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 to 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 1926
The Eland Cave Hunting Kit by Ghilraen Laue, Curator of Special Collections
(Photo: M. Lombard)
In 1926 Dr. Ernest Warren, the director of the Natal Museum (as it was then known), received a letter from J. S. Lombard offering to sell a Bushman hunting kit which he had found in a cave in the Drakensberg. The hunting kit was bought by Warren for the sum of £6 10s and accessioned into the museum’s collections. The items received were: a bow, bowcase, quiver, 21 arrows, a curved metal blade, a short blade in a leather sheath, a small leather bag containing a solid substance, and a wooden spatula for applying poison to the arrows.
The shelter where the items were found, now known as Eland Cave, is located in the ukuHlamba Mountains in KwaZulu-Natal near the Cathedral Peak area. Archival reports indicate that in 1870 Bushmen were living in the vicinity of Eland Cave but that by 1873 most had disappeared. Some reports have Bushmen still living in secluded ravines in the Didima Gorge as late as 1885. A Mr Robinson who saw the hunting kit before it was removed noted that it was found next to what appeared to be a Bushman bed made of grass. He believed that the grass bed and hunting kit were so well preserved that it was unlikely they had been there for 40-50 years. He concluded that a lone Bushman must have continued to live in the area long after the rest of his people had disappeared.
In July 2023 the results of a study of poison residues, including samples from the arrows mentioned above, were published (click here to see the publication). The biomarkers indicate that the poison on the arrows was most likely of plant origin, specifically from the genera Adenium and Sansevieria.
