First-millennium agriculturist ceramics of the Eastern Cape, South Africa: an investigation into some ways in which artefacts acquire meaning

Abstract

Artefacts acquire/embody migratory meanings according to contexts of raw material manipulation, use, discard and discourse. First-Millennium Agriculturist ceramics and concomitant private and public significances/use values are placed within aspects of a deep past Stone Age history of space and artefact usage in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Some thought paradigms and cultural contexts are examined as having directly influenced discourse, what artefacts were foregrounded, and in which manner writers of southern African prehistory considered them. Thereafter ceramic artefacts and associated technologies are focussed upon as being intimate to personal/ community lifeways and worldviews. Domestic and ceremonial utilityware, figurines and masks, as well as clay usage in homebuilding and metalworking, and urges to apply a mark to malleable clay, or deliberately alter and/or bury ceramic artefacts; are explored as manifestations of medium and usage well suited to regularly reconfigured meanings .