IRON AGE COMMUNITIES OF THE SOUTHERN HIGHVELD

326pp. Deep blue faux leather boards with gilt letting. Very light general wear. The pictorial dust jacket is lightly edge-worn with a small 1cm section missing at the top left corner of the front cover. Numerous illustrations and photographs. 

Ruins of villages and towns built of stone on the interior plateau of South Africa first became known to the outside world from the reports of explorers in the early nineteenth century. Many of these settlements in what are now the Transvaal and Orange Free State had been destroyed or abandoned as a result of disastrous conflicts of the Difaqane period, from about 1820 onwards. Some were still occupied by Sotho-Tswana peoples while yet others were of such great antiquity that their builders were long forgotten.

The project described in this book represents the first systematic archaeological research on these settlements south of the Vaal River. The early sources of information, reviewed critically, proved to be a valuable starting point. The examination of aerial photographs covering the whole region revealed hundreds of sites which could be subdivided according to their settlement patterns. Seven excavated sites, selected to represent the major subdivisions, are described and illustrated in detail. Finally the archaeological evidence is drawn together and compared with a synthesis of the early historical material. Iron Age communities of the southern Highveld is a completely new and authoritative statement on the prehistory and early history of this region.

Source: Dust jacket inside flap