During the last week in July we excavated a grave where we found a golden bracelet and a bracelet made from golden beads. In total some 291 golden beads were found. This is the story of Losha, who reached out and touched us from 500 years in the past.
But the throne, Sma had said once, is the ultimate symbol for many cultures. To sit, in splendour, is the highest articulation of power. The rest come to you; lower, often bowing, frequently backing off, sometimes prostrate (though that is always a bad sign, said the Culture's blessed statistics), and to sit, to be made less animal by that evolutionary uncalled-for posture, signified the ability to use. There were some small civilisations - barely more than tribes, Sma had said - where they slept sitting, in special sleep chairs, because they believed that to lie down was to die (did they not always find the dead lying down?). From Use of Weapons by Ian M. Banks (1990)
En sy bruin stam
het sku in 'n wye kring gedam
- die kinders stil - of elkeen apart
sy dag se werk gesoek, verward
en vol peins by die vleg van die goue tou
of die knoop van die nette, en skaam onthou
die nag met sy wilde dans;
Uit Raka deur NP van Wyk Louw (1941)
Note:
NP van Wyk Louw is a famous South African author.
A poetic-cum-literal translation:
And his dark tribe
Skittishly shy circled wide
- children silent - or each on his own
looking for a days work, confused,
pensive at the braiding of the golden strand
or knotting of the net; shyly remembering
the night with it's wild dance...
Gauteng, the central province of the new South Africa takes its name from the gold mined in this region. But gold has been mined extensively in Southern Africa and not only in the modern mines in and around Johannesburg. An extensive network of mines existed in the southern parts of Zimbabwe and Zambia. Where has the gold removed from these mines gone to?
Zimbabwe had gold. It also had the Ancient Runes Mining Company. This company mined archaeology sites for the gold with a total disregard for the archaeological context or value of the gold. At Mapungubwe gold has been found around 1935. The first lot of these had to be retrieved by the police. The rest were excavated by archaeologists but the methodology left many gaps. Their context was not recorded so it is not known for sure in which area of the settlement these skeletons were buried. A kind of a glue covering the skeletons made them difficult to date accurately. An enriched C14 is now being done.
At Thulamela, a Venda word meaning place of birth, these wrongs were righted and a small bit of the puzzle were given a better fit. Small gold beads, golden wire and a potsherd with traces of molten gold were discovered by Sidney Miller in the ash heap during routine excavation. A calibrated C14 date of 1240 AD to 1630 AD was also obtained. A small sign of things to come.
Almost three years after starting on the site, a skeleton was discoved in Enclosure 13 by Sidney Miller. Realizing the possible importance of this skeleton in the interpretation of the site as a whole, he called in the Department of Anatomy from the University of Pretoria. Our department specializes in the excavation of skeletons, especially rescue excavations where time combined with maximal information retrieval is extremely important. Our team consists of Dr. Maryna Steyn, Coen Nienaber and myself, Marius Loots. On this excavation we also had the head of the department, Prof. JH Meiring along as well as Marko Hutten and Stephan Gaiger.
What made this projct even more important is the combination of archaeology, anthropology, cultural resource management and the local community. For the first time in the history of archaeology the local community were actively involved in a project to unearth the story of the past. Goldfields Mining Company played an important role in all of this with a very large sponsorship which made the whole effort possible.
The site of Thulamela is situated in the Pafuri area of the Kruger National Park in South Africa. This is in the north-eastern part of South Africa near its border with Zimbabwe and Mozambique. It is located next to the Levuvhu River which flows into the Limpopo River. The Limpopo forms the border between South Africa and Zimbabwe and flows into the Indian Ocean about 200km north of Maputo.
The site is at the edge of a plateau. The plateau borders the floodplain of the Levuvhu river. At this point one is about halfway to the summit. The large trees (note the one to the right in the foreground) is a boabab or Adansonia digitalis. The captain's enclosure is to the top left marked with an arrow. The royal living area is relatively in accessible from one side and one has to enter still further to the left and pass the general population to to reach the captain.
Sidney Miller found the skeleton a while back and only partially opened the grave. The walls on the site were not standing but were rebuild by Sidney. Most of the walls on sites in South Africa has completely fallen over. Although some other sites has been reconstructed, Thulamela is probably the first where the reconstruction were done with the original material exactly on the original site. As this site is in the Kruger National Park, the Parks Board would like to develop the tourist potential of the site. This has to be done if archaeology would like to pay its way. None of these walls were standing and it would be difficult to compete with a place like Great Zimbabwe. The biggest culprit with the destroying of walls are baboons. If a troop of thirty baboons pass over these walls looking for food they can easily destroy a layer of wall per month. No extra material were brought in. The rubble were moved sideways to open up the foundation of the walls which are almost always intact. This gave the exact position of the original walls. The key to the reconstruction was the fact that the sandstone of the outer layer were dressed. The rubble could then be sorted into the outer layer stone and infill. Using the dressed stone, the wall were rebuild until the material was finished and the filled up with the rest. It is important to remember that these are reconstructions and although the shape and hight of the walls are probubly correct, any patterns build into the original will have been lost.
