Making connections: ostrich eggshell beads as indicators of precolonial societal interaction in southeastern southern Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACT Ostriches are peculiar birds and their strangeness has been recognised by southern African hunter-gatherers through multiple symbolic associations. Such qualities are likely to have been enhanced where people had access to beads made from their eggshell but did not have direct knowledge of the birds themselves. Southeastern southern Africa, encompassing the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains, the eastern half of the Eastern Cape Province and much of KwaZulu-Natal is one such area. We review the unusual attributes and associations of ostriches and their eggshell before briefly summarising previous work that has used strontium isotope analysis to investigate past bead exchange networks in this region. Because bead size can be controlled and patently varies through time and space, we then employ it as another potential indicator of the existence and spatial extent of past social networks. Having critically considered previous efforts in this field, we report on our work to build the largest sample of such data yet obtained in southern Africa and compare our preliminary results with other signals of interaction between precolonial hunter-gatherer and (where applicable) agropastoralist communities.