IKOSA Indigenous Historical Reconstruction Series
VOLUME ONE
THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL LANDSCAPE OF THE CENTRAL HIGHVELD AND VAAL RIVER
- An Evidentiary Foundation for the Reconstruction of Early Sotho-Tswana Civilisation
Published by: Indigenous Kingdoms of Southern Africa NPC (IKOSA)
Research Edition, Volume One
FOREWORD
The Indigenous Kingdoms of Southern Africa (IKOSA) presents this volume as the first part of a broader programme to reconstruct the indigenous history of southern Africa from the evidence preserved in its landscapes, archaeological sites, oral traditions, languages, genealogies and historical memory.
This volume is deliberately different from a conventional historical narrative.
It does not seek to tell the complete history of the Sotho-Tswana peoples in a single book. Nor does it seek to replace one authoritative historical narrative with another before the evidence has been sufficiently assembled and tested.
Its principal purpose is to gather, organise and interrogate the evidence upon which subsequent volumes can be constructed.
The central proposition of this research programme is that the history of southern Africa cannot adequately be reconstructed by relying upon any single category of evidence.
Archaeology provides material evidence of settlement, technology, economy and chronology.
Oral tradition preserves genealogies, political relationships, territorial memory and the identities of ancestral houses.
Praise poetry preserves names, places, events and relationships that may not appear in written records.
Linguistics preserves evidence of relationships between communities and the historical development of language.
Historical geography preserves the relationship between people and the landscapes they occupied.
Each source has limitations. Each also preserves information unavailable from the others.
The task of indigenous historiography is therefore not to choose between archaeology and oral history. It is to determine how these bodies of evidence can be placed into dialogue without allowing one to automatically invalidate the other.
This volume begins that process.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The central Highveld and Vaal River region contains one of the most significant archaeological landscapes for understanding the development of southern African farming societies.
The archaeological record includes Stone Age occupations, early farming communities, iron-working sites, stone-walled settlements, agricultural landscapes and extensive settlement clusters extending across present-day Gauteng, the Free State and neighbouring regions.
One of the most important documentary sources examined in this volume is R.J. Mason’s 2002 report, Moment in the Past of Thaba ya Batswana
Mason identified more than one hundred Iron Age stone-walled sites on the Klipriviersberg and recorded archaeological evidence including pottery, cattle and sheep/goat remains, evidence of sorghum or millet, hut plaster, bead manufacture, leather working and earlier Stone Age artefacts.
Mason further stated that only approximately two percent of the Klipriviersberg sites had been investigated, concluding that a much larger historical story remained to be uncovered.
This observation is fundamental to the IKOSA research programme.
The archaeological record is not exhausted.
The historical landscape has not been fully excavated.
Consequently, conclusions concerning population continuity, political identity, lineage and settlement formation must remain open to further investigation.
At the same time, the existing archaeological record already challenges simplified historical narratives.
Mason’s report explicitly connects the archaeological sequence of Thaba ya Batswana with Broederstroom, dated by him to approximately AD 300 to 600, and describes Broederstroom as representing a local origin for a cluster of ancestral traditions associated with later Hurutse-Kgatla, Rolong and Kwena communities.
This does not prove that the inhabitants of AD 300 were directly identical to any modern Sotho-Tswana community.
It does, however, establish a legitimate archaeological question concerning the relationship between successive populations and settlement traditions occupying the same broad landscape.
That question is central to this volume.
CHAPTER ONE
THE PURPOSE OF VOLUME ONE
1.1 Reconstructing Rather Than Repeating History
Southern African history has frequently been presented as though its principal task were to identify the movements of tribes across a largely undifferentiated landscape.
The resulting narrative often takes the form of migration.
One population is said to have arrived.
Another is said to have displaced it.
A third is then said to have migrated into the same region.
Such narratives may describe some historical events accurately, but they are insufficient as a general explanation of indigenous settlement development.
They also risk overlooking another possibility:
continuity through expansion.
The Basotho historical institution known as Ho Tswa Motse provides an important conceptual starting point.
The expression describes the establishment of a new settlement by members of a parent community. Young men of a generation, often with their families and followers, could establish another settlement under hereditary leadership while retaining genealogical, political and cultural relationships with the parent community.
From this perspective, a new settlement did not necessarily represent the arrival of an unrelated population.
