Andrew B. Smith

archaeology dept, beattie building room 3.01

phone: +27 21 650-2354

fax: +27 21 650-2352

email: andrew.smith AT uct.ac.za

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Web-publication of the transcription and translation of the travel journals of Robert Jacob Gordon (1743-1795).

 

My interests are in the origins and development of herding societies of Africa.  I have excavated in the Sahara and in Southern Africa, and have worked with Tuareg pastoralists in Mali, and Khoekhoen descendents in South Africa.  I have also worked with Ju/’hoansi Bushmen in Namibia, who offer examples of hunters in transition to becoming food producers, with interesting insights into the difficulties this entails in going from an essentially egalitarian society, to one where private ownership is accepted. I have done research in Ghana, Mali, Niger, Namibia and South Africa.

 

Prof Smith is an emeritus professor in the Dept. of Archaeology at UCT.  He holds a PhD from the Univ. of California, Berkeley (1974).  He taught in the USA and Ghana, before taking up the position at UCT in 1977.
 

Selected publications:

Smith, A.B. (2008) Pastoral origins at the Cape, South Africa: influences and arguments. Southern African Humanities 20 (1): 49-60.

 

Smith, A.B. (2006) Excavations at Kasteelberg and the Origins of the Khoekhoen in the Western Cape, South Africa. Oxford: BAR International Series 1537.

 

Smith, A.B. (2005) African Herders: Emergence of Pastoral Traditions. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press.

 

Balasse, M., Smith, A.B., Ambrose, S.H. & Leigh, S (2003) Determining birth seasonality by analyses of tooth enamel oxygen isotope ratios: the Late Stone Age site of Kasteelberg (South Africa). J. of Archaeological Science 30: 205-215.

 

Smith, A.B., Halkett, D., Hart, T. & Mutti, B. (2001) Spatial patterning, cultural identity and site integrity on open sites: evidence from Bloeddrift 23, a pre-colonial herder camp in the Richtersveld, Northern Province, South Africa.  South African Archaeological Bulletin 56:23-33.

Smith, A.B. & Webley, L. (2000) Women and men of the Khoekhoen of Southern Africa. In Hodgson, D. (ed) Rethinking Pastoralism: Gender, Culture and the Myth of the Patriarchal Pastoralist. London: James Currey, pp. 72-96.

Smith, A.B., Malherbe, C., Guenther, M. & Berens, P. (2000). The Bushmen of Southern Africa: A Foraging Society in Transition. Cape Town: David Philip.

Smith, A.B. (1998) Keeping people on the periphery: the ideology of social hierarchies between hunters and herders. J. of Anthropological Archaeology 17:201-215.

Smith, A.B. & Lee, R.B. (1997) Cho/ana: archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence for recent hunter-gatherer/pastoralist contact in Northern Bushmanland, Namibia. South African Archaeological Bulletin 52:52-58.

Smith, A.B. (1992) Pastoralism in Africa: Origins and Development Ecology. London:Hurst.