'Hunters-with-sheep': the /Xam Bushmen of South Africa between pastoralism and foraging

bibliographic database
Line

Periodical article

Title:	'Hunters-with-sheep': the /Xam Bushmen of South Africa between pastoralism and foraging
Author:	McGranaghan, Mark
Year:	2015
Periodical:	Africa: Journal of the International African Institute (ISSN 0001-9720)
Volume:	85
Issue:	3
Pages:	521-545
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	San pastoralists livestock wild animals attitudes 1800-1899
External link:	https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972015000297
Abstract:	The ability of hunting and gathering populations to adopt herding forms of subsistence constitutes the crux of a long-standing debate in southern African archaeological and anthropological scholarship concerning the spread of livestock to the subcontinent. This article takes as a detailed case study the subsistence strategies of the nineteenth-century /Xam Bushmen of the Northern Cape (South Africa), extracted from a transcription of the entirety of the Bleek-Lloyd Archive. It focuses on /Xam characterization of and relationships with the various domesticated species that shared their Karoo landscape, and asks whether these relationships differ markedly from their conceptions of non-domesticated animals. Turning to the wider context of hunter-gatherer engagements with domesticates, the article concludes by proposing that, for the /Xam, domesticated fauna were part of a spectrum of differentiated resources, and did not entail an interaction with a wholly alien suite of new demands. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French [Journal abstract]