The entangled past : integrating archaeology, oral tradition and history in the South African interior

Abstract

The historical entanglement of indigenous and colonial societies in South Africa created not only multiple points of social and cultural interaction, but also a repository of interconnected material, oral and documentary records. A multi-source, comparative approach across disciplinary boundaries is, therefore, essential to achieve a full and seamless account of late precolonial and early colonial African history. Oral tradition provides a bridge between archaeology and text-based history and enables us to connect political lineages with specific precolonial African towns. Even deep into the nineteenth century, documentary sources on African societies of the interior are often very limited in scope, thus necessitating the use of archaeological methods and data. The methodological strengths and weaknesses of each discipline should, however, be carefully considered before proceeding to integrate the different data sets. Three case studies from the South African interior are presented to illustrate the explanatory potential of an interdisciplinary approach.