Continuity and Transition from the Early to Mid-Holocene at the Foothills of the Drakensberg: Preliminary Results from the Current Excavations of Strathalan Cave A, North-Eastern Cape, South Africa

The first bone tools from Kromdraai and stone tools from Drimolen, and the place of bone tools in the South African Earlier Stone Age

Understanding the Implications of Mitochondrial DNA Variation in the Health of Black Southern African Populations: The 2014 Workshop.

Early hominid bone tools from Drimolen, South Africa

Introduction - shedding the past, shaping the future, David Simon. Part 1 Population and mobility: obscuring history? contemporary patterns of regional migration to South Africa, Sally Peberdy gender, labour markets and migration in and from Botswana, Kavita Datta the sexual and economic politics of (re)integration - HIV/AIDS and the question of stability in southern Africa, Doug Webb. Part 2 Transcending the past - the politics of dis- and re-engagement: in the wake of war - military transitions in southern Africa, Susan Willett small arms proliferation - a major challenge for post-apartheid South and southern Africa, Alex Vines South Africa's foreign policy - from isolation to respectability?, Greg Mills nature has the power to heal old wounds - war, peace and changing patterns of conservation in southern Africa, Eddie Koch. Part 3 Changing geographies of production and economic integration: the changing role of sugar as a vehicle for economic development within southern Africa, Steve Atkins and Alan Terry lessons unlearned -South Africa's one-way relationship with Zimbabwe, Colin Stoneman desert enclave to regional gateway? Walvis Bay's reintegration into Namibia, David Simon powering the region - South Africa and the southern Africa power pool, Tore Horvei SADC, COMESA, SACU -contradictory formats for regional integration in southern Africa?, James Sidaway prospects for the region, David Simon.

Recent government legislation in South Africa (the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act, No.10 of 2004) calls for the removal of trout from ecosystems and habitats where they may cause harm. The elimination of trout would, however, undermine the tourism appeal of many upper catchments in South Africa to recreational fishers. This paper reports the first formal recreational valuation of a trout fishery in South Africa – the one in and around Rhodes village, North Eastern Cape. The valuation is carried out by applying the individual travel cost method using several count data models. The zero truncated negative binomial model which allows for the non-negative integer nature of the trip data, for truncation as well as for over-dispersion, found that the consumer surplus per day and per trip to the Rhodes trout fishery was ZAR2 668 (US$334) and ZAR13,072 (US$1634), respectively in the year 2007, and the total consumer surplus generated was ZAR18,026,288 (US$2 253,286).

Farming Communities have lived in northeastern South Africa since the 4th century ad. Archaeologists use pottery style and radiocarbon dates in their reconstructions of the temporal and spatial distribution of these farming community settlements in the Lowveld, on the Great Escarpment and on the Central Plateau. Early Farming Community sites tend to be restricted to the Lowveld and river valleys, while Middle and Late Farming Community sites are distributed more widely. Early Farming Communities lived in scattered homesteads until the development of chiefdoms toward the end of the first millennium. Chiefly settlements comprised larger, aggregated sites. After the 16th century, larger-scale aggregation started, resulting in extensive, dense settlements such as the stonewalled Bokoni towns. Food production and procurement ranged from small household-scale practices to specialized hunting and intensive farming. Salt and metal extraction and production also were important components in the regional economy. The initial production of salt was household based, but Middle Farming Communities developed this into a specialized industry. Metal production was not industrialized and, while the scale of metal production increased through time, production took place at a household level. Since the early 10th century ad, these local enterprises intersected with international trade systems, thereby linking the interior of South Africa into international trade networks. These indigenous networks, however, were disrupted and at times intentionally disarticulated when European colonial powers extended their control over southern Africa.

Recent government legislation, which calls for the eradication of trout from ecosystems where they may cause harm, could damage the tourism appeal of many South African catchments. However, no South African studies have tried to quantify the economic impact of removing trout from rivers and streams. This study aimed first to value the Rhodes trout fishery, North Eastern Cape, South Africa, and second to assess whether the trout fly fishing industry in Rhodes could form the foundation for the implementation of a local economic development initiative. Overall, the study found that the trout fishing industry directly generates approximately R5 658 240 per annum, and sustains a minimum of 39 direct job opportunities for the community of Rhodes, and can therefore provide the impetus for the creation of a tourism-based local economic development programme.

