Patterning in recent radiocarbon dates from southern Africa as a reflection of prehistoric settlement and interaction Parkington, J and Hall, M Title Patterning in recent radiocarbon dates from southern Africa as a reflection of prehistoric settlement and interaction Authors Parkington, J and Hall, M Type Article URL THIS article is the latest in a series designed to review for Journal readers the impact of newly acquired dates on the writing of southern African prehistory.1 As the number of

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... es has increased, and as the integration of dates into archaeological research programmes has progressed, it has become necessary to survey new dates more regionally and assess them more contextually. Thus previous syntheses in this series have moved away from annotated sets of dates to more thematic summaries of recent research as it is affected by a growing ability to date specific patterns of behaviour. We have followed the precedent of Hall and Vogel2 in avoiding as far as possible both modern political units of space and what they called 'transregional cultural categories' of time such as Later Stone Age and Early Iron Age. The reason for this is simply that both sets of terms may be quite unsuitable formats for understanding prehistoric behaviour and may encourage us to compartmentalize what must have been integrated and complex interactions between people with different technologies. At the same time, we have found it difficult to review new radiocarbon dates strictly by environmental zones, for the problems currently prominent in southern African archaeological research often transgress such regional boundaries. Consequently, the text of this review assesses the contribution that new dates have made to research problems, while the map (p. I8) gives the location of sites in relation to environmental zones. Colleagues in the Southern African Association of Archaeologists kindly responded to a circular by sending lists of recently published dates, and additional readings were obtained from the journal Radiocarbon3 and elsewhere. Geographically, the dates come from those parts of southern Africa south of the Kunene, Okavango and Zambezi rivers, and they are listed in the Appendix by laboratory and site name. Radiocarbon determinations presented here are based on the original Libby half-life of 5,568 years and are uncalibrated; they are expressed in terms of years b.c. and a.d. Previous reviews of southern African radiocarbon dates which have appeared in this Journal include those by Martin Hall and J. C. Vogel (xxI, iv, 1980, 431-55), Tim Maggs (xviII, ii, 1977, 161-9I), R. C. Soper (xv, ii, 1974, I75-92), J. E. G. Sutton (xIII, i, 972, 1-24) and D. W. Phillipson (xi, I, 1970, 1-15). 2 Martin Hall and J. C. Vogel, 'Some recent radiocarbon dates from southern Africa', J. Afr. Hist., xxI, iv (I980), 431. 3 J. C. Freundlich, H. Schwabedissen and W. E. Wendt, 'Koln radiocarbon measurements II', Radiocarbon, xxII, i (I980), 68-8I. J. C. Vogel and Ebbie Visser, 'Pretoria radiocarbon dates II', Radiocarbon, xxIII, i (1981), 43-80. AFH 28 JOHN PARKINGTON AND MARTIN HALL THE KALAHARI BASIN