Bokoni
Bokoni was a pre-colonial, agro-pastoral society found in northwestern and southern parts of present-day Mpumalanga province, South Africa. Iconic to this area are stone-walled sites, found in a variety of shapes and forms. Bokoni sites also exhibit specialized farming and long-distance trading with other groups in surrounding regions. Bokoni saw occupation in varying forms between approximately 1500 and 1820 A.D.
Etymology
Bokone translates to "northern region", and with the class 2 prefix it takes the meaning "people from the north'. In spite of inaccuracies surrounding the term 'Koni', it is still used in reference to the communities associated with Bokoni.For comparison, in the same way that Bokoni relates to the Koni, "Bopedi" refers to the area or society of the Pedi people.
Description
Settlement
It is thought in recent studies that the Koni are not a single ethnic entity, and should not be counted as such. Archaeological studies conducted on early Koni sites may actually study a selection of groups, bearing different origins and ethnicities, that arrived in the same region around the same time. At some point between then and the more recent stages of Bokoni's history, these groups merged and formed a collective identity. It has been theorized that Roka groups made up part of this merged identity. A number of scholars note that some of the groups making up the Koni came from the east of the area, while others came from the northwest. Other academic sources note that modern Koni groups reference Swaziland to be the location of their ancestral origin.Sites
Bokoni sites are found almost continuously between Orighstad and Carolina, usually along the various rivers branching out to the east and west along this 150 kilometer stretch. Bokoni communities generally consisted of centralized, large villages, found on valley hills; with smaller settlements bearing similarities surrounding them. The largest of the villages associated with Bokoni have been measured at over 5 kilometers across. There are a few notable outliers to these patterns: including clusters of sites in the nearby southern Komati Valley, and within the Crocodile Tributaries. A single cluster of sites can also be found to the west of the general Bokoni region, in the Steelpoort Valley; but these sites do not bear the same characteristics as other Bokoni sites, and have been somewhat ignored in various analyses. The Bokoni region has also been described more generally as being between the Leolu Mountains, the Spekboom River, and the Badfontein Valley.Settlements across the Bokoni region are also seen to span a considerable range of altitudes. Population estimate studies have placed the Bokoni population at the society's height to be somewhere in the range of 19,000 and 57,000 individuals.
Occupational phases
Four main occupational phases have been identified in Bokoni history. All dates are A.D.- Pre-18th Century: Centered within the Komati River Valley, small chiefdoms engaged in light construction of the first stone terraces.
- Early-18th - Mid-18th Centuries: At this point in time, structures start to take a more defensive form. This aligns with a shift of population center from Moxomatsi to Mohlo-Pela. It has been theorized that these correlate with violence from the nearby Mapono. This phase also sees the creation of many villages that remain into later periods.
- Mid-18th - Mid-19th Centuries: This period is marked by frequent conflict: most commonly with the Pedi, or Maroteng. Resulting from the scattering of the Koni people during this period in time, most data comes from oral histories as opposed to archaeological data.
- Late-19th Century: After a very brief revival at the start of this phase, Bokoni saw decline and eventual loss of autonomy in the face of larger local groups at this point in time. Sites are generally abandoned between this point and the present.
Stone-walled features
Stone-walled features at Bokoni sites were by no means static: it is thought by academics that these features would change over time to fit the needs of site occupants. The archaeological record for some sites depicts multi-layered roads, and excavations at Rietvlei have revealed cattle grazing areas placed directly on top of former agricultural terraces. It is argued that the goal was maximum efficiency in land usage.
Roads
Roads found at Bokoni sites are recognized to be the longest and most complex in pre-Colonial South Africa, and have few comparable systems elsewhere in the world. Roads for this region are commonly defined by a stone wall on either side. These roads connect homesteads, and would have limited the movement of cattle throughout the area, while keeping terraced agricultural zones safe from grazing. Approaching the homesteads themselves, the roads tend to narrow to around a meter in width, limiting traveling livestock to a single-file line. In most cases, the homestead-leading paths terminate at the entrance to the central enclosure of a given homestead after appearing at entrances to larger, communal paths. These communal pathways link homesteads and terraces together over a larger area, and have been found to measure as long as or in excess of 4 kilometers each.Agricultural terracing
Terracing in Bokoni's agricultural infrastructure takes varying forms of complexity, and is the only known field-based agricultural system to have persisted since prior to, and through, Africa's colonial period. The boundary of a field may be marked with one to a few rows of simply arranged stones, or sometimes lined with considerable stone walls, usually measuring well over a meter in height. Sizes and shapes of individually marked farming plots have been seen to vary wildly in both size and shape, but common among Bokoni agricultural endeavors is the tendency to place plots on slopes as opposed to within flatter plains. While it is possible, and assumed by academics, that agriculture occurred on the plains, there are no terraces, structures, or other archaeological evidence yet found to imply that this is the case. Stone materials for the construction of terraces and other hillside stone structures have been noted to be sourced from the same hills on which they have been purposed.Terraces prove useful in the struggle against soil erosion on hillside sites. Terraces here succeed in not only organizing plots of farmland, but in making cultivation possible on the steeper slopes of the area, where soil erosion would otherwise prove problematic. In most studied cases, it seems that terrace walls were not built up all at once; after buildup of otherwise lost soils, certain sections of previously-stone rows were expanded upwards to further prevent soil loss. It is also thought that terracing was not implemented at the beginning of site occupations, but rather slowly over time to accommodate increasing populations.
Homesteads
Bokoni homesteads share a degree of uniformity in their layout: central livestock kraals, surrounded by domestic spaces, in turn surrounded by an encompassing outer wall. Most of the time, a homestead will be connected with a small, individual road to a larger, communal road leading to other homesteads and other parts of the settlement. Houses have been seen to be built in the domestic spaces of these homesteads. Superstructures are assumed to have been softer materials than stone: leading to a lack of visible remains besides the stone lining where walls would have been for most sites, and fire pits for some sites. The exception to this trend are some sites featuring nearly-entire stone huts also displaying the use of corbels: usually found in outlier cluster sites to the south of the main Bokoni regions.Homesteads are notable for the role they played in the context of Koni spirituality: as the spirit world of the Koni belief system could only be reached by male heads of household through the power channeled through ties to deceased patrilineal ancestors. Clustering patterns of enclosures within homesteads have also been tied to family structure in some studies: as the homestead is developed further to accommodate an expanding familial group, the physical structure would depict ties and family size.
In archaeological studies, researchers identified and separated out three distinct varieties of homesteads:
- A pair of concentric circles. The inner would house livestock in its central kraal; and the outer would serve as a domestic space, with houses placed within it. A wall would surround the domestic space, completing the second circle and tying the homestead together. This type of homestead is generally found in small, isolated settlements.
- A pair of concentric circles. This variety is similar to the first, but is distinguished by a number of auxiliary circles on the outside of the outer wall, The distribution of these auxiliary circles tends to vary between sites, but generally seems to geometric or 'flowering' patterns. This type of homestead is generally found in larger settlements, and less frequently in smaller ones.
- Lacking the concentric circles of the former two varieties, the third form of homestead is entirely consisted of smaller circles. This is the rarest of the three varieties, and is usually found at a distance from other homesteads and agricultural terracing; as opposed to being more closely incorporated.