It could represent the reproduction of an existing society in a new location.
This distinction is fundamental.
A population can expand without abandoning its civilisation.
A settlement can become a daughter settlement without the parent settlement disappearing.
A political community can branch without the original community being replaced.
The archaeological consequences of such a system require careful examination.
1.2 The Central Research Problem
This volume therefore begins with a fundamental question:
How should the archaeological landscape of the central Highveld and Vaal River be interpreted when archaeological evidence of long-term occupation is considered alongside indigenous traditions concerning genealogy, settlement foundation and political expansion?
A second question follows:
To what extent have colonial and modern historical classifications obscured the identities of the specific communities associated with individual landscapes?
And a third:
Can apparently separate archaeological settlements be understood as components of a connected indigenous settlement system rather than as isolated populations or successive migrant groups?
These questions cannot be answered through speculation.
They require evidence.
Volume One therefore begins with the evidence.
CHAPTER TWO
THE EVIDENTIARY PRINCIPLE
IKOSA adopts a simple rule for this research programme:
> The interpretation must never be allowed to become stronger than the evidence upon which it rests.
This principle requires every proposition to be classified according to its evidentiary status.
2.1 Established Archaeological Evidence
An archaeological date, excavation result, material finding or documented settlement characteristic belongs in this category when it is directly supported by archaeological investigation.
Examples include:
- radiocarbon dates
- stratigraphic sequences,
- excavated structures,
- pottery assemblages,
- faunal remains,
- metallurgical evidence,
- settlement architecture,
- documented occupation layers.
2.2 Indigenous Historical Evidence
This includes:
- oral genealogies,
- praise poetry,
- clan traditions,
- hereditary histories,
- traditional place names,
- accounts of settlement foundation,
- remembered relationships between ruling houses.
Such evidence should not automatically be treated as archaeological dating.
Its value may instead lie in identifying people, places, relationships and political events.
2.3 Historical Synthesis
The third category consists of interpretations generated by comparing the first two.
This is where IKOSA will propose historical models.
These models must remain distinguishable from directly established archaeological facts.
This distinction is especially important in the case of Napo, Motebang, Disema, Molapo, Dikoteng, Tebang and Thaba Tshotsho.
CHAPTER THREE
THE DEEP ARCHAEOLOGICAL LANDSCAPE
3.1 Melville Koppies
Melville Koppies provides an important starting point because the archaeological record extends far beyond the period normally associated with written African history.
Mason’s excavations revealed Stone Age material beneath later occupation layers. Accounts of his work describe evidence extending to approximately 500,000 years ago, including an early Stone Age occupation, later Middle and Late Stone Age material and Iron Age remains. ([The Heritage Portal][1])
The archaeological significance of Melville Koppies is therefore not restricted to the Iron Age.
It represents a long-lived human landscape.
Mason’s excavations at the Iron Age furnace also produced deeper Stone Age material. The surviving archaeological record includes an Iron Age smelting furnace, Stone Age tools and traces of stone-walled cattle settlements. ([SciELO][2])
The current heritage documentation describes Early Stone Age occupation reaching approximately 500,000 years ago and later Iron Age occupation within the same landscape. ([Melville Koppies][3])
This raises an important question for future IKOSA research.
What relationship, if any, existed between successive populations occupying this landscape?
At present, the archaeological evidence does not permit IKOSA to answer that question conclusively.
Nor should it.
The appropriate scholarly response is to identify the question and propose the research required to investigate it.
3.2 The Problem of Biological Continuity
The existence of long-term occupation does not automatically demonstrate biological continuity.
A landscape may be repeatedly occupied by unrelated populations because it possesses desirable environmental characteristics.
Melville Koppies offers water, grazing, iron-bearing geological formations, defensive elevations and access to surrounding resources.
These factors alone could explain repeated occupation.
Nevertheless, repeated occupation can also preserve cultural knowledge.
Communities may return to landscapes because earlier inhabitants established pathways, agricultural systems, resource exploitation patterns or places of cultural significance.
The distinction between these possibilities requires further investigation.
IKOSA therefore proposes that future research examine three forms of continuity separately:
Environmental continuity
The landscape remained attractive to successive populations.
Cultural continuity
Technologies, settlement practices or material traditions demonstrate relationships between successive occupations.
