Living on the margins: an archaeology of 19th century Karoo rural dwelling

• Main Author: Lupuwana, Vuyiswa Thembelihle
• Other Authors: Hall, Simon
• Format: Doctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Faculty of Science 2021
• Subjects: Archaeology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/33767

The 19th century corbelled houses of the Karoo are an architectural type conventionally attributed to Trek Boer pastoralism. Consequently, mid-20th century scholarship tends to view them as an architecture type that embodies the ideology of whiteness on the frontier. However, recent research emphasises that Cape frontiers in the early stages of development were zones of interaction rather than simply boundaries that defined racial and cultural binaries. Consequently, research on corbelled houses of the Karoo has explored that they are a creole architectural type that came about through the frontier processes of the Cape, particularly between people with mixed Khoe and settler ancestry. Specifically, it has been suggested that the domed ‘igloo' form reproduces the basic indigenous architecture of the pastoralist matjieshuis. Kramer (2012) established a timeline for the building of these structures and estimated that they emerged from the 1830s and were built up until the mid-tolate 19th century. Furthermore, Kramer (2012) and Lupuwana (2017) have linked these structures as the dwellings of pastoralists of Baster descent. This thesis broadens the discussion of these corbelled houses and argues that with the closing of the Northern Cape frontier later in the 19th century, this architectural type straddled multiple social and class identities. In order to explore this issue, archaeological and documentary evidence are combined to interrogate the biographies of three corbelled structures built in the 1860/70s on the farm Gorras in the Carnarvon district of the Karoo, during a period of agricultural, pastoralist and mercantile intensification. Architectural additions, spatial change or inertia, combined with household debris indicates different scales of consumption, degrees of material indulgence and the purchasing power of different households.