Bokoni: Old Structures, New Paradigms? Rethinking Pre-colonial Society from the Perspective of the Stone-Walled Sites in Mpumalanga

This article demonstrates that the interdisciplinary research that has been conducted on Bokoni under the auspices of the 500 Year Initiative has had significant outcomes. We have created a more periodised account of the development of the settlements. Narrow and ethnically determined conceptions of identity have been subjected to critique and the notion that specific pottery forms are necessarily markers of specific cultures or linguistic units has been challenged. Conventional accounts of the nature of Iron Age agriculture have been substantially qualified. At the same time, a host of new questions have been developed around the appropriate unit of study for these communities and the economic and political dynamics that shaped their rise and decline.