South Africa - within or apart from Africa?, Adebayo Adedeji South Africa in Africa - a South African perspective, Kader Asmal. Part I Africa in the global context: Africa and the new world order - rethinking development planning in the age of globalization, Fantu Cheru South and southern Africa in the new international divisions of labour and power - development prospects in the 1990s, Timothy M. Shaw. Part II The political economies of Africa and South Africa: the state of the African political economy, Bade Onimode the state of South Africa's political economy, Fred Ahwireng-Obeng the debate about reconstruction and development in South Africa, Ben Turok. Part III South Africa's relations with Africa: South Africa in Africa - a Namibian perspective, Hage Geingob South Africa's economic relations with Africa - current patterns and future perspectives, Robert Davies towards common security in southern Africa - regional cooperation after apartheid, Elling Njal Tjonneland and Tom Vraalsen. Part IV Prospects and perspectives: towards a new African order - evolving a strategy for mutually-beneficial political and socio-economic relations after apartheid, Adebayo Adedeji.

The Mandela 1 government that came into power in 1994 made the democratization of science and technology a priority in post-apartheid South Africa (Joubert, 2001, p. 316). Attendant ideas of Science Communication and Public Understanding of Biotechnology 2 have hitherto become currency in South Africa’s public sector drive towards the democratization of science. Democratization of science and technology implies that the people as non-experts are an integral part of all deliberations on policy, regulation and control of science and technology, for example, in debates or controversies on issues arising from biotechnology. Democratization of science and technology is about the sociopolitical control of science and technology by wider society. Science and technology must be controlled by wider society because evil-minded groups of people can ill-use it to inflict harm on other groups of people. Moreover, certain unscrupulous and corrupt business entities can collude with the state and/or powerful and influential sociopolitical figures in societies to exploit and abuse indigenous scientific resources as well as endogenous modes of specialized scientific knowledge. On the latter, for example, they can evoke intellectual property rights (IPR) to patent resources that are not theirs historically. Thus, the ideal-type of democracy makes it imperative for the people of South Africa and of other societies in Africa to understand and actively participate in developments in science and technology. 3 This need necessitates increasing scholarly attention to be given to questions of science communication and public understanding of science, arising at the intersection between science, society and politics in South and southern Africa. Some of the major drivers of the processes of the democratization of science are social movements, which are elements of civil society (Ballard, Habib and Valodia, 2006). Social movements do fill and are apt to fill an important gap in science communication and public understanding of biotechnology in South and southern Africa. Scientists are accused generally of being poor communicators of science and technology, preferring to work in isolation, behind closed doors, in laboratories (Latour, 1987). Science communities are notoriously insular (Weingart et al., 2000). News media practitioners are accused of misrepresenting-by distorting, oversimplifying, or sensationalizing-science in public domains and of passively resisting science communication (Joubert, 2001, pp. 324-5). Yet there is a lack of scholarly attention to the role of social movements in the democratization of science in Africa as a whole. Practically, the democratization of science is partial, ad hoc, and biased in South and southern Africa. 4 Therefore, overall, it is unclear what the nature and role of interventions of social movements are in the democratisation of science in Africa.

Technology or taphonomy? A study of the 2.04–1.95 Ma bone tools from Drimolen Main Quarry, South Africa

Bone tools from Beds II–IV, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, and implications for the origins and evolution of bone technology

