Celebrating Fifty Years of Archaeology-Remembering Past Staff: Valerie Ward

Val Ward was born in 1935 in Durban, where she later studied and then practised medical technology. She published her first paper in 1960 in the SA Journal of Medical History. Her career took her to the United Kingdom, where she married Tony Ward, a pathologist. Together they moved to Hong Kong where Val studied several non-university courses, including archaeology. She became active in the Hong Kong Archaeological Society and published a monograph on stone adzes from the city. On a visit to Natal in 1974, she contacted the Natal Museum and joined an archaeological rescue excavation. In 1977, the Wards returned to South Africa and Val worked for the Natal Museum on a voluntary basis before being offered a position as Technical Officer in 1980. She remained in this position until her retirement in 1998. Val contributed substantially to the Archaeology Department’s research output as author and co-author and was the assistant editor for the Natal Museum Journal of Humanities (now Southern African Humanities) from 1992 onwards. She was also an energetic organizer of the South African Archaeological Society’s Natal Branch. In many ways, Val occupied the crucial role of what is today termed a “Collections Manager”. She ensured that protocol and procedure were followed in regard to the use of the museum’s collections while never obstructing the research process. She passed away in 2016.

Celebrating Fifty Years of Archaeology-Remembering Past Staff: Dr Aron Mazel

Aron joined the museum in 1979 immediately after completing his honours in Archaeology at the University of Cape Town. He undertook a project, funded by the Department of Forestry, to record rock paintings in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg mountains and make management recommendations about them. In 1981, a second post in archaeology was created at the museum and Aron took up this position. While employed at the museum, he obtained his master's degree and then his doctorate from the University of Cape Town. His master's dissertation focused on the rock paintings in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg, while his doctorate, based on his excavation of eight rock shelters, investigated the last 10 000 years of San hunter-gatherer history in the Thukela Basin. Thereafter, he excavated another seven rock shelters in the Thukela Basin. Both his rock art and excavation research have significantly expanded our knowledge of hunter-gatherer history in KwaZulu-Natal and substantially contributed to our understanding of the South African past prior to colonialism. Aron became Assistant Director at the Natal Museum in 1994 before becoming Director of the South African Cultural History Museum in Cape Town in 1998. Today, he lives in the United Kingdom where he recently retired as a Reader in Heritage Studies at Newcastle University. He remains attached to the university as an Associate Researcher.

Celebrating Fifty Years of Archaeology-Remembering Past Staff: Dr Timothy Maggs

Tim Maggs (on the left in the picture above) became involved in archaeology by exploring rock art in the Western Cape with the pioneering recording trio Johnson, Rabinowitz and Sieff. With the encouragement of Ray Inskeep, he completed a bachelor’s and honours in Archaeology at the University of Cape Town in 1965. At that time Monica Wilson and Ray Inskeep had raised a large Wenner-Gren grant for Iron Age research covering parts of the Free State, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. Turning from rock art research, Tim took up this project and, after examining large quantities of aerial photographs, realized that there was an enormous wealth of pre-colonial farming settlements just on the southern Highveld, so the project focused on this region. His doctorate was completed in 1974, though he had already moved to the Natal Museum in 1972, becoming the first professional full-time archaeologist in KwaZulu-Natal. While at the museum, he improved curatorial, documentation and retrieval systems for the archaeology collections and he worked extensively on the archaeology of pre-colonial black farming communities in what is now KwaZulu-Natal, establishing the chronological framework for the period in the province. Early on he joined the Rock Art Recording Group, led by John Wright and Richard Evans, and later researched the rock engravings of farming communities as well as Portuguese shipwrecks. He was conscious of the need to promote a wider understanding of pre-colonial times in South Africa as this was largely suppressed under the apartheid education system. Measures included museum outreach and a wide variety of non-specialist publications and contributions to textbooks. He was the first chairman of the KwaZulu Monuments Council which, after 1994 became the KwaZulu-Natal Amafa and Research Institute. His contribution to Southern African archaeology in the 22 years that he was at the museum was enormous. Tim left the museum in 1994 to move to Cape Town where he has continued his work on archaeology.