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 2011
The Moon Collection by Mudzunga Munzhedzi, Collections Technician, Human Sciences Department
Michael (Mike) Moon was an amateur archaeologist based near Durban, who made a significant contribution to the archaeological archive at the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in the 1980s and 1990s. He had retired early to pursue his interest in archaeology and he assisted the Museum in various fieldwork expeditions. The Moon Collection in the Museum was built up through work conducted for Archaeological Impact Assessments. These are assessments conducted routinely before any development takes place. Of the 6000 or so archaeological sites archived at the Museum, Moon excavated or recorded at least 166, either alone or together with the Museum’s professional archaeologists such as Tim Maggs, Aron Mazel and Gavin Whitelaw.
He participated in the initial archaeological survey of the Inanda Dam Rescue Project in 1983, and he later made a significant discovery of an Early Iron Age (EIA) site in the early stages of construction of the dam. Under the Museum’s direction Moon excavated an EIA pit at the dam containing the remains of some 90 vessels in 1985. Moon cleaned and reconstructed some of these vessels before he brought them to the Museum.
In 1988 the Museum appointed Moon as an Honorary Associate. His last accessioned materials were a donation of Early Stone Age tools from Inanda Dam as well as pottery and an axe head from the Kranzkloof Nature Reserve. These materials were accessioned in 2011, marking the last time that he contributed to the collections. Mike Moon died in January 2021.
Early Iron Age pots that were excavated by Mike Moon from a pit that contained the remains of at least 90 vessels at Inanda Dam.
