Cultural Heritage with Phathisa Nyathi
IN our last article, we sought to unpack ideas and perceptions pertaining to the Earth. This we arrived at by scrutinising various cultural practices.
From the cultural practices, we sought to identify the underpinning cosmologies, worldview, philosophy, beliefs and perceptions. This we were able to do from the realisation that communities do as they believe.
Cultural practices are products of beliefs, cosmology, worldview and perceptions.
Before we deal with the numerous astronomical ideas and their related cultural practices, let us take the case of domestication of wild animals. It seems all communities and societies started off as hunter-gatherers. There was some division of labour between men and women. The women were gatherers. They went into the bush to collect fruits, berries, roots and tubers. Some grasses yielded seeds that were also gathered.
Men, on the other hand, were hunters. What they hunted roamed around the bush. The hunted animals moved from place to place. In the winter, months when water sources became fewer, the animals travelled to get to water sources. Bows and arrows were used as hunting instruments. Traps were also used to kill the animals.
The animals that they hunted were not restricted to one place. The animals wandered around depending on the availability of water and grazing.
The mode of production dictated settlement type. A nomadic life style led to a particular type of settlement. Life was not sedentary and that was reflected in the type of structures that were constructed. Where shelter was temporary, the structures reflected transience in the choice of materials used. Grass, wood and clay were major materials that were used.
What would be the purpose of constructing permanent structures where settlement was temporary as dictated by the availability of animals? Where a kill was made, that became home, albeit a temporary one. San settlement structures were of a transient nature in line with the nomadic nature of the San.
Architecture was thus modified and determined by a people’s lifestyle. There was some positive correlation between the resilience of living structures and the mode of subsistence. When the mode of production changed, the change was reflected in their architecture. What is of significance for our purposes is the fact that from architecture we are able to figure out the lifestyles of the people whose architecture we are studying.
Once a given society or community began to domesticate animals, the architecture transformed and reflected the lifestyle of the particular people.
Some species of animals were domesticated. Good examples are cattle, goats, and sheep. What that immediately implied was to transform settlement patterns to accommodate the animals that had become an integral part of the homestead. How are cattle pens to be constructed? What materials are going to be used? Between the genders, who will hew wood to construct the holding pens or byres?
Natural construction materials were handled by different genders and that was to be the case for a long time. For example, wood is the preserve of men. Men use axes and adze to cut down trees for use in constructing cattle pens and the more relatively enduring huts. Men will carve artifacts that are used by women. For example, men carve a stirring stick, uphini, though the womenfolk use it when preparing food.
The location of a cattle byre may be influenced by numerous factors. Where animals have been domesticated, and there already exist sites associated with men who were hunters, cattle pens will be located on sites reserved for men. Largely, the front part of a homestead is associated with men. Of course, we need to figure out which came first.
When animals were domesticated, where they were penned defined the male domain within a homestead.
Where there was cattle rustling, cattle pens were located centrally and surrounded by houses. This was the case among the Ndebele people in the early days of their migration out of KwaZulu—Natal. There were many groups of people that raided for cattle. Security for cattle was thus ensured as cattle played an important role in the cultural, social, political and economic spheres.
This is what archaeologists have referred to as the central cattle pattern (CCP). It was an arrangement that applied among the Nguni and Sotho peoples.
However, what is more important is to appreciate why a cattle byre was centrally located. Getting into a homestead, one passed through a ring of huts and finally got to the cattle pen at the centre.
The pen fence and the ring of huts provided protection to the valued domesticated animals.
This was not the case for example at Old Bulawayo, King Lobengula’s capital town from 1870 to 1881. The cattle byre for the Royal Enclosure, isigodlo, was part of the palisade that demarcated the Royal Enclosure from the Central Enclosure and the Peripheral Enclosure for the commoners. The position of the cattle byre was a pointer to the relative security for the domesticated cattle.
Later, after occupation, the situation changed more dramatically in response to the more secure position regarding cattle. The cattle byre completed its migration from the centre (CCP) to the palisade and finally away from the homestead. There was no one who was likely to engage in cattle rustling because of a more secure lifestyle.
However, for our purposes, what is important is the realisation that the built environment mirrors and reflects the social, cultural, economic, political and cosmological realities. Through the study of a built environment, we are in a position to glean a lot about its creators, builders and users who have since abandoned it.
Is there evidence of a cattle byre to indicate to us that the settlers domesticated animals? What was the size of the cattle and sheep or goat byres? The size will reflect the size of wealth of the settlers. Was the byre centrally located or an integral part of the palisade or was it a distant standalone beyond the homestead boundary? The position makes a pronouncement about prevailing security.
There is just so much to glean from a built environment. It is a mirror of the people who settled on the site. This will be in terms of their cosmology, their worldview, their beliefs, their economic status, their social organization and a lot more. Where a people have deserted their settlement, we are thus in a position to learn a lot about them through assessment of what remains of their settlement.
Euphemistically, men began hunting in the cattle byre as it were. Cattle were associated with wealth and men sought to control that wealth by placing restrictions of access by women. Domestication was followed with allocation of taboos and gender restrictions, all in an effort to control wealth, power and influence. Women, for example, were not allowed into a cattle byre.
Their nature was perceived as contradicting the medicinal formulations used to ensure increase of the cattle herd. Menstruation was cited as a condition that was a handicap. It was a condition naturally associated with and restricted to women. Men were, by virtue of their very nature, free from the perceived limitations. Only the young girls before puberty and the old women beyond puberty were exempt from the restrictions. A girl was allowed to enter the cattle byre when she was getting married. She entered the cattle pen for the performance of severance rituals by her father.
It was not just wealth that was being denied to womenfolk. The cattle byre became a designated spiritual hub. By excluding the women from a sacred and spiritual site, they were being discriminated and disempowered. Daughters, once they got married, were subjected to reduced spiritual power that translated to other forms of power such as political, social and economic power.
Domestication was an economic measure that had wide-ranging ramifications. It is ideas attending to it that are of interest to us. These may be gleaned from what survives from a cultural landscape.
Communities build as they think and as they believe. It is from this standpoint that we glean ideas about the earth from what we see in the form of cultural practices.
As pointed out in the previous article, humans tend to create myths about numerous stars, planets and the moon. Their tendency is not to see the Earth as part of the broader universe that is attended by myths of creation and myths relating to Eschatology.
However, this is not to say there are no myths relating to the Earth. There are several of them.
However, many of these have to be deduced indirectly from the numerous cultural practices. Seeing as we dealt with domestication of animals and delved into the ramifications of the process, it is only proper that we do the same with regard to domestication of grasses, plants and trees.
That is to say we have to do the same with agriculture that involved domestication of items that were gathered by women. Were there comparable practices, as we saw pertaining to men? Were these expressed on the built environment?
Are there structures in the built environment that are attributed to the development of agriculture that developed from domestication of gathering? The next article will unravel this aspect before we go back to perceptions of the Earth as gleaned from cultural practices.