Discovery raises questions about history of South African ivory trade
New research from the University of Cape Town indicates that the pre-colonial ivory trade in Southern Africa began 200 years earlier than previously thought – raising the question of just how and where trans-oceanic trade really started in South Africa.
The researchers found that the ivory at KwaZulu Natal’s KwaGandaganda‚ Ndondondwane and Wosi sites‚ all of which date between the 7th and 10th century AD‚ did not just come from the local elephants.
According to the study‚ which is available for free on Springer’s African Archaeological Review carbon‚ nitrogen and strontium analysis of the tusks showed that the elephants lived in a wide range of areas.
“KwaGandaganda‚ Wosi and Ndondondwane preserve the earliest evidence for large-scale ivory processing in Southern Africa‚ the precursor of a larger‚ more expansive network of goods – including gold – that would flow through this region in the centuries to come‚” The researchers wrote.
Other sites from that era in KwaZulu Natal don’t show evidence of this scale of ivory working‚ suggesting that these sites specialised in it. The tusks were definitely from elephants.
While there were hippo and warthog remains in the area‚ the researchers used Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry to check what species the ivory came from. There may be evidence of the sites being engaged in overseas trade.
“We can’t answer this question definitively‚ but there are a number of lines of evidence that suggest both applied.
“We suggest at least some of the ivory from the KwaZulu-Natal sites may also have been destined for trans-oceanic trade based on the large quantities of ivory on some KwaZulu-Natal sites and the new evidence reported here that ivory procurement was not merely local but was conducted over considerable distances‚ with a greater degree of organisation than previously suspected.
“Considering that the first imported glass beads and ceramics appear at almost the same time‚ there is surely a persuasive case to be made for overseas trade.”
- TMG Digital