Sheltered from change: hunter-gatherer occupation of Balerno Main Shelter, Shashe-Limpopo confluence area, South Africa

Abstract

Balerno Main Shelter is one example of the varied hunter-gatherer responses to the spread of farmers into the Shashe-Limpopo confