the application of oral traditions and ancillary to this, ethnoarchaeological data. In the reconstruction of Southern Ndebele settlement patterns, the application of these two methods in particular proved to be successful, as indicated in the two case studies.

Hierdie artikel beklemtoon die belangrikheid van addisionele en aanvullende navorsingsmetodes by vestigingstudies in Suid-Afrika. Vestigingspatroon-studies is in wese multi-dissipliner van aard en wek belangstelling in die antropologie, argitektuur en die argeologie. Dit blyk egter dat navorsers in hierdie dissiplines onversigtig staan teenoor alternatiewe navorsingsmetodes wat tydens veldwerk aangewend kan word. Twee sulke metodes is die ontginning van mondelinge oorlewering en aanvullend daartoe, etnoargeologiese data. By die rekonstruksie van die vestigingspatroon van die Suid-Ndebele het die aanwending van veral hierdie twee metodes suksesvol geblyk te wees, soos wat die twee gevallestudies aandui.