Archaeology

Toppieshoek might not yet be a familiar placename, nor is its unique heritage widely recognised, but this is about to change. There are two heritage sites on the property, and they are very different from one another: one is the critically important archaeological remains of Early Iron Age farming settlement, dating from 350 AD, while the other is the Leiden University Observatory’s old Southern Station that operated from 1953 to 1978.

Three Blue Plaques were unveiled on Toppieshoek on 9 March 2024 in a splendid celebration to mark the Toppieshoek Restoration Project, a collaborative venture between the Magaliesberg Association for Culture and Heritage (MACH) and Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), owner of  the 60ha property overlooking Hartbeespoort Dam. More than 120 people attended the event, including the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of TUT, Prof Tinyiko Maluleke who unveiled the Blue Plaque, Ms Kenetswe Mosenogi, the North West MEC for Arts, Culture and Recreation, Jessica Glendinning Policy Officer: Culture and Media of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, as well as numerous other dignitaries from the University and public life.

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Standing on the beach at Paternoster, looking inland with the waves breaking behind you, is the skyline dominated by Kasteelberg. It is only 4km away and was a convenient camping location for the early herders using the site to have access to the rich marine resources of the West Coast. And use them, they did: young seals, shellfish, etc. were not only a major part of their diet, but seal fat was used, mixed with red pigment (ochre) as body covering, much as the Himba of Namibia and the Maasai of Kenya do today. How do we know? Around the major site location, Kasteelbeg ‘B’, are over 140 grooves in the granite bedrock (see image below). We also have portable versions of these grooves, and every one found in the excavation is ochre-stained.

Granite bedrock grooves at KBB

Kasteelberg is a collection of 36 discrete sites, of which only six have been excavated. The kopje was occupied by Middle Stone Age hunters some 30,000 years ago, but the main occupation is much later, after 1800 years ago. It was intensively used, so much so that an enormous amount of shell and bone has led to the suggestion that it was a place herding people aggregated to after the rains when there was plenty of forage...

While not precisely an archaeological matter, I thought that a short note on a metal item found in Haenertsburg (Limpopo) a few years back might both interest readers and encourage feedback. A dirt track was graded to provide access to a plot being developed just outside Haenertsburg, one of the original gold mining centres of the ZAR. My sister lives next door and as I was visiting at the time, I went across to see what had been exposed.

I have known for some time that historical debris is present in the area which is downslope of the original hospital, said to date to the early years of the twentieth century. This debris consists in the main of undecorated sherds of local clay vessels, but occasionally items of a European origin are exposed during farming operations and in mole-rat mounds. This “exotic” element includes sherds of bone china, glass fragments and the occasional bakelite item. We have even come across a small but broken Bakelite toy car of 1940s vintage that we gave to the custodian of the local village museum.

As expected the grader had churned up many clay sherds, but there was one item that caught my eye - a flat and weathered metal disc. Careful cleaning revealed hand stamped text on the two sides. One side reads NATIVE DOG 029004, while the other more weathered reads TRANSVAAL 1903 (see main image). Its presence seems to confirm my earlier assumption that the debris is not simply an old village garbage dump...

Historians who specialise in researching early history have learnt to use a wide range of materials from the past as source materials. What are these materials? Where can we find them? Who made them? When? Why? What are the problems with using them? The essays in 'Archives of Times Past: Conversations about South Africa’s Deep History' explore particular sources of evidence on southern Africa’s time before the colonial era. Edited by Cynthia Kros, John Wright, Mbongiseni Buthelezi and Helen Ludlow, these essays are by well-known historians, archaeologists and researchers engaging these questions from a range of perspectives and in illuminating ways. Written from personal experience, they capture how these specialists encountered their archives of knowledge beyond the textbook.

The article below is based on Mandy Esterhuysen’s chapter ‘Digging Historic Cave: An Archaeological and Historical Quest’ in Archives of Times Past: Conversations about South Africa’s Deep History, edited by Cynthia Kros, John Wright, Mbongiseni Buthelezi and Helen Ludlow (Wits University Press, 2022): 199-210. Published by Wits University Press, January 2022. Click here for full details.

It was a story that roused archaeology student Amanda Esterhuysen’s interest. In 1854, in the course of increasing hostilities between Boer settlers from the Cape trying to occupy what would become the Transvaal and its African inhabitants, members of the Kekana section of the Ndebele people were besieged by forces led by Marthinus Pretorius. The commandos blocked all the entrances to a cave in which the Kekana had taken refuge and prevented anybody from escaping. Pretorius later announced...

The remains of the largest fortification built by the British during the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) can still to be seen today on Strubenkop in Lynnwood, Pretoria. The site today is a nature reserve managed by the City of Tshwane but apart from the remains of the fort nothing much is left on the hill. It is therefore believed that the reserve was proclaimed to preserve what was left of the building.

The history of the Anglo-Boer War in Pretoria has been quite well documented. It was a war between the two Boer Republics (the Transvaal or Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek and the Orange Free State) and Great Britain. After the British captured Pretoria on 5 June 1900, they erected fortified posts at strategic position all over South-Africa. The main aim was to protect railway lines and other routes as well as to limit the movement of the Boer commandos. The railway lines were of particular importance as illustrated by the fact that the Boers also guarded them when they were still in control thereof.

Repairing a bridge during the South African War

By January 1901, many blockhouses (small fortifications) had been erected. These were mainly corrugated iron structures (called Rice pattern blockhouses) as these were pre-fabricated and could be built...

