ABSTRACT
The beginnings of farming in southern Africa over 1500 years ago have already been outlined (Chapter 22). Now it is worth examining it in a developed state as it existed for about the last 500 years, looking particularly at a region where mixed farming was most successful and gave rise to substantial social and political changes. Here ‘southern Africa’ is considered to be all of the continent south of a line drawn from the Limpopo River, in the east, to Walvis Bay, in the west. However, the western and south-western parts of this huge area were too dry to grow African cereal crops or had winter rainfall instead of the necessary summer rainfall. In those parts of southern Africa, livestock-herding or hunter-gathering or a combination of the two remained the subsistence strategies until European colonization over the last 300 or more years. In contrast, to the east and north-east both cultivation and livestock, particularly cattle, were important. This was especially the case on the highveld between the Vaal and Orange Rivers and some way north of the Vaal. In this area there are numerous deserted stone-built settlements belonging to the last few centuries. Their relatively recent date means that oral traditions, historical documentation and linguistic data can all help in the interpretation of their archaeological evidence, which consequently has quite a story to tell.
