Books by Annie R Antonites
This book is for the archaeologist, conservator, museum professional or student and covers the pr... more This book is for the archaeologist, conservator, museum professional or student and covers the preservation of archaeological bone and ivory from a South African context. Preservation of bone tools and elephant ivory from the Iron Age sites of K2 and Mapungubwe in South Africa presents a case-study on a guide to best practice in archaeological conservation.
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Papers by Annie R Antonites
South African Archaeological Bulletin, 2024
We present the results of a macro-botanical analysis of carbonised seeds from Schroda, considered... more We present the results of a macro-botanical analysis of carbonised seeds from Schroda, considered the earliest Limpopo Valley settlement of socio-economic and political prominence in the Mapungubwe sequence.
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Koedoe, Mar 29, 2024
This article presents a broad overview of excavated animal taxa and methods of procurement at the... more This article presents a broad overview of excavated animal taxa and methods of procurement at the Middle Iron Age site of Schroda (AD 900–1100), located in the Mapungubwe National Park. Here, a diverse animal resource base was exploited through various strategies – some of which drew on individual participation, while others relied on group effort and resource pooling. Cattle, sheep and goat herds provided a reliable supply of meat, milk and skins throughout the year, while a range of wild mammals, birds, reptiles and fish were also hunted, trapped and collected. Although procurement strategies and animals targeted generally remained unchanged for about 200 years, there is a small shift in the proportion of livestock relative to other animals and a related increase in the exploitation of wild animals. Reliance on a broad spectrum of subsistence strategies is often done as a risk management strategy in areas with unpredictable environmental conditions. Erratic rainfall patterns, evident at the end of the first millennium in the middle Limpopo Valley, would have necessitated such an approach. In addition, the updated taxonomic list for Schroda provides a deep-time record of animal presence and expands the former distribution ranges for some taxa in the Mapungubwe National Park area.
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The South African Department of Arts and Culture to S.U and a University of Pretoria Research and... more The South African Department of Arts and Culture to S.U and a University of Pretoria Research and Development Grant funded A.A.’s excavations at MNR 74.
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African Archaeological Review, 2020
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Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 2018
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African Archaeological Review, 2016
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Schroda, a Zhizo/Leokwe settlement in the Limpopo Valley, is well-known among archaeologists who ... more Schroda, a Zhizo/Leokwe settlement in the Limpopo Valley, is well-known among archaeologists who study the rise of complex societies in southern Africa. The Limpopo Valley is of particular importance, as it is here that class distinction emerges and political centralization culminates in the formation of the first southern African state – Mapungubwe – in the thirteenth century AD. This project focuses on those communities who settled in the valley three hundred years earlier, during the Zhizo and early K2/Leokwe phases. Excavated from 1975–1982, Schroda has one of the largest archaeological assemblages in the region. Previous research placed the site at the center of early East African coastal trade networks with the southern African interior, elevating it to economic and socio-political dominance in the region during the tenth century AD. At around AD 1000, Schroda’s influence declines due to a shift in regional socio-political dynamics linked to the establishment of a new political center at K2. This dissertation presents an investigation into the continuities and changes in the daily lives of the people at Schroda, following the establishment of K2. More specifically, it explores how these continuities and changes played out in their daily activities related to food provisioning. Given the social nature of all aspects of food provisioning this study moves beyond the purely economic concerns of food and consider the social undertones evident in the physical remains of the activities they once shaped. The archaeological assemblages from Schroda, and that of the contemporary but smaller settlement Pont Drift, underwent extensive re-assessment as part of this project. The main research focus was on ceramics and animal bones, but I also included the available evidence for botanical remains and features associated with food processing and storage. This approach differs from previous Limpopo Valley subsistence studies in that it incorporates both multiple classes of materials and considers all stages of food provisioning. This more holistic view thus not only considers animal bones, but also the containers in which they were cooked and served. It looks at the resources and objects used to kill animals and process plants and where they were prepared, consumed and discarded. This project synthesizes all of the available information and presents an extensive overview of the major food-related activities at Schroda and Pont Drift.
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African Archaeological Review, 2016
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Quaternary International, 2018
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Penge is an Early Iron Age farming settlement in the Sekhukhuneland region of Limpopo Province. E... more Penge is an Early Iron Age farming settlement in the Sekhukhuneland region of Limpopo Province. Excavations were conducted in 2005 as part of a mitigation process for the expansion of the Penge town waterworks. Ceramic analysis suggests that the site is part of the Doornkop facies of northeastern South Africa. Radiocarbon results place occupation at between the seventh and ninth centuries AD. The faunal assemblage indicates the exploitation of domesticates and game, and the utilization of animal-based raw materials such as worked bone and shell. The data presented here contribute to the chronological, ceramic and subsistence database on early farming communities in the South African interior. KEY WORDS: Agropastoralists, ceramics, Doornkop, early farmers, Early Iron Age, fauna. The Penge Early Iron Age (EIA) settlement is located on the southern bank of the Olifants River (S24 ° 22 ′ 10.56 ″ E30 ° 17 ′ 57.48″) in the Steelpoort region of the Limpopo Province (Fig. 1). The site, asso...