Biological continuity
Genetic evidence demonstrates some degree of population continuity.
Only the third category directly addresses biological ancestry.
This distinction is essential to the credibility of the IKOSA research programme.
CHAPTER FOUR
BROEDERSTROOM AND THE EARLY FARMING LANDSCAPE
One of the most significant pieces of evidence in the existing documentary record is Mason’s treatment of Broederstroom.
In his 2002 report on Thaba ya Batswana, Mason dates Broederstroom to approximately AD 300 to 600 and describes it as representing the local origin of a cluster of ancestral traditions associated with later Hurutse-Kgatla, Rolong and Kwena builders of farming and metal-producing settlements between Gauteng and Zeerust.
This is an important statement.
It does not establish a direct genealogical line from a fourth-century individual to a modern community.
But it does establish that an experienced archaeologist interpreted the archaeological sequence as part of a developmental history extending from early farming communities toward later Sotho-Tswana associated settlement traditions.
The implication deserves much more detailed investigation.
CHAPTER FIVE
DIKOTENG AND THABA YA BATSWANA
5.1 The Problem of the Name
The archaeological locality now documented as Thaba ya Batswana is identified by IKOSA oral historical research as the landscape historically known as Dikoteng.
This distinction must be preserved throughout the research programme.
The archaeological documentation examined for this volume uses “Thaba ya Batswana”. Mason’s report describes the locality as one of more than one hundred Iron Age stone-walled sites identified across the Klipriviersberg.
IKOSA’s purpose is not to deny the archaeological documentation.
On the contrary, it is to preserve the archaeological record while asking whether the modern name adequately represents the historical complexity of the landscape.
5.2 What Mason Found
Mason’s excavation of Thaba ya Batswana Site 1 produced evidence of farming, cattle and sheep/goat keeping, probable sorghum cultivation, pottery manufacture, hut plastering, bead production, leather working and the capture of wild birds.
The excavation also produced Late Stone Age artefacts beneath the Iron Age material.
Mason specifically noted that the Stone Age material preceded the pottery-bearing farming occupation.
The site therefore provides evidence for multiple occupation horizons.
This is precisely why the site should not be reduced to a single ethnic label.
5.3 The AD 350 Question
A critical distinction must be made here.
Mason’s report includes a figure entitled “Thaba ya Batswana in the Network of the Past AD 350-1800.”
Mason’s concluding discussion separately identifies Broederstroom as dating to AD 300 to 600 and links its archaeological development to later ancestral traditions.
Accordingly, Volume One should not presently state that Thaba ya Batswana Site 1 itself has been directly dated to AD 350.
The stronger and more defensible formulation is:
Mason placed Thaba ya Batswana within a broader archaeological network extending from approximately AD 350 to 1800, while identifying Broederstroom, dated to approximately AD 300 to 600, as an important early component of the developmental sequence he associated with later Batswana ancestral traditions.
This distinction matters enormously.
It prevents us from converting an archaeological model into a direct site date.
CHAPTER SIX
TOPONYMIC HOMOGENISATION
IKOSA introduces the concept of Toponymic Homogenisation to describe a particular form of historical distortion.
Definition
Toponymic homogenisation is the process by which historically specific indigenous place names are replaced by broad ethnic, administrative, archaeological or political labels, thereby obscuring the diversity of communities historically associated with those landscapes.
This differs from toponymic erasure.
Toponymic erasure occurs when an indigenous name disappears.
Toponymic homogenisation occurs when the original historical specificity is replaced by an umbrella identity.
The distinction is important.
A name can survive in modified form while the historical meaning of the landscape is nevertheless diminished.
6.1 Dikoteng and Thaba ya Batswana
From the IKOSA perspective, the replacement of Dikoteng with Thaba ya Batswana presents precisely this problem.
“Thaba ya Batswana” identifies the landscape broadly with Batswana.
“Dikoteng” preserves a specific indigenous historical identity.
The difference is not merely linguistic.
A broad ethnic label can obscure the existence of multiple political communities, ruling houses and historical lineages that interacted within the same landscape.
IKOSA therefore proposes that archaeological site registers should record both names, where historically justified:
Historical indigenous name: Dikoteng
Modern archaeological / heritage designation: Thaba ya Batswana
This approach allows archaeological literature to remain searchable while restoring indigenous historical geography.
