Male-biased migration from East Africa introduced pastoralism into southern Africa.

Background: Hunter-gatherer lifestyles dominated the southern African landscape up to ~ 2000 years ago, when herding and farming groups started to arrive in the area. First, herding and livestock, likely of East African origin, appeared in southern Africa, preceding the arrival of the large-scale Bantu-speaking agro-pastoralist expansion that introduced West African-related genetic ancestry into the area. Present-day Khoekhoe-speaking Namaqua (or Nama in short) pastoralists show high proportions of East African admixture, linking the East African ancestry with Khoekhoe herders.

Mapping past human land use using archaeological data: A new classification for global land use synthesis and data harmonization.

In the 12,000 years preceding the Industrial Revolution, human activities led to significant changes in land cover, plant and animal distributions, surface hydrology, and biochemical cycles. Earth system models suggest that this anthropogenic land cover change influenced regional and global climate. However, the representation of past land use in earth system models is currently oversimplified.

A southern African archaeological database of organic containers and materials, 800 cal BC to cal AD 1500: Possible implications for the transition from foraging to livestock-keeping.

Although evidence of organic materials has consistently been reported in the archaeology of southern Africa little attention has been given to how this evidence, so slight in comparison to pottery and lithics, might be used to understand the transition from foraging to livestock-keeping in southern African Archaeology. We have compiled a geo-referenced, radiocarbon database of these organic, material culture remains, with particular reference to containers made of ostrich eggshell, wood, gourd, tortoise shell, twine, and leather over a 2300-year period to capture the periods before and after the appearance of livestock. We have mapped the organic materials for the period 800 cal BC to cal AD 1500 and explored the subsistence base of those who used them.

The archaeological evidence for the appearance of pastoralism and farming in southern Africa.

This paper is a response to the growing reference to archaeological evidence by linguists and geneticists interested in the spread of early farmers and pastoralists in southern Africa. It presents two databases. The first contains the archaeological evidence for pastoralism and farming in southern Africa, for the period 550 BC to AD 1050.

Modelling the spread of farming in the Bantu-speaking regions of Africa: an archaeology-based phylogeography.

We use archaeological data and spatial methods to reconstruct the dispersal of farming into areas of sub-Saharan Africa now occupied by Bantu language speakers, and introduce a new large-scale radiocarbon database and a new suite of spatial modelling techniques. We also introduce a method of estimating phylogeographic relationships from archaeologically-modelled dispersal maps, with results produced in a format that enables comparison with linguistic and genetic phylogenies. Several hypotheses are explored.