A review of hunter-gatherers in Later Stone Age research in southern Africa

Abstract

Since its inception in academia in 1929 by John Goodwin and Clarence \nvan Riet Lowe, the Later Stone Age (LSA) in southern Africa has seen \nconsiderable growth and heated academic debate. Recently, some \nacademics have lamented that LSA research has stagnated, and even \nreached the brink of marginalisation. According to Mitchell (2005), \none reason for reviving LSA research is the field’s global importance \nand potential to empower and represent previously disenfranchised \ncommunities. The aim of this paper is to examine how San communities and southern African hunter-gatherers have been historically \nperceived by reviewing LSA research approaches. Several key \nthemes of LSA research are presented which capture major shifts in \nmethodological and theoretical frameworks and research interests \nwithin the field. These examples signal fundamental shifts in research \ndiscourse, archaeologists’ perspectives, and the dominant views of \n‘Bushman’. Although providing an historical summary of LSA \nresearch, the paper also considers decolonisation within the field, \naligning with the current socio-political milieu in southern Africa. It \nis suggested that while using ethnography and indigenous knowledge \nsystems is helping us decolonise our approach to the archaeological \nrecord, this is not without its problems.

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