CHAPTER SEVEN
TEBANG AND THE PROBLEM OF “KWENENG”
The Suikerbosrand archaeological complex provides a second example.
The settlement is widely known in contemporary archaeological literature as Kweneng.
IKOSA’s oral historical reconstruction identifies the historical settlement as Tebang, associated with Motebang.
The distinction again illustrates the difference between a broad ethnic classification and a specific historical place identity.
The archaeological term “Kweneng” is useful for identifying the archaeological complex.
The indigenous name “Tebang” may preserve a more specific historical relationship with a particular ruling house.
IKOSA therefore does not propose simply replacing one name with another.
It proposes recording the names together and investigating the historical relationship between them.
That approach avoids creating a new form of erasure while correcting the loss of historical specificity.
CHAPTER EIGHT
FROM DIKOTENG TO THE VAAL RIVER
The central historical hypothesis developed by IKOSA concerns the relationship between Dikoteng, Tebang and Thaba Tshotsho.
According to the indigenous historical reconstruction being documented by IKOSA:
Napo’s two elder sons were Motebang and Disema.
During approximately 1350 to 1400 CE, the two brothers left the parent settlement at Dikoteng and established separate settlements.
Motebang established Tebang.
Disema established Thaba Tshotsho.
The two settlements were established on opposite sides of the Vaal River.
This is not being presented in Volume One as an archaeologically proven genealogy.
It is being presented as an indigenous historical hypothesis requiring archaeological testing.
That distinction will remain fundamental throughout the IKOSA series.
CHAPTER NINE
HO TSWA MOTSE
9.1 Beyond the Migration Model
One of the principal conceptual problems identified by IKOSA is the tendency to describe precolonial African settlement almost exclusively through migration.
Migration is useful when a population moves from one region to another.
It becomes inadequate, however, when the historical process involves the systematic reproduction of settlements by members of an existing society.
The Basotho institution of Ho Tswa Motse provides a different analytical model.
A younger generation could leave a parent settlement and establish another settlement under hereditary leadership.
The parent settlement did not necessarily disappear.
The new settlement did not necessarily represent a foreign population.
The process was one of branching.
9.2 Civilisational Reproduction
IKOSA therefore proposes the concept of civilisational reproduction.
Civilisational reproduction occurs when a society reproduces its political, genealogical, cultural and economic institutions through the establishment of new settlements.
Under this model:
Parent settlement
↓
Hereditary branch
↓
New settlement
↓
Independent political development
↓
Continuing genealogical relationship
This model may be particularly important for interpreting the relationship between Dikoteng, Tebang and Thaba Tshotsho.
The historical question consequently changes.
Instead of asking:
“Where did the people of Tebang migrate from?”
we ask:
“What parent settlement generated Tebang through the indigenous process of Ho Tswa Motse?”
The same question can then be applied to Thaba Tshotsho.
CHAPTER TEN
NAPO, MOTEBANG, DISEMA AND MOLAPO
The indigenous historical reconstruction documented by IKOSA identifies Napo as the father of Motebang, Disema, and Molapo with the three described as his elder sons.
The proposed chronology places the departure Motebang and Disema from Dikoteng approximately between 1350 and 1400 CE.
The proposed sequence is:
Dikoteng
Napo
↙ ↘
Motebang | Disema
↓ ↓
Tebang | Thaba Tshotsho
↓ ↓
North of Vaal | South of Vaal
This model is significant because the two settlements are treated as parallel foundations, rather than successive stages in a single migration.
That distinction provides a possible explanation for why conventional genealogical histories can appear chronologically compressed.
Two branches may be recorded as though they were successive because the historical tradition preserves genealogical relationships rather than a complete chronological calendar.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE Deneysville QUESTION
The identification of Thaba Tshotsho with the landscape now occupied by Deneysville requires particular investigation.
IKOSA’s historical tradition identifies Thaba Tshotsho as the settlement established by Disema on the Free State side of the Vaal River, adjacent to what is now the Vaal Dam.
If this identification is correct, modern development may have substantially overbuilt or disturbed the archaeological landscape.
This creates a major research challenge.
The absence of visible ruins in a modern urban environment cannot automatically be interpreted as evidence that no settlement existed there.
Modern roads, houses, infrastructure, agriculture and dam construction can destroy, bury or obscure archaeological evidence.
