Among the Headless Hordes
Missionaries, Outlaws and Logics of Landscape in the Wittebergen Native Reserve, c. 1850-1871
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4604236 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rachel King (0000-0002-0085-3498, Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge; Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 44 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 659-680 |
| Publication date | 2018-07-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Southern African Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0305-7070 • E-ISSN: 1465-3893 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/03057070.2018.1475910 |
| OpenAlex | W2890627634 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 12 |
This article offers an archaeological perspective on the Wittebergen Native Reserve, not through excavated remains, but by exploring how historical perceptions of a landscape related to experiences of authority, tenure, mobility and security. It examines how (mis-)perceptions of land (its productivity and availability) helped missionaries to formulate settlement projects to create stable communities of sedentary agriculturist labourers. Wittebergen was one such project, also proposed as a ‘buffer’ between Moshoeshoe I and potential allies to the south. I then discuss alternative experiences of Wittebergen: as a node in a network of sites employed by mobile cattle raiders in the southern Maloti–Drakensberg, and as implicated in actions coded by white observers as ‘disorderly’. Wittebergen thus figures in experiences of landscape that emphasise mobility and authority. Where these logics of landscape met, they had tangible consequences: certain forms of land use were interpreted as vacancies, justifying colonial seizure; fields, mountains and homesteads became the terms of debates linking tenancy with safety and lawlessness; and aspects of the landscape were modified to address threats to the reserve’s security, real or imagined. This article thus signposts how material–cultural traces discerned through archaeological perspectives provide direct statements by communities marginalised in written or oral historical texts
Agriculture · Archaeology · Business · Colonialism · Geography · Land tenure · Lawlessness · Leasehold estate · Political science · Settlement (finance · Sociology · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies · History · Law
‘Appetite comes with eating’
‘Were they half civilized?’ Knowledge and Reminiscence in the Maloti-Drakensberg
Persist, Resist
Un-Settled Encounters; or, if Walls Could Speak
Conclusion
Fluidities of personhood in the idioms of the Maloti-Drakensberg, past and present, and their use in incorporating contextual ethnographies in southern African rock art research
An archaeology of interruption
In praise of outlaws
Outlaws, Anxiety, and Disorder in Southern Africa
A survey of social ecologies in the freshwater biomes of highland Lesotho and the adjacent Eastern Cape, South Africa
Cattle, raiding and disorder in Southern African history
Things of the outside teach me
| Unique citing works | 12 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,33 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2024 (8) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 12 |