Bushmen: Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers and their Descendants
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 8/1/2019
EAN 9781108418263, ISBN10: 1108418260
Hardcover, 218 pages, 23.8 x 16.5 x 1.4 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
The hunter-gatherers of southern Africa known as 'Bushmen' or 'San' are not one single ethnic group, but several. They speak a diverse variety of languages, and have many different settlement patterns, kinship systems and economic practices. The fact that we think of them as a unity is not as strange as it may seem, for they share a common origin: they are an original hunter-gatherer population of southern Africa with a history of many thousands of years on the subcontinent. Drawing on his four decades of field research in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, Alan Barnard provides a detailed account of Bushmen or San, covering ethnography, archaeology, folklore, religious studies and rock-art studies as well as several other fields. Its wide coverage includes social development and politics, both historically and in the present day, helping us to reconstruct both human prehistory and a better understanding of ourselves.
1. 'Bushmen'
unity and diversity
2. The politics of indigeneity
3. How far back can we go?
4. Discovery and destruction of the /Xam
5. The !Xoõ and their neighbours
6. G/wi, G//ana and the central Kalahari
7. Naro
'Central', 'Northern' or unique?
8. Ju/'hoansi or !Kung
classic San
9. Hai//om
Khoekhoe-speaking San
10. Bushmen of the Okavango
11. Sharing the land with others
12. Conclusions.