The appropriate response is therefore not assumption but investigation.
IKOSA proposes:
- archaeological desktop research,
- historical aerial photography,
- cadastral research,
- LiDAR analysis,
- GIS reconstruction,
- examination of old farm boundaries,
- oral history,
- place-name research,
- targeted archaeological survey,
- and, where legally and ethically appropriate, archaeological excavation.
The objective would be to determine whether material evidence corresponding to the proposed Thaba Tshotsho settlement can be identified.
CHAPTER TWELVE
GENEALOGICAL COMPRESSION
The chronological conflict between oral genealogy and archaeological dating requires a separate analytical framework.
Early historians attempted to convert indigenous genealogies into Western chronological systems.
This frequently involved counting generations backwards from historically documented nineteenth-century rulers.
The resulting chronology can be distorted because genealogies do not necessarily preserve every generation.
The earlier IKOSA paper identified this as Genealogical Compression.
The concept is retained here but treated cautiously.
The proposition is not that oral traditions are false.
It is that oral traditions may preserve relationships more reliably than elapsed years.
This distinction is crucial.
A genealogy may accurately preserve:
A was the father of B.
while providing insufficient information to determine precisely:
B was born exactly 27 years after A.
The two propositions are fundamentally different.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ARCHAEOLOGY AND ORAL HISTORY AS COMPLEMENTARY EVIDENCE
The IKOSA methodology therefore rejects the assumption that archaeology and oral tradition must compete.
They answer different questions.
Archaeology can establish:
- where people lived,
- what they built,
- what they ate,
- what technologies they used,
- when particular materials were deposited,
- how settlements changed.
Oral tradition may preserve:
- names,
- genealogies,
- founders,
- political relationships,
- territorial identities,
- remembered migrations or expansions,
- relationships between settlements.
The challenge is to determine where these two systems of evidence converge.
The principle can be expressed simply:
Archaeology can provide the chronology of the material landscape; oral history can provide historical identities that archaeology alone may not preserve.
Neither should automatically be permitted to overwrite the other.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE IKOSA SITE REGISTER
Volume One will establish a master archaeological register for all sites selected for detailed investigation.
Each site will be recorded according to the following framework:
A. Identity
1. Indigenous name
2. Modern name
3. Colonial name, where applicable
4. Alternative archaeological names
B. Geography
5. Province
6. Municipality
7. River system
8. Hill or mountain
9. Coordinates
10. Relationship to neighbouring sites
C. Archaeology
11. Archaeological period
12. Settlement type
13. Architecture
14. Pottery
15. Metallurgy
16. Faunal remains
17. Botanical evidence
18. Trade materials
19. Burial evidence
20. Stratigraphy
D. Chronology
21. Radiocarbon dates
22. Other absolute dating
23. Relative dating
24. Earliest occupation
25. Latest occupation
26. Gaps in occupation
E. Documentation
27. Excavator
28. Excavation date
29. Excavation report
30. Publication
31. Repository of artefacts
32. Heritage status
F. Indigenous Historical Evidence
33. Oral traditions
34. Genealogies
35. Lithoko/Dithoko
36. Place-name traditions
37. Associated royal or chiefly houses
G. IKOSA Analysis
38. Established evidence
39. Reasonable inference
40. Historical hypothesis
41. Contradictory evidence
42. Research gaps
43. Required future investigation
This register will become the foundation for subsequent volumes.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A PRELIMINARY ARCHAEOLOGICAL CORRIDOR
The evidence assembled so far suggests that the research should not be organised around isolated archaeological sites.
It should investigate a connected landscape.
The preliminary corridor is:
Melville Koppies
↓
Broederstroom
↓
Klipriviersberg / Dikoteng
↓
Suikerbosrand / Tebang
↓
Vaal River
↓
Thaba Tshotsho
↓
Deneysville and surrounding Vaal landscape
This is not yet being proposed as a proven migration route.
It is a research corridor.
Its purpose is to test whether archaeological, environmental, architectural, linguistic and oral evidence reveal relationships between these landscapes.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE QUESTION OF ANCESTRAL CONTINUITY
The evidence raises a question that deserves much greater attention.
If human occupation of the central Highveld extends back hundreds of thousands of years, and later farming communities repeatedly occupied landscapes already used by earlier populations, what relationships existed between successive inhabitants?
