LAUSR

With his book Foragers in the middle Limpopo Valley: trade, placemaking, and social complexity South African archaeologist Tim Forssman takes us on a journey back in time across a region that is critical in southern Africa for understanding the complex mechanisms behind the evolution of past human societies. The middle Limpopo Valley extends into South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana, and is celebrated for its rich cultural heritage, natural beauty and plentiful wildlife, including herds of elephants that attracted Iron Age communities and European hunters alike. Located at the confluence of the Limpopo, the Shashe and the Motloutse Rivers, this region hosts several rockshelters that preserve the traces of the last foragers to have lived in the area. They are the main protagonists of this book. One must acknowledge that the archaeological record associated with these foragers is not spectacular. What makes the region remarkable, however, is the fact that not only is it one of the few places in the world where foragers interacted for several centuries with farmers, but it is also where foragers shared a territory with farming communities at a time when they were organising themselves into one of the first African, state-level societies at Mapungubwe.