It is unknown when exactly human beings first arrived in the Magaliesberg, but stone tools from the area date back hundreds of thousands of years. There are, however, three important archaeological sites in the Magaliesberg where radio-carbon dating has revealed fascinating evidence of the way early occupants lived at least 6 000 years ago. These sites are Kruger Cave, west of Olifantspoort (excavated by Prof Revil Mason - see main image), and Jubilee Shelter and Cave James, east of Silkaatsnek (excavated by Prof Lyn Wadley). All of these sites are extremely vulnerable to damage, and for this reason their exact locations are not disclosed.

The research of Professors Mason and Wadley, and other archaeologists, has shed significant light on the way of life of these people who lived in the Magaliesberg region thousands of years ago. They grew no crops and kept no livestock. They relied entirely on hunting of wild animals and gathering of edible parts of wild plants for their food. These Magaliesberg hunter-gatherers have often been referred to as "San", "Bushmen" or "Khoisan",  but for various reasons, all of these terms are problematic. The reality is that we simply do not know what these people called themselves, or what they were called by other people who moved into the area later on. The term "hunter-gatherers" works well as a description which is closely tied to the way that they lived.
 
The excavation of Kruger Cave by Prof Mason yielded large numbers of small, finely worked stone...

Revil John Mason died on 23 August 2020 at the age of 91 years, scarcely a year after receiving the Golden Eagle award on Gaudy Day at St John’s College in 2019. Revil was born on 10 February 1929 and grew up in Saxonwold. He entered St John’s Prep in 1936. After matriculating in 1946, Revil studied at the University of Witwatersrand and obtained a B Com. degree, garnering several prizes, including the Aitken medal for the best graduate in Commerce, together with the Chamber of Industries medal and the Dean’s award.

St John's College (The Heritage Portal)

Wits Great Hall (The Heritage Portal)

However, after attending a lecture by Prof Dart he became fascinated by archaeology and proceeded to study Archaeology at the University of Cape Town where he again excelled in his studies and obtained a doctorate at the age of 28 years old. At the young age of 24 years he successfully excavated Makapansgat, discerning three layers of the Stone Age, a new discovery in South African Archaeology. During the 1950s he often visited St John’s, talking to the boys about new archaeological...

On the southern bank of Hartbeespoort Dam lies the archaeological site of one of the oldest farming and herding settlements in South Africa. It comprised several small interlinked homesteads and was first excavated by the pioneering Wits University archaeologist Revil Mason in the 1970s.

The inhabitants of this settlement at Broederstroom were the first Iron Age people in the area, and another leading archaeologist at Wits University, Tom Huffman, later used styles and patterns on potsherds from the site to trace their origins via the KwaZulu-Natal east coast through East Africa and back to the birthplace of the Bantu languages east of Nigeria. The site reveals that people were practicing agriculture, farming livestock, making pottery and smelting iron in South Africa 1,600 years ago. They brought with them the linguistic roots of the Bantu languages now spoken by 80 per cent of South Africans, and introduced methods of farming and animal husbandry that gave them considerable advantages over the Stone Age nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life that had, until then, existed in the region.

Farming and animal husbandry

The people of Broederstroom tilled the land and stored their produce in sealed underground pits lined with cattle dung. Methane gas from the dung lining of the pit controlled insect infestations, and grain stored in this way could last for several seasons. For daily use, grain was also kept in wicker storage bins raised on stones to keep out the damp.

Later Stone Age artifacts were found at the site, and it...

I would like to discuss a topic very close to my heart. One which my dad has been interested in for some time and researched extensively. That is the stone circles found in Mpumalanga. Most of the mountains and hills of Mpumalanga have stone circles on them and extensive road networks joining them to one another. This has long been thought of as just homes of the local peoples and their cattle kraals. They were therefore dismissed as being of any real value or importance archaeologically. However, it has since been proven by means of extensive investigation and discovery of artefacts, rock art and satellite and aerial imagery, that these people, the Bokoni or Koni people were much more advanced.

Forgotten World, the epic study by Delius, Maggs and Schoeman

They were farmers, forgers of weapons and tools, miners and traders. The smelting of iron and copper and forging of weapons and tools from iron ore and mixing this with charcoal and fluxes to get steel takes a very specialized skillset, even some form of chemistry to get the mixture right for the steel to be strong enough to be of use. This later developed into a specialty performed by only specific people and the skill was then passed down within those families. The chief of the village prized the metal-workers as the skill allowed...

In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie highlights the remarkable work of archaeologist Revil Mason. The piece was originally published on the City of Joburg's website on 19 November 2009. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

We might not know about the historical significance of Melville Koppies and other areas of Joburg if not for the meticulous work done by archaeologist Revil Mason.
 
Now retired, Mason is credited with uncovering the secrets of iron smelting at the koppies, one of the last indigenous, protected green lungs in the city.
 
Mason went on to find 14 more prehistoric iron furnaces in the suburbs of Northcliff, Lonehill, Panorama and Bruma. In the Klipriviersberg Nature Reserve in southern Joburg he found 110 prehistoric Sotho/Tswana villages, occupied from 1500 to 1800.

Northcliff Hill (The Heritage Portal)

Lonehill Koppie (The Heritage Portal)

His excavations led to the koppies being proclaimed a national monument, now a heritage site, in 1963.
 
Mason, former professor of research in the Wits department of archaeology, uncovered an Iron Age furnace on the koppies, dating to around 1600AD.
 
"In 1948 I found Stone Age artefacts on Melville Koppies...