Archival Work at the Killie Campbell Africana Library

With the reopening of public institutions after the Covid-19 lockdown, Angela Ferreira of the Archives & Public Culture Research Initiative at the University of Cape Town and Dr Geoff Blundell, Head of the Human Sciences Department at the KwaZulu-Natal Museum, conducted work at the archive housed at the renowned Killie Campbell Library at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban Campus. Ferreira is conducting research for her Masters degree on the formation of communities in nineteenth-century KwaZulu-Natal while Blundell is researching KhoiSan resistance to colonialism in the Eastern Cape. Ferreira and Blundell are also collaborating on various projects where there is overlap in their research interests.

Together with Troy Meyers, they are researching the history of the Lochenberg Family. The Lochenbergs were important intermediaries between Colonial authorities, missionaries, and indigenous communities; their influence stretched from the Fish River in the west to the Mzimkulu River in the east and from the south-eastern escarpment to the Indian Ocean—an area of some 178,000 square kilometres. While the focus of the study is the nineteenth century, the Lochenberg family played a major leadership role in ongoing resistance to colonialism and Apartheid in the Eastern Cape during the twentieth century. The histories of communities, such as those of the Lochenbergs, have largely been glossed over or have been treated simplistically and one of the aims of this research is to bring the subtleties and complexities of the histories of these communities to the fore.

On Tuesday 06^th October, Justine Wintjes and Ghilraen Laue of the Human Sciences Department, KwaZulu-Natal Museum and Jeremy Hollmann, Research Associate at the Rock Art Research Institute, took the opportunity to visit and record more sites in the central Drakensberg. A total of three sites were recorded. The images here are from the site with the most well-preserved images.

This therianthrope (part-human, part animal) figure was first recorded by Patricia Vinnicombe and published in her book People of the Eland in 1976.

  In this panel, the therianthropes are surrounded by at least 14 tiny grey figures. These figures are hardly visible, but show up beautifully when enhanced using the programme DStretch.

Dstretch has been used here to show up the amazing details of the body decoration on these elongated orange figures. Photos: Justine Wintjes.

𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘆 𝗰𝗼𝘄𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀, 𝗮 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗲𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗰 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲!

Money cowries are tropical sea snails (Monetaria moneta). They have delicate lace-like bodies that are protected by a smooth, hard shell (or ‘exoskeleton’).

The material this shell is made of is strong and bright, almost gem-like. As their common name – ‘money cowries’ – tells us, for thousands of years people across the globe used them as a kind of currency.