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Penge is an Early Iron Age farming settlement in the Sekhukhuneland region of Limpopo Province. E... more Penge is an Early Iron Age farming settlement in the Sekhukhuneland region of Limpopo Province. Excavations were conducted in 2005 as part of a mitigation process for the expansion of the Penge town waterworks. Ceramic analysis suggests that the site is part of the Doornkop facies of northeastern South Africa. Radiocarbon results place occupation at between the seventh and ninth centuries AD. The faunal assemblage indicates the exploitation of domesticates and game, and the utilization of animal-based raw materials such as worked bone and shell. The data presented here contribute to the chronological, ceramic and subsistence database on early farming communities in the South African interior.
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Handbook of Research on Advocacy, Promotion, and Public Programming for Memory Institutions, 2019
The Voortrekker Monument has been a central memory institution for Afrikaners since its conceptio... more The Voortrekker Monument has been a central memory institution for Afrikaners since its conception in the 1930s. Built to commemorate 19th century white settlers moving into the interior, the Monument has for many years been appropriated by different groups for various purposes, including as an Afrikaner Nationalist symbol. Since the early 1990s, the Monument has made a concerted effort to change established perceptions and stigmas. The Monument's registration as a Section 21 Non-Profit Company in 1993 and declaration as National Heritage Site in 2011 were accompanied by a shift in focus from a political character to one where its aesthetic architectural heritage and tourism values are celebrated. These changes in character enabled and drove the expansion of the Voortrekker Monument heritage site as a memory institution. This chapter discusses the continued success of the Monument post-1994 as a national memory institution through the diversification of its visitors and programmes.
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Southern African Humanities, 2018
Schroda, a Zhizo/Leokwe settlement in the Limpopo Valley, is well known among archaeologists who ... more Schroda, a Zhizo/Leokwe settlement in the Limpopo Valley, is well known among archaeologists who study the rise of complex societies in southern Africa. Previous research placed the site at the centre of early East Coast trade networks with the southern African interior, elevating it to economic and socio-political prominence in the region during the AD 900s. By AD 1000, Schroda’s influence had declined due to a shift in regional socio-political dynamics linked to the establishment of K2. These regional developments coincided with a change from the Zhizo to Leokwe ceramic styles, which has been used to establish a multicomponent occupation at Schroda. However, the identification of different depositional horizons was limited to one of six excavated areas at the site. Through an integrated analysis of ceramic style traits, glass bead sequences and original stratigraphic descriptions, this study presents a revised chronology for the five largest excavated areas at Schroda. The updated chronologies place the excavated material within its correct historical context and enable phase-specific comparisons of all material culture from Schroda. Five new radiocarbon dates inform on the timing of the Zhizo/Leokwe transition and the abandonment of the site.
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Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences
The identification to species of completely worked bone tools is impossible using standard skelet... more The identification to species of completely worked bone tools is impossible using standard skeletal morphological markers. Worked bone studies therefore have focused on questions about manufacture and use, rather than on issues of raw material selection strategies. Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) is a technique that uses unique collagen bio-markers to fingerprint and identify species of origin from small amounts of bone or ivory. We present the first ZooMS analysis of bone arrowheads from southern Africa. Our findings show that a narrower selection of species was selected for tool manufacture than for food, while, at some sites, certain antelope species were selected for tools that are not present in the unmodified faunal remains. We examine what this selectivity might suggest about mechanical suitability and symbolic associations of the species chosen to make tools. We conclude that mechanical suitability was probably of primary concern and that probable symbolic connotations that were attached to certain species did not translate to the technological sphere to the same extent that they did in other parts of the world.
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Antonites, A.R., Douglass, K.G. & Linseele, V. African Archaeozoology Today: Multi-Analytical App... more Antonites, A.R., Douglass, K.G. & Linseele, V. African Archaeozoology Today: Multi-Analytical Approaches to Human-Animal Interactions in the African Past. Quaternary International Special Volume in African Archaeozoology. Quaternary International 471A: 1-5.
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This paper presents the first recognised evidence of bone hoes in South Africa. Two bovine scapul... more This paper presents the first recognised evidence of bone hoes in South Africa. Two bovine scapulae and a portion of a long bone show use-trace evidence that supports our interpretation as ground-working implements. The scapulae were probably hafted onto wooden handles using a combination of plant fibres and sinew, whereas the tool made from the long bone appears not to have been hafted. Bone hoes represent a short-lived technological innovation, although the reasons to account for this remain speculative. The recognition of these agricultural implements poses interesting questions about the extent and variety of bone working among Iron Age agriculturalists in the Limpopo Valley during the 10th e 13th centuries AD, and potentially also about the nature of women's work in these communities.
