Talk by Professor Jan Boeyens - Head of the Archaeology Division of the Department of Anthropology & Archaeology,University of South Africa

For centuries Bantu-speaking communities across southern Africa maintained ideas about the cultural and symbolic significance of African rhinoceroses. African farming communities related traits of both the more aggressive and solitary black rhino and the more sociable and territorial white rhino to leadership. The Mapungubwe gold rhino, for example, served as an emblem of sacred leadership in a class-based society. In less-stratified Sotho-Tswana societies, people invoked rhinos in chiefly praise poems and used of rhino figurines as teaching aids in initiation schools. Meat cut from the breast of the rhino was reserved for chiefs, and a special club of rhino horn was widely used to mark chiefly status. Rhino horns and bones also featured in rainmaking rituals. Monoliths adorning the central courts of nineteenth-century Tswana towns, as well as the walls or courts of Zimbabwe culture and Venda capitals, most probably represented rhino horns, and so captured the key qualities of African leadership in the architecture of towns.

To be held at the KwaZulu-Natal Museum, 237 Jabu Ndlovu Street, Pietermaritzburg at 10h30 on 13 May 2017

Part of the AGM of the South African Archaeological Society.