Ostrich eggshell bead attributes and the hunter/herder/pastoralist debate in southern Africa
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24212989 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nicola Wells (University of the Witwatersrand), Thembi Russell (0000-0002-0241-216X, University of the Witwatersrand), Deano Stynder (University of Cape Town) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-24 |
| Publication date | 2026-09-25 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Azania Archaeological Research in Africa (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0067-270X • E-ISSN: 1945-5534 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/0067270x.2026.2732582 |
| OpenAlex | W7214321360 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 46 |
In southern Africa the size of ostrich eggshell beads has been used to attempt to separate hunter-gatherer from pastoralist sites since the 1980s. This paper offers a revival of the debate with individual bead and aperture diameter measurements and the presentation of a new bead metric — the cup percentage — and a larger spatio-temporal dataset. Preliminary results from late Pleistocene and Holocene Western Cape sites in South Africa show a change in beads after the arrival of domestic livestock. The challenge remains as to how to explain this post-2000 BP change.
aperture diameter · bead size · Holocene · Late Pleistocene · ostrich eggshell beads · Southern Africa · spatio-temporal change · Western Cape · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
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| Highly cited | No |
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