A historical archaeological inverstigation into two recent households of the Motse, Botshabelo Mission Station, Middelburg, Mpumalanga, South Africa

Abstract

The archaeological research was conducted at Botshabelo, a nineteenth century Berlin Mission Society station located outside Middelburg, Mpumalanga. It focuses primarily on the collection of residential houses and homesteads in the area known as the Motse, meaning “village” in Sotho. This is where the mission station’s African residents lived. This research seeks to use archaeology, specifically the study of the associated material culture, in order to refine the chronology of changes to settlement in this area, and to explore the ways in which the inhabitants interacted with other sectors of the mission station community and the then wider Transvaal society. Although the mission station and its settlement dates from 1865, the material culture excavated and analysed in this project is primarily from the twentieth century. It is through the careful analysis of these houses and their architecture, together with the associated material culture that the social and cultural values of the people who built and used them can be explored.

To date there has been a copious amount of research done on these mission stations in southern Africa, flowing mainly from the disciplines of history and anthropology (Comaroff and Comaroff 1991; Delius 1981; Japha et al 1993; Kirkaldy 2005; Vernal 2009). In contrast, however, there has been relatively little archaeological research carried out on the various mission stations within southern Africa (but see Ashley 2010; Boshoff 2004; Clift 2001; Jeppson 2005; Reid et al 1997). This research project is based in archaeology, and in particular in the discipline of historical archaeology, which can provide the methodologies and approaches that can be used to make sense of the history of the Botshabelo Mission Station and the Motse. This research therefore intends to contribute to the currently under researched field of mission archaeology within South Africa.