Iron Age sites in northern Botswana's Okavango Delta 3: Lotshitshi, a Later Stone Age/Bambata/Recent site on the Delta margin. Issue 1 (2nd January 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wilmsen, Edwin N.; Denbow, James
• Is Part Of: Azania. Volume 58:Issue 1(2023)
• Page Start: 104
• Page End: 113
• Publication Date: 2023-01-02
• Subjects: Botswana -- Later Stone Age -- Bambata pottery -- cattle -- optical petrography -- Toteng -- Chobe-Zambezi; Archaeology -- Africa, Eastern -- Periodicals; Archaeology -- Africa -- Periodicals; Africa, Eastern -- History -- Periodicals; Africa -- History -- To 1498 -- Periodicals; Africa, Eastern -- Antiquities -- Periodicals; Africa -- Antiquities -- Periodicals; 960
• DOI: 10.1080/0067270X.2023.2184660
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0067-270X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Lotshitshi is a small site on the edge of the Thamalakane River floodplain on the southern margin of the Okavango Delta, Botswana. A component with Later Stone Age lithic artefacts radiocarbon-dated to the second/third millennia BC is overlain by a component with the same kind of stone tools, but with the addition of Bambata pottery and domestic cattle radiocarbon-dated to the earlier decades of the first century AD. A component with Recent pottery is at the top of this sequence. Although modest in size and content, Lotshitshi adds valuable details to our knowledge of Bambata pottery-making peoples with cattle and provides additional evidence for the movement of peoples during this time from the Chobe-Zambezi confluence region to western Botswana, thus supplementing efforts to understand Early Iron Age population dynamics in southern Africa as a whole.