Chemical evidence of dairying by hunter-gatherers in Lesotho in the first millennium AD

Soon after analysing natural residues from historical pots, a workforce of experts led by the College of Bristol has uncovered new evidence of dairying by hunter-gatherers in the landlocked South African nation of Lesotho in the mid-late very first millennium Advert.

The research on natural residue investigation from South African hunter-gatherer pots is currently being published now in Mother nature Human Behaviour.
Extensive archaeological evidence reveals that Early Iron Age agricultural communities settled in the coastal regions of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa from all over Advert 400.

Though these farmers seem to have been in make contact with with nearby lowland hunter-gatherer groups, it was long assumed that they had tiny or no direct make contact with with hunter-gatherers already occupying the mountainous regions of Lesotho, as they did not settle the area till the nineteenth century owing to the unsuitability of the mountains for crop cultivation.

About the earlier a number of decades even so, remains of domestic animal bones have been uncovered in a number of web sites in the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains in Lesotho in hunter-gatherer contexts courting to the 1st and 2nd millennia Advert.

At one particular web site in certain – Likoaeng – domestic animal bones have been found in affiliation with an Early Iron Age potsherd and some fragments of iron. This discovery led to the suggestion that the hunter-gatherers occupying the web site have been adhering to a ‘hunters-with-sheep’ method of subsistence that included the keeping of compact quantities of livestock into what was or else a foraging economy and that they need to have obtained these animals and objects by on-going make contact with with agricultural groups centered on the coastline.

In the earlier five several years even so, a number of studies have sequenced DNA from supposed domestic animal bones from these highland web sites, and instead found them to belong to wild species. This led to the suggestion that the existence of domestic animals in the highlands, and consequently the stage of make contact with, had been overestimated, however the zooarchaeologists involved stand by their primary morphological evaluation of the bones.

Guide researcher, Helen Fewlass, now centered at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig) but who carried out the operate as component of her master’s project in the College of Bristol’s Office of Anthropology and Archaeology, said: “We used natural residue investigation to look into fat that turn into absorbed into the porous clay matrix of a pot for the duration of its use.

“We extracted and analysed lipid residues from pots from two hunter-gatherer web sites with domestic livestock remains in the highlands of Lesotho, Likoaeng and Sehonghong, courting to the mid-late very first millennium Advert and in comparison them to lipids extracted from pots from a the latest close by agricultural settlement, Mokatlapoli.

“This authorized us to check out the subsistence methods of the hunter-gatherers occupying these web sites to see if there was any evidence for their make contact with with farming groups.”

The workforce found that dairy residues have been current in approximately a third of the hunter-gatherer pots. They directly radiocarbon dated a dairy residue from Likoaeng to Advert 579-654 and a different from Sehonghong to Advert 885-990. The success ensure the existence of domestic animals at these web sites in the 1st millennium Advert.

The workforce also observed patterning in the secure carbon isotopic values of fatty acids in the residues, which suggest that unique techniques of animal husbandry have been practised by the 1st millennium hunter-gatherer groups in comparison to the the latest agricultural team occupying the identical area.

The secure carbon isotopic values of dairy residues from the agricultural web site evidently replicate the introduction of crops these types of as maize and sorghum into the area in the late nineteenth century and the foddering of domestic animals upon them.

As the hunter-gatherer groups need to have learnt animal husbandry approaches, the success aid the idea that hunter-gatherer groups in the highlands of Lesotho had on-going make contact with with farming communities in the lowlands, instead than just getting the animals by raids or long-length trade networks. Primarily based on the direct date of the dairy residue from Likoaeng, make contact with need to have been set up inside of a handful of centuries of the arrival of agricultural groups in the coastal regions of South Africa.

The success also have implications for the on-going debate about the molecular vs morphological evaluation of the faunal remains. The success of the natural residue investigation aid the osteoarchaeological evidence for the existence of domestic animals at Likoaeng and Sehonghong. On the other hand, as substantial quantities of milk can be produced from one particular domestic animal, the prevalence of dairy residues does not explain to us how quite a few domestic animals have been current.

Direct radiocarbon courting of domestic faunal remains in these contexts has been hampered by bad collagen preservation. The new system (published before this month in Mother nature) for direct courting of fat extracted from potsherds represents a new avenue for placing the arrival and existence of domestic animals in the place in a secure chronological context.

Helen Fewlass added: “The existence of dairy fat in pots from Likoaeng and Sehonghong in highland Lesotho reveals that hunter-gatherers in the mountains had adopted at minimum sporadic use of livestock from agricultural groups in South Africa not long immediately after their arrival in the 1st millennium Advert.”

Co-writer, Dr Emmanuelle Casanova, from the College of Bristol’s Natural Geochemistry Device – component of the University of Chemistry, added: “In addition to the identification of dairying methods we have been able apply a manufacturer-new courting system for pottery vessels to verify the antiquity of the dairy residues which correctly fits with the age of the hunter-gatherer groups.”

This research represents the very first investigation and direct radiocarbon courting of natural residues from pottery from south-eastern Africa. The significant stage of preservation found implies that the system has excellent prospective for further more applications in the area. This mountainous place of Lesotho has other hunter-gatherer web sites that contains pottery in contexts courting to the 1st and 2nd millennium Advert so there is prospective to extend this type of investigation to other web sites in the area to understand irrespective of whether this practise was relatively isolated or ubiquitous.

###