120 Years in 120 Objects
Join the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in celebrating the museum’s 120th year of orbiting the sun. Staff and guest curators have chosen one object or item per year of our existence to highlight for the public. Visit the website and our social media platforms regularly to see the latest object and keep an eye out for information about a physical exhibition later this year!
Today’s Object is from 1984
South Africa’s Oldest Spoons by Aron Mazel, Associate Researcher, Newcastle University
Nkupe rock shelter, in northern KwaZulu-Natal, has one of the largest collections of bone tools ever found in South Africa. Over 400 bone tools were excavated here in the 1980s (Pictures 1 and 2). The San hunter-gatherers, who occupied the rock shelter between 6500 and 2500 years ago, made these exquisite artefacts.
While awls and points were the most common bone tools that the Nkupe hunter-gatherers made (Pictures 3 and 4), the most extraordinary find was two, and possibly three, bone spoons. Found in 1984, these spoons are 4000 years old and, therefore, they are the oldest spoons that we know of in the country. One of them is whole, another is broken but clearly the same item as the whole one (Picture 5), and the third, while broken and not as distinctive as the others, appears similar enough to be considered a spoon.
No other ancient hunter-gatherer bone spoons have been found in KwaZulu-Natal or elsewhere in South Africa. This makes the spoons quite unique. We don’t know why the hunter-gatherers didn’t make more spoons. It’s possible that marine or freshwater shells (on a marine shell in the KZN Museum’s collections, click here), such as the brown mussels, often found in hunter-gatherer rock shelter excavations, may have been more commonly used as spoons.
Picture 1: Nkupe floor area
Picture 2: Nkupe end of excavation 1984
Picture 3: Nkupe bone awls
Picture 4: Nkupe bone points
Picture 5: Nkupe bone spoons
