Browsing by Author "Maggs, Timothy"

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    Iron age decorative metalwork in southern Africa: an archival study
    (2016) Walker, Ellen Jeanine; Chirikure, Shadreck; Maggs, Timothy
    This thesis addresses continuity and change in the manufacture and use of decorative metalwork in the Iron Age (200-1900 AD) of southern Africa, within a framework of archival studies and artefact studies theory. The thesis adopted a direct historical approach which exploited the huge database of existing information to create typologies of objects and processing techniques that are prominent in ethno-historical sources of the 19th and 20th centuries. This process enabled for the first time, a comprehensive mapping of object typologies and techniques of manufacture by ethnic groups thereby allowing cross cultural comparisons. Subsequently, the study explored the typology of objects utilized further back in the time of the Early Iron Age using archaeological evidence. It demonstrated that most of the objects used in the Iron Age were similar to those that were used in the 19th century. However, new innovations were made along the way with metals and alloys being constantly added to the range of materials worked. A dedicated visual study of fabrication techniques employed in the manufacture of ethnographic materials housed at Iziko Museum of Cape Town was carried out. The techniques gleaned from the macroscopic study were compared with those metallographically documented in the literature for the manufacture of Iron Age objects, further exposing continuity and change in metal fabrication. The social, economic and political role of decorative metalwork was hardly static, and varied from context to context and group to group.
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    Society in transformation : early Iron Age mixed farming communities in the lower Thukela Basin, Zululand
    (1992) Van Schalkwyk, Leonard Outram; Hall, Martin; Maggs, Timothy
    This dissertation is the result of a field-project conducted in the lower Thukela Basin over a twenty-month period in 1984 and 1985. The dissertation sets out to document a regional survey of Early Iron Age sites in a part of the Lower Thukela Basin and report on the excavations and analysis of material from two sites, Mamba and Wosi. On the basis of the archaeological evidence iron smelting practices are discussed and the nature of first millennium mixed-farming, valley bottom settlements reported on. The ceramic finds are described and compared with other known samples from this period and are chronologically placed in the light of recent classificatory suggestions. Some arguments are submitted as to the changing nature of the archaeological record through time. In response to appeals made at the 1985 conference of the Southern African Association of Archaeologists (Hall 1985a; Lewis-Williams 1985) I have, subsequent to the conducting of the field-work, attempted to inform myself more widely of prevailing applications of social theory in the interpretation of the southern African pre-colonial historical record. The latter part of this dissertation is my attempt at such an application and further, an attempt at testing specific theories and models against the field-data collected. Unless otherwise acknowledged, all of the field-work reported on is my own. I remain indebted however to those who have gone before and provided the necessary frameworks on which much of my interpretation is based.