In a recent article, a team of Chinese, French, Canadian, and Czech researchers led by d'Errico suggested the earliest bone needles were manufactured in Siberia and northern China, and were invented independently in both regions. Here, the Chinese archaeological record is reviewed to provide more details on this claim. The occurrence of this tool type is correlated with the associated lithic technologies and the environmental conditions in order to investigate the dispersal events that took place during the second half of the Late Pleistocene. The review suggests the manufacture of needles represents an indigenous innovation that appears in northern China circa 31 kaBP on the onset of the Chinese Late Palaeolithic alongside stone tools attributed to the core-and-flake technology. As of 25 kaBP, a new form of needle is introduced in the archaeological record. These needles are flat and they appear with stone tools attributed to the microblade technology. This evidence likely signals the migration of a populations bringing with them blade technologies from western Eurasia. At the end of the Pleistocene, bone needles are more diversified, which suggests they were used in a variety of tasks. During the late-Tardiglacial, bone needles are found in northern China both in contexts that yielded microblade technology as well as core-and-flake technology with ceramic. In southern China, the first bone needles appear alongside core-and-flake technology around 12 kaBP. The first appearance of this tool type in southern China could either be the result of a convergent innovation or the southward migration of prehistoric populations that lived in northern China prior to the Last Glacial Maximum. South of the Yangzi river, bone needles are manufactured at the end of the Pleistocene in contexts attributed to the core-and-flake technology with ceramic. The presence of the same toolkit in both northern and southern China at the end of the Pleistocene, i.e., core-and-flake technology with ceramic and bone needles, raises the question of potential long-distance population movements and cultural influences across North and South China at the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene.

Bone, like other organic materials, featured prominently in the technological repertoires of most historically documented hunter-gatherer communities practising a Stone Age economy. Unlike stone, however, bone does not survive as well archaeologically, resulting in less attention generally being paid to this aspect of material culture. Yet, despite their poorer preservation, bone tools are found in several hominin sites dating to the last two million years in South and East Africa, where two regionally distinct varieties of bone tool occur. Traceological analyses (which comprise use-wear, fracture, and residue analyses) have gone a long way in elucidating the functions of these tools and those from younger periods. Deliberately modified bone tools are found sporadically at archaeological sites dating throughout the last two million years, but never in large numbers. Bone tools offer us many insights into past cultures and now-vanished technologies. For example, insect extraction, musicality, basket weaving, and garden agriculture were all expressed through the medium of bone. These bone artefacts often constitute the sole evidence for such technologies and their associated behaviors. To this list might be added bow-and-arrow technology, although here there is plenty of confirmatory evidence from lithic and residue studies. Despite their ubiquitously fewer numbers, bone tools are no less important for understanding aspects of the past than their lithic counterparts and have been the focus of several anthropological debates. The degree of similarity in manufacturing techniques, finished product morphology, and decorative motifs have led some researchers to extrapolate similarities in overarching cultural traditions. But the same similarities are seen in other parts of the world. Even a recurrence of decorative motifs may mean different things to different people at different times. The presence of well-made bone tools in Iron Age sites continues to be seen as evidence for trade between hunter-gatherers and farmers. But without concrete evidence that the bone tools moved from one place to another, such facile interpretations only serve to underplay farmer agency. Apart from trying to work out function, bone tool studies globally are focused on identifying the specific animal species selected to make tools and what such selection strategies might reveal about the symbolic importance of animals in human societies.

An early bone tool industry from the Middle Stone Age at Blombos Cave, South Africa: implications for the origins of modern human behaviour, symbolism and language

Recent archaeological discoveries have revealed that pigment use, beads, engravings, and sophisticated stone and bone tools were already present in southern Africa 75,000 y ago. Many of these artifacts disappeared by 60,000 y ago, suggesting that modern behavior appeared in the past and was subsequently lost before becoming firmly established. Most archaeologists think that San hunter-gatherer cultural adaptation emerged 20,000 y ago. However, reanalysis of organic artifacts from Border Cave, South Africa, shows that the Early Later Stone Age inhabitants of this cave used notched bones for notational purposes, wooden digging sticks, bone awls, and bone points similar to those used by San as arrowheads. A point is decorated with a spiral groove filled with red ochre, which closely parallels similar marks that San make to identify their arrowheads when hunting. A mixture of beeswax, Euphorbia resin, and possibly egg, wrapped in vegetal fibers, dated to ∼40,000 BP, may have been used for hafting. Ornaments include marine shell beads and ostrich eggshell beads, directly dated to ∼42,000 BP. A digging stick, dated to ∼39,000 BP, is made of Flueggea virosa. A wooden poison applicator, dated to ∼24,000 BP, retains residues with ricinoleic acid, derived from poisonous castor beans. Reappraisal of radiocarbon age estimates through bayesian modeling, and the identification of key elements of San material culture at Border Cave, places the emergence of modern hunter-gatherer adaptation, as we know it, to ∼44,000 y ago.