Exploitation of sheep (Ovis aries) and goats (Capra hircus) by Iron Age farmers in southern Africa Shaw Badenhorst * Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, Wits 2050, South Africa Archaeozoology and Large Mammal Section, Vertebrates Department, Ditsong National Museum of Natural History, 432 Paul Kruger St, Pretoria 0001, South Africa article info Article history: Received 22 June 2017 Received in revised form 22 November 2017 Accepted 10 December 2017 Available online 18 December 2017 Keywords: Sheep Goats Caprine Index Mapungubwe Hill Iron Age Farmers abstract Sheep and goats have been kept by Bantu-speaking farmers since their arrival during the Early Iron Age in southern Africa. Published samples dating from the Early, Middle and Late Iron Ages are used in this paper to investigate the exploitation of these two domestic animals. A Caprine Index is introduced to measure the ratio of sheep and goats in samples. In almost all cases, samples from the entire Iron Age are dominated by sheep, although the representation of goats increases slightly towards the Middle and Late Iron Age. Three exceptions to the pattern exist in the region, namely Mapungubwe Hill (Middle Iron Age), Nyanga and Hill X (Late Iron Age). At Mapungubwe Hill, the possibility exist that the dominance of goats over sheep is a factor of identification limitations when the original study was conducted in the late 1970s. However, a study is currently underway to re-analyse the fauna from this site. By the middle of the 20th century, goats are more common than sheep under Bantu-speaking farmers in South Africa, a pattern that may be attributed to social, economic, political and/or environmental changes. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Caprines (sheep and goats collectively, from the subfamily Caprinae) were introduced into southern Africa some two millennia ago. However, their role remains poorly understood (but see Badenhorst, 2002, 2006; Plug, 1996a for example). Caprines were, without doubt, influential in many social aspects of farming communities. This paper aims to trace the utilisation of caprines over two millennia amongst farmers, with an emphasis on economic issues, and is part of a larger effort to revisit patterns of livestock usage by farmers during the last few millennia (Badenhorst, 2002, 2006; 2009a, 2009b; 2010, 2011; 2012, 2015; 2017; Fraser and Badenhorst, 2014). 1.1. Archaeological and anthropological background The major livestock animals are not native to southern Africa. Southern Africa was occupied by San hunter-gathers during the Later Stone Age, who initially kept no domestic animals (Mitchell, 2002). Just more than two millennia ago, the first evidence for sheep and cattle are found in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa (Webley, 1992; Vogel et al., 1997; Sealy and Yates, 1994; Robbins et al., 2005, 2008; Pleurdeau et al., 2012). Due to the fragmentary nature of the remains, they can often only be identified as caprines. The appearance of long leg bones suggest these early sheep had long legs, much like the ‘’unimproved’’ sheep breeds still found in southern Africa today. These indigenous sheep have also hair rather than wool, and it is likely that early sheep in the region also had hair. The bone remains cannot point to fat or thin-tailed sheep (Plug, 1996a). The first Portuguese navigators however, found that local Khoekhoen herders possessed fat-tailed sheep by the end of the 15th century AD (Quin, 1959, p. 99). Some archaeologists sug- gested that livestock accompanied migrating herders (e.g. Smith, 1983), and there is convincing evidence that Khoekhoe herders only came to southern Africa during the second millennium AD (Sadr, 2008). Consequently, it is possible that sheep diffused amongst of hunter-gatherers prior to the arrival of herders (Sadr, 2003). Goats have not been identified in any significant quantities from herder (or hunter-gatherer) sites in the western half of southern Africa from the last two millennia, despite clear depictions of goats by early Europeans in the Cape (Badenhorst, 2002, 2006). These sites often have ample evidence for sheep though (Plug and Badenhorst, 2001). * Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, Wits 2050, South Africa. E-mail address: Shaw.Badenhorst@wits.ac.za. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2017.12.023 1040-6182/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. Quaternary International 495 (2018) 79e86