From uterus to jar: the significance of an infant pot burial from Melora Saddle, an early nineteenth-century African farmer site on the Waterberg Plateau

Abstract

The internment of infants in ceramic receptacles was a fairly widespread funerary practice in southern Africa during the Iron Age. Using the rich source of ethnographic data on child-death and mortuary practices among Southeast Bantu speakers, we explore the cultural significance and symbolic meaning of an infant pot burial uncovered on Melora Saddle, an early nineteenth-century African farmer settlement on the Waterberg Plateau, Limpopo Province. The skeletal remains belong to a perinatal individual, aged between 34 weeks gestation and newborn. The short-necked jar was interred in an upright position either inside, or close to, a house. Ethnographic data show that a conceptual link was made between a woman's reproductive capacity and the land'd fertility, as well as between potting and procreation. A close symbolic link existed between pots, wombs, mothers and their houses. Child-birth and child-death were fraught with ritual danger that had to be averted to ensure the well-being of the family and the community. Any deviations from the natural order of things generated pollution (heat or dirt), which threatened a woman's fertility and a lineage's continuation.