There are several possibilities.
Possibility One
Different populations repeatedly occupied the same favourable landscapes without significant biological continuity.
Possibility Two
Some cultural practices were transmitted between populations through interaction.
Possibility Three
There was substantial population continuity accompanied by cultural transformation.
Possibility Four
Different combinations of these processes occurred at different times and places.
The archaeological record alone cannot presently determine which model is correct.
This is precisely why IKOSA proposes an interdisciplinary programme.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ANCIENT DNA AND THE UNANSWERED QUESTION
IKOSA therefore proposes that appropriate archaeological contexts should be considered for future ancient DNA research, subject to South African law, archaeological ethics, community consultation, provenance requirements and the necessary permissions.
The purpose should not be to “prove” a predetermined ethnic conclusion.
The purpose should be to investigate population history.
Questions could include:
- Did successive populations show biological continuity?
- Were there episodes of substantial population replacement?
- Did populations from different archaeological regions interact?
- Can genetic relationships be detected between geographically separated settlements?
- Can ancient populations be compared with properly selected modern reference populations?
Ancient DNA cannot independently prove that an archaeological population was “Basotho”, “Bakwena”, “Bafokeng”, “Batswana”, “Bapedi”, or another modern community.
Ethnic identities are historical and political formations that cannot simply be read from genomes.
Genetic evidence can nevertheless contribute to understanding population ancestry, mobility, admixture and continuity.
That distinction must remain explicit.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
TOPOGRAPHY AS HISTORICAL EVIDENCE
IKOSA proposes that hills, rivers, valleys, settlements and place names should be treated as components of historical evidence.
The Vaal River is not merely a geographical boundary.
It may have been a corridor of interaction.
A settlement on one side of the river may have had political, genealogical and economic relationships with settlements on the other side.
This is particularly relevant to the proposed relationship between Tebang and Thaba Tshotsho.
The fact that two settlements were allegedly established by brothers on opposite sides of the Vaal is not proof of the tradition.
It is nevertheless a highly testable historical proposition.
Archaeological survey can investigate both sides.
GIS can reconstruct settlement distribution.
Architectural comparison can examine similarities.
Pottery analysis can examine technological relationships.
Lithic and metallurgical evidence can investigate exchange.
Oral traditions can be mapped against the physical landscape.
This is the type of interdisciplinary research Volume One is intended to initiate.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE LIMITS OF EXISTING KNOWLEDGE
One of the most important findings of this preliminary review is how little of the archaeological landscape has actually been investigated.
Mason reported that more than one hundred Iron Age stone-walled sites had been identified on the Klipriviersberg, while only approximately two percent had been investigated.
That observation should fundamentally influence historical interpretation.
An archaeological absence is not necessarily an historical absence.
A site that has not been excavated cannot be treated as a site that has no archaeological evidence.
A landscape that has been poorly surveyed cannot be treated as an empty landscape.
A lineage absent from a published archaeological report cannot automatically be treated as absent from the historical landscape.
This is one of the reasons why IKOSA considers a systematic site register essential.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE FIVE PILLARS OF THE IKOSA METHOD
Volume One establishes five principal evidentiary pillars.
Pillar One: Archaeology
Excavation, stratigraphy, architecture and material culture.
Pillar Two: Absolute Dating
Radiocarbon dating and other scientifically appropriate chronological techniques.
Pillar Three: Indigenous Historical Memory
Oral traditions, genealogies, royal histories and community knowledge.
Pillar Four: Language and Lithoko/Dithoko
Historical linguistics, place names and praise poetry.
Pillar Five: Historical Geography
The mapping of settlements, rivers, hills, migration or expansion routes and political territories.
The purpose is not to give every source equal evidentiary weight in every question.
The purpose is to allow each source to answer the questions it is capable of answering.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE THREE IKOSA HISTORIOGRAPHICAL CONCEPTS
Volume One establishes three concepts that will be developed further in subsequent volumes.
21.1 Genealogical Compression
The reduction of extended historical periods into shortened genealogical sequences through the omission, merging or telescoping of generations.
21.2 Toponymic Homogenisation
The replacement of historically specific indigenous place identities with broad ethnic, archaeological, administrative or political labels that obscure historical diversity.
