Social landscapes of Euphorbia Kop : a K2 farmer settlement with a forager presence in southern Africa

Abstract

Holocene foragers in southern Africa were mobile, stone-tool-using, hunting and gathering communities that lived in rock shelters and in the open in temporary campsites. From the early 1st millennium a.d., farmer groups migrated into southern Africa and introduced domesticated crops, livestock, and metal technology into the region and lived in fixed homesteads. Differences in the material culture and residential habits of these two communities are distinct and largely differentiable. As such, studying their interactions is possible through the analysis of material culture and its context. Here, we present the findings from Euphorbia Kop in the middle Limpopo Valley of central southern Africa that contains several strands of evidence indicating a forager presence within a farmer settlement identified by several distinct cultural markers. Our findings demonstrate a response to contact not well recorded in the region that offers a possible explanation for the decline and eventual disappearance of forager remains in rock-shelter contexts beginning in the early 2nd millennium A.D.