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The impact of resource exploitation by ancient human communities on Madagascar's environment is a... more The impact of resource exploitation by ancient human communities on Madagascar's environment is an area of intense debate. A fundamental question in the archaeology of Madagascar is the extent to which arrival of settlers, introduction of non-native plants and animals, and subsequent human exploitation of island biota, which catalyzed declines in biodiversity and significantly degraded environmental conditions. Fine-grained datasets, including zooarchaeological, archaeobotanical and other ecological evidence , are needed to assess the relationship between human resource exploitation and environmental change. On Madagascar, the resolution of zooarchaeological datasets is often reduced by poor preservation of faunal remains, making precise taxonomic identifications difficult, and few projects to-date have comprehensively assessed zooarchaeological data. Here, we present zooarchaeological data from three coastal villages in the Velondriake Marine Protected Area in southwest Madagascar, where human occupation spans from ca. 1400 BP to the present. Faunal remains from the Late Holocene sites of Ant-saragnagnangy and Antsaragnasoa were identified using morphological analysis of remains, and a PCR-based bulk bone metabarcoding approach was applied at Andamotibe to molecularly identify fish and other vertebrates in a faunal assemblage that was particularly fragmented. Results were interpreted and contextualized using modern data on local fish diversity, climate and anthropogenic impacts on marine and estuarine habitats, as well as modern fishing practices (including preferred fishing grounds, tackle, taxonomic representation and volume of catch). Our use of multiple analytical and interpretative approaches has provided the most highly resolved view to date of past human subsistence in coastal southwest Madagascar. We contend that future research into human-environment dynamics on Madagascar should make use of diverse analytical methods, in order to more comprehensively evaluate past interactions between human communities and the native biota. Furthermore, we encourage an historical ecological approach, so that long-term perspectives on changing human-environment dynamics may be used to contextualize modern trends.
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African Archaeological Review, 2016
Given the current theoretical and methodological trends in archaeozoology worldwide, coupled with... more Given the current theoretical and methodological trends in archaeozoology worldwide, coupled with the active study of past human-animal interactions in the South African region, we organised a session at the 2015 “Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists” (ASAPA) conference in Harare, Zimbabwe, entitled “New directions in the archaeozoology of the last 2,000 years.” The aim of the session was twofold: first, to consider the contributions that southern African faunal studies can make to broader archaeological questions, and second, to highlight the field’s multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary potential to provide complementary research directions to “traditional” methodologies. Only case studies related to South African archaeofauna were presented at the conference, and these served as a starting point for the eventual compilation of this special issue of African Archaeological Review.
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Mapungubwe (AD 1220–1290) is generally regarded as the first urban centre in southern Africa, fun... more Mapungubwe (AD 1220–1290) is generally regarded as the first urban centre in southern Africa, functioning as the seat of power for an extensive but short-lived polity. More than 80 years of excavations here, and at its nearby predecessor K2 (c. AD 1000– 1220), resulted in a substantial assemblage of material remains from elite and commoner contexts. This assemblage includes a large collection of worked bone objects, such as needles, awls, tubes and objects of personal adornment. Of particular interest are the bone arrow-heads and link-shafts, of which a significant number of specimens were found complete and intact. Such quantities of well-preserved worked bone objects are unique in the archaeological record of the region. The worked bone assemblages from these two sites provide a rare opportunity to study multiple components of the production process as well as the use context of bone objects. In this paper, we characterise the K2 and Mapungubwe worked bone industries through various morphological, technological, use-trace and contextual approaches and discuss the significance of these aspects in terms of raw material selection and manufacture and archaeological use context. In particular, this study shows the complexity of these worked bone industries over time.
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Books by Annie R Antonites
Papers by Annie R Antonites
Excavated from 1975–1982, Schroda has one of the largest archaeological assemblages in the region. Previous research placed the site at the center of early East African coastal trade networks with the southern African interior, elevating it to economic and socio-political dominance in the region during the tenth century AD. At around AD 1000, Schroda’s influence declines due to a shift in regional socio-political dynamics linked to the establishment of a new political center at K2. This dissertation presents an investigation into the continuities and changes in the daily lives of the people at Schroda, following the establishment of K2. More specifically, it explores how these continuities and changes played out in their daily activities related to food provisioning. Given the social nature of all aspects of food provisioning this study moves beyond the purely economic concerns of food and consider the social undertones evident in the physical remains of the activities they once shaped.
The archaeological assemblages from Schroda, and that of the contemporary but smaller settlement Pont Drift, underwent extensive re-assessment as part of this project. The main research focus was on ceramics and animal bones, but I also included the available evidence for botanical remains and features associated with food processing and storage. This approach differs from previous Limpopo Valley subsistence studies in that it incorporates both multiple classes of materials and considers all stages of food provisioning. This more holistic view thus not only considers animal bones, but also the containers in which they were cooked and served. It looks at the resources and objects used to kill animals and process plants and where they were prepared, consumed and discarded. This project synthesizes all of the available information and presents an extensive overview of the major food-related activities at Schroda and Pont Drift.