ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the close connection between archaeological theory and archaeology’s political domain. A contemporary written text contains marked ambiguities in its author’s account of the place of fish in the diet of Cape Town’s population. Although the merchant princes and petty bourgeoisie of Cape Town were anxious to build an image to the contrary, life in Cape Town in the early nineteenth century could be rough. A semiotic approach to the study of material culture allows archaeology a role beyond the amplification of narrative: it allows people to discern how symbols were manipulated in everyday forms of domination and opposition. The earliest colonial buildings at the Cape were simple one- or two-roomed, mass-built rectangles with thatched roofs, and adaptation of basic European vernacular forms to allow for the great shortage of timber at the Cape that prevented the use of frame construction techniques. The genre of ‘Cape Dutch’ architecture has been massively expanded in modern reconstructions and motifs.