21.3 Civilisational Reproduction
The expansion of an indigenous society through the establishment of new hereditary settlements while retaining genealogical, political and cultural relationships with parent settlements.
Within Basotho historical terminology, Ho Tswa Motse provides the indigenous conceptual foundation for investigating this third phenomenon.
Together these concepts offer an alternative framework for interpreting the archaeological landscape.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE PRELIMINARY IKOSA MODEL
At the present stage of research, IKOSA proposes the following working model:
Deep occupation
The central Highveld has experienced extraordinarily long periods of human occupation.
Early farming
By approximately AD 300 to 600, established farming communities were present in the broader region, including Broederstroom.
Regional development
Over subsequent centuries, farming, metallurgy, settlement organisation and stone architecture developed across the Highveld.
Mature stone-walled settlements
By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, extensive stone-walled settlement systems existed in several regions.
Political branching
Indigenous traditions describe the establishment of new settlements by hereditary branches of existing communities.
Dikoteng
Dikoteng is investigated as a parent settlement within the indigenous historical reconstruction.
Tebang
Tebang is investigated as the settlement associated with Motebang.
Thaba Tshotsho
Thaba Tshotsho is investigated as the settlement associated with Disema.
Ho Tswa Motse
The relationship between these settlements is investigated as possible evidence of structured civilisational reproduction rather than population migration.
This remains a working model.
Its purpose is to direct research.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
WHAT VOLUME ONE DOES NOT CLAIM
For scholarly clarity, IKOSA expressly does not claim that Volume One has established:
1. That all Early Iron Age populations in the region were Sotho-speaking.
2. That all archaeological populations can be assigned to modern ethnic groups.
3. That genetic continuity from the earliest Stone Age inhabitants to modern Sotho-speaking populations has been demonstrated.
4. That every stone-walled settlement belonged to a single political community.
5. That the archaeological date of a settlement is automatically the date of its oral founder.
6. That the Thaba ya Batswana Site 1 excavation itself has been directly dated to AD 350.
7. That the archaeological identification of Kweneng as Tebang has already been independently proven.
8. That Thaba Tshotsho beneath or around modern Deneysville has yet been archaeologically demonstrated.
9. That Ho Tswa Motse explains every precolonial settlement movement.
10. That oral traditions should be accepted without critical evaluation.
These are research questions.
They are not predetermined conclusions.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE RESEARCH AGENDA FOR VOLUME TWO AND BEYOND
The purpose of Volume One is therefore to establish the evidentiary foundation from which later volumes can proceed.
The next phase of research should include:
Archaeological documentation
A systematic review of every available excavation report relating to the selected sites.
Chronology
A database of all available radiocarbon dates, including laboratory codes, material sampled, archaeological context and published interpretation.
GIS
A spatial database linking archaeological sites, rivers, hills, settlement clusters and historical place names.
Oral history
Systematic recording of relevant traditions from descendant communities.
Linguistics
Study of the historical development and geographical distribution of relevant place names and terminology.
Lithoko
Collection and analysis of praise poetry containing geographical and genealogical references.
Archaeological genetics
Identification of appropriate archaeological contexts for future ancient DNA research.
Heritage archaeology
Investigation of sites that have been damaged, renamed, overbuilt or incorporated into modern towns.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CONCLUSION
Volume One begins from a proposition that is both simple and profound:
The landscape itself has not stopped speaking.
Stone walls remain.
Settlement patterns remain.
Pottery remains.
Iron furnaces remain.
Buried occupation layers remain.
Place names remain.
Oral genealogies remain.
Praise poetry remains.
Rivers and hills remain.
The problem is that these sources have rarely been examined together as components of one historical system.
The existing archaeological evidence already demonstrates that the central Highveld possesses an exceptionally deep human history. Melville Koppies alone preserves evidence extending from the Stone Age into the Iron Age and more recent historical periods. ([The Heritage Portal][1])
Mason’s investigation of Thaba ya Batswana demonstrates that the Klipriviersberg contains an extensive network of Iron Age settlements, while his report indicates that only a small fraction had been investigated.
The same report connects Broederstroom, dated approximately AD 300 to 600, with a broader developmental sequence associated by Mason with later Hurutse-Kgatla, Rolong and Kwena traditions.
These findings do not provide every answer.
They provide something equally important:
they demonstrate that the questions are worth asking.
IKOSA therefore proposes a new approach.
