Archaeology, Climate Change, And Human Adaptation In Southern Africa

In Africa south of the Zambezi River, archaeologists and other experts have long explored the impact of climate and environmental changes to the development of ancient civilizations during the Iron Age (CE 200–1900). However, some of the prevailing thought is still rooted in environmental determinism, informed by selected ethnographies, stable isotopes and archaeological evidence. As the authors note, while climatic reconstructions are important, attributing political and social changes solely to environmental conditions undermines human agency and oversimplifies complex ways in which people lived their lives in Iron Age Southern Africa. For instance, the drought brought by the medieval Little Ice Age is assumed to have caused the collapse of the civilization at Mapungubwe in the Shashi-Limpopo valley around 1300 CE. And yet, within the wider region, civilizations in similar ecological settings upstream (Shashi and Upper Limpopo) and downstream (Lower Limpopo), persisted and thrived through the same climatic challenges. In the new paper, Foreman and colleagues from the UK, South Africa, and Zimbabwe considers the sites of Mapela (CE 1150–1310) and Little Mapela (CE 1296–1489) in the Shashi region, part of the wider landscape where the borders of Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe meet at the confluence of the Shashi -Limpopo rivers. The team draws on African cosmologies, resilience theory, and archaeological evidence to spotlight adaptation strategies utilized by the inhabitants of these settlements to build resilience through time. The main conclusion is that even in cases of climatic extremes, humans responded to opportunities and constraints in context-specific ways.
July 26. 2024