The "floor" of enclosure 13 were packed with stone and this was revealed around the edges of the grave. In the area around the skeleton, no stones were found. On top of the skeleton a floor has been build. This has been removed by Sidney during the excavation of the grave. An entrance to the back leads to the captain's area.
We got the skeleton with a part of the skull visible as well as the right os coxae, femur and lower limb. During the first stage in excavating a skeleton nothing are removed until we have cleaned up completely around the whole of the skeleton. The edge to the top and bottom were left to try and discern any edges of the original grave. Unfortunately none were found. The body are in a tightly horizontally flexed position, lying north-south with the head north and facing east.
In the Venda people, the women greet the men by bowing slightly with the palms together and hands under the left temple, as she was found in the grave. This is called the losha which is a kind of greeting and sign of respect. Because of this, she was called Losha by some of the workers at the site and it became her name. The position of the arms and hands are apparent on this slide. Notice the bracelet and two golden beads.
In the photo:
1, 2 = Spots where we found concentrations of golden beads
3 = The golden bracelet
We also found a stone flake behind the vertebral column. This was not a formal stone tool and was probubly introduced with the infill.
No other gravegoods were found. She was a female, 43 to 50 years old an 1.73m tall. Compared to the life expectancy and average length of similar populations (like at Mapungubwe), she was already very old and quite tall. She was in excellent health. She had good, strong teeth and no signs of osteoporosis or osteophytes on the bones.
Note the almost perfect teeth. There were no caries present at all. There were a lot of calculus and the teeth were well worn but even with that, we could not find any caries. The anterior teeth had very prominent hypoplasia which is frequently seen in Iron Age communities. This is often caused by feeding stresses just after weaning.
The flattened gold wire were twisted around some sort of core to form a spiral. Three of these spirals were then again loosely twisted around each other. The bracelet was worn, probably at all times. The insides of the spirals were well- worn and very shine. This made if fragile and we found quite a few bits and pieces from the broken ends in the excavation. The core was probably made of grass.
On the first day we found about 15 beads. That almost doubled the number of beads found in ash-heaps at Thulamela up till then. At the end of the second day we had found the beads in the outer ring. They were stringed for safety. The inner string were found on the last day of excavations. A total of 291 beads were found. The beads are roughly 2mm in diameter. They were apparently made by dropping molten gold into water. This formed little droplets which were pierced by punching a hole th rough the middle with a sharp iron punch.
Gongs originate from Ghana in western Africa where they are apparently used as a kind of musical instrument. They can also be used as bells on a bull. In southern Africa they have been known to be a status symbol. A single gong was found at Great Zimbabwe. The one at Thulamela was found in Enclosure 13, the captain's area. This find is almost as important as the gold. The gongs are made from two triangular pieces of metal which are "braced" together at the edges. This technique was not used in southern Africa and shows that trade-links spanning the continent already existed at an very early stage. The site as a whole was first occupied by the middle of the 13th century. By the middle of the 15th century the site was densely populated and this continued until the middle of the 17th century. This as well as the building style, the gold and pottery link the site with Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe. The gongs extend this link even further into Western Africa.
A second grave was found in the hut floor in the captain's area. On top of the floor akind of a clay mound was build. This was done after the grave, visible in the foreground, were dug. It might have been some kind of funerary mound. The edges of the grave is clearly visible as a disturbed area in the clay floor.
The second grave has been excavated two months after the first, early in September. During that time parks board officials were guarding the site every night, sharing the dark with lions, leopard and hyena as company. Even worst for some of them was this guy, waiting to be disturbed. The guards are neccesary because the last time gold was found, at Mapungubwe, the police had to retrieve the objects from farmers who raided the site in search of gold. It was only afterwards that archaeologists were called in by the goverment.
Maybe you were wondering what we looked like. Maybe you didn't. If you were, this is the team.
From left to right: Stefan Geiger, Prof. JH Meiring (with hat), Marius Loots and Marko Hutten (in front), Koen Nienaber, Mariana Nienaber and Dr. Maryna Steyn.
(Sorry, but you have to load the image for this one.)
© Okt 1998 mloots@medic.up.ac.za