The history of indigenous southern Africa should not be reconstructed solely as a history of migrating populations.
It should also be investigated as a history of settlement continuity, political branching, civilisational reproduction and indigenous territorial memory.
The Basotho concept of Ho Tswa Motse provides a potentially important indigenous framework for understanding how communities reproduced themselves spatially.
The concept of Toponymic Homogenisation provides a framework for understanding how historical diversity can subsequently become obscured through broad archaeological, ethnic and administrative naming.
The concept of Genealogical Compression provides a framework for investigating why oral genealogies and colonial chronological reconstructions can produce apparently incompatible timelines.
Together, these concepts provide the initial intellectual architecture for the IKOSA Indigenous Historical Reconstruction Series.
Volume One therefore does not close the historical debate.
It opens it.
Its principal task is to identify the sites, assemble the archaeological documentation, preserve indigenous historical names and traditions, establish the chronology, identify contradictions, expose gaps in existing research and formulate hypotheses capable of archaeological testing.
The subsequent volumes will build upon this foundation.
APPENDIX A
PRELIMINARY IKOSA SITE REGISTER
The following sites are proposed for inclusion in the first research corpus:
1. Melville Koppies
2. Broederstroom
3. Dikoteng / Thaba ya Batswana
4. Klipriviersberg settlement complex
5. Meyer’s Farm settlements
6. Ntsuanatsatsi
7. Tebang / Kweneng
8. Suikerbosrand settlement complex
9. Vaal River stone-walled settlements
10. Thaba Tshotsho
11. Deneysville archaeological landscape
12. Relevant Bokoni settlements
13. Other settlements identified through the documentary review
This list is deliberately provisional.
No site should be excluded merely because it does not fit the developing IKOSA hypothesis.
Indeed, contradictory evidence will be considered particularly valuable.
APPENDIX B
EVIDENTIARY CLASSIFICATION
Every proposition in subsequent volumes should be marked internally as one of:
A. Archaeologically established
B. Historically documented
C. Indigenous oral tradition
D. Linguistically supported
E. Reasonable historical inference
F. IKOSA working hypothesis
G. Unresolved question
This classification will prevent the research programme from making the same methodological mistake it seeks to correct.
APPENDIX C
INITIAL RESEARCH PROPOSITION
IKOSA’s preliminary proposition can therefore be stated as follows:
The precolonial history of the central Highveld and Vaal River region may represent a long process of indigenous settlement continuity and civilisational reproduction, within which successive farming communities developed, expanded and established daughter settlements through hereditary political branching. The relationship between Dikoteng, Tebang and Thaba Tshotsho provides a particularly important case through which this proposition can be tested.
The proposition remains open to confirmation, modification or rejection.
That is precisely the purpose of Volume One.
Editorial note for the next stage
This should now become a living research volume, rather than a document we regard as finished. The next step is to build the site corpus systematically.
I recommend that you start giving me the sites one at a time or in batches, beginning with the sites you consider indispensable. For each one, I will separate the material into archaeological evidence, documentary interpretation, indigenous historical tradition, chronology, competing interpretations, and unanswered questions.
I have already identified some particularly important documentary evidence for the corpus. For example, Mason’s report records over 100 Iron Age stone-walled sites in the Klipriviersberg, while only about 2% had been investigated at the time of his report. That makes the archaeological landscape far larger than the few famous sites normally discussed in popular histories.
I also think we should make Dikoteng, Tebang and Thaba Tshotsho the central case study, while keeping Melville Koppies and Broederstroom as the deep chronological background. This gives Volume One a very strong geographical spine:
Deep human occupation → early farming → Dikoteng → Ho Tswa Motse → Tebang and Thaba Tshotsho → Vaal River → later political formations.
And crucially, we will not force the evidence to fit that sequence. If the archaeological record contradicts any part of the model, Volume One will record the contradiction. That is what will make the eventual IKOSA series intellectually defensible.
[1]: https://www.theheritageportal.co.za/article/revil-masons-melville-koppies?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Revil Mason’s Melville Koppies | The Heritage Portal”
[2]: https://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?pid=S2223-03862014000200008&script=sci_arttext&utm_source=chatgpt.com “The value of tours around heritage sites with Melville Koppies as an example”
[3]: https://mk.org.za/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Melville Koppies Nature Reserve”