FAUNAL REMAINS IN THE TRANSITION FROM HUNTING TO HERDING IN SOUTHEASTERN BOTSWANA

Abstract

Because foragers became pastoralists so late in southern Africa, their well-preserved remains can help us better understand the original herders of this world. The dominant thinking is that becoming herders is hard. Hunters share meat, herders keep it to themselves. Perhaps only a few hunters ever bridged this gap: the socially important habit of sharing meat may have held the rest back. Following this line of thinking, herding must have reached the southern tip of Africa with migrating herders because, otherwise, too many hunters would have had to bridge the gap for sheep to arrive by diffusion. This paper explores the opposite view: that becoming herders may not have been so hard. Faunal remains from two rockshelters in southeastern Botswana suggest that hunters could have first treated domestic stock as socially unimportant meat, not subject to rules of sharing. Continued hunting and sharing of large and medium game could have fulfilled social obligations, while privately owned domestic stock