Simon Hall

archaeology dept, beattie building, room 3.22

phone: +27 21 650-2355

fax: +27 21 650-2352

email: Simon.Hall AT uct.ac.za

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courses lectured: The roots of black identity: the peopling of South Africa; Global interaction and the transformation of southern African society

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My research interests range across the archaeology of both hunter-gatherers and farmers in southern Africa, and as a result, I have several research themes. One examines interactions between hunter-gatherers and mixed farmers over the last 2000 years, when mixed farming was first introduced to southern Africa. Another, and my major current focus, is collaborative research on the origins of the Tswana town. We are interested in the political economy between the 17^th and early 19^th centuries when Tswana-speakers in North-West Province underwent a significant shift towards aggregated, semi urban settlement patterns. This period encourages a multi-source approach that combines material culture and ethnographic, oral and written evidence and the specific goals range from understanding changes in symbolic systems to specialist analyses of ceramic and metal technology and agricultural ecology. 

Dr Hall is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology at UCT.  His Masters thesis (University of the Witwatersrand) dealt with Tswana-speaking farmers in Limpopo Province and his doctorate (University of Stellenbosch), examined aspects of the Holocene hunter-gatherer sequence in the Eastern Cape.

Selected publications:

Hall, S. 2010. Farming communities of the second millennium: internal frontiers, identity, continuity and change. In, Hamilton, C., Nasson, B. & Mbenga, B. (eds.): 112-167. Cambridge History of South Africa. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

Parkington, J. & Hall, S. 2010. The appearance of food production in Southern Africa 1000 to 2000 years ago. In, Hamilton, C. Nasson, B. & Mbenga, B. (eds.): 63-111. Cambridge History of South Africa. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

Smith, J., Lee-Thorp, J., Hall, S., Prevec, S. & Späth, A. 2010. Pre-colonial herding strategies in the Shashe-Limpopo Basin, southern Africa, based on strontium isotope analysis of domestic fauna. Journal of African Archaeology 8(1):83-98.

Hattingh, S. & Hall, S. 2009. Shona ethnography and the archaeology of the K2 burials. Southern African Humanities 21: 299-326.

Boeyens, J. & Hall, S. 2009. Tlokwa oral Traditions and the interface between history and archaeology at Marothodi. South African Historical Journal. 61:3-27.

Hall, S., Anderson, M., Boeyens, J. & Coetzee, F. 2008. Towards an outline of the oral geography, historical identity and political economy of the late precolonial Tswana in the Rustenburg region. In, Esterhuysen, A., Swanepoel, N. & Bonner, P. (eds.). 500 years Rediscovered. Proceedings of the inaugural meeting of the 500 year conference: 55-86. Witwatersrand University Press: Johannesburg.

Hall, S. & Chirikure, S. 2008. Herders farmers and metallurgists of South Africa. In, Pearsall, D.M. (ed) Encyclopedia of Archaeology:66-71. Academic Press: London, New York.

Chirikure, S., Hall, S. & Maggs, T. 2008. Metals beyond frontiers: exploring the production, distribution and use of metals in the Free State grasslands, South Africa. In, Esterhuysen, A., Swanepoel, N. & Bonner, P. (eds.). 500 years Rediscovered. Proceedings of the inaugural meeting of the 500 year conference.87-102. Witwatersrand University Press: Johannesburg.

Miller, D. & Hall, S. 2008. Rooiberg revisited – the analysis of tin and copper smelting debris. Historical Metallurgy 42:1-16.

Chirikure, S., Hall, S. & Miller D. 2007. One hundred years on: What do we know about tin and bronze production in southern Africa? In La Niece, S., Hook, D. & Craddock, P. (eds.) Metals and Mines: Studies in Archaeometallurgy:112-122. British Museum: London.

Koursaris, A., Hall, S. & Grant, M.R. 2007. An archaeometallurgical study of iron artifacts from Mabotse Journal of Materials 59(5):22-25.

Hall, S. 2007. Tswana History in the Bankenveld. In Bonner, P., Esterhuysen, A. & Jenkins, T. (eds.) A Search for Origins: Science, History and South Africa’s ‘Cradle of Humankind’:162-179. Witwatersrand University Press: Johannesburg.

Smith, J., Lee-Thorp, J. & Hall, S. 2007. Climate change and agropastoralist settlement in the Shashe-Limpopo River Basin, southern Africa: AD 800 to 1700. South African Archaeological Bulletin, 62(186):115-125.

Hall, S., Miller, D., Anderson, M. & Boeyens, J. 2006. An exploratory study of copper and iron production at Marothodi, an early 19^th century Tswana town, Rustenburg District, South Africa. Journal of African Archaeology 4(1):3-35.

Hall, S. & Mazel, A. 2005. The private performance of events: colonial rock art from the Swartruggens KRONOS 31:124-151.

Hall, S. 2004. ‘South African pottery past and present’. In  A. Walter-Oliphant, Delius, P. & Meltzer, L. (eds) Democracy X: marking the present, re-presenting the past:13-21. UNISA Press: Pretoria.

Hall, S. 2000. Forager lithics and Early Moloko homesteads at Madikwe. Natal Museum Journal of Humanities. 12:33-50

Hall, S. 2000. Burial and sequence in the Later Stone Age of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. The South African Archaeological Bulletin 55:137-146.

Hall, S. and B. Smith, 2000. Empowering places: rock shelters and ritual control in farmer –forager interactions in the Northern Province, South Africa. South African Archaeological Society, Goodwin Series 8:30-46.

Hall, S. 1998. A consideration of gender relations in the Late Iron Age “Sotho” sequence of the Western Highveld, South Africa. In, S. Kent (ed.) Gender in African Prehistory, pp. 235-258. Walnut Creek, London, New Delhi: Altamira Press.

Hall, S. 1997. Material culture and gender correlations: The view from Mabotse in the late nineteenth century. In L. Wadley (ed.) Our Gendered Past: Archaeological Studies of Gender in Southern Africa. pp. 209-219. Witwatersrand University Press: Johannesburg.