A01=Brian A. Stewart
animism
archaeology
Author_Brian A. Stewart
Category=JHMC
Category=NHHA
Category=NKDS
coastal
domestic
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
foodways
herders
hunter-gatherers
refitting
religion and ritual
site formation
South Africa
spatial analysis
Product details
- ISBN 9781950446773
- Weight: 1665g
- Dimensions: 225 x 285mm
- Publication Date: 20 Apr 2026
- Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Dunefield Midden on South Africa’s west coast is one of the world’s largest and best-preserved campsites of past foragers. Covered by windblown sand soon after abandonment, it provides a snapshot of domestic life for some of the subcontinent’s last precolonial peoples. The site’s shallow, intact deposits encouraged an emphasis on horizontal exposure and spatial resolution on the part of its excavators, John Parkington and his students at the University of Cape Town. Those efforts spanned more than a decade and resulted in the recovery of nearly 1,000 square meters of Later Stone Age archaeology, including over 100 features interspersed with diverse shell, bone, and artifact assemblages. Twenty-seven radiocarbon dates on charcoal and marine shells constrain the site’s occupation to between AD 1300 and 1400, with a cumulative duration of no more than a few months.
This book presents the results of a comprehensive spatial analysis and refitting program of an array of meticulously mapped subsistence materials from Dunefield Midden. Ceramic cooking vessels, ostrich eggshell flasks, tortoiseshell bowls, and the bones of three differently sized ungulates, both wild and domesticated, are reassembled and their distributions compared to understand the cultural flows and natural forces that structured this exceptional site. Resulting patterns are interpreted with reference to diverse ethnoarchaeological, ethnographic, and ethnohistoric observations from Africa and beyond. What emerges is a uniquely detailed spatial reconstruction of hunter-gatherer material use-histories, social organization, group identity, and spirituality.
Brian A. Stewart is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he is also Curator of African Archaeology at the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology. His research focuses on the evolution of human adaptive plasticity, with an emphasis on southern African hunter-gatherers. Currently he investigates the deep time development of socioeconomic strategies and religious traditions in southern Africa’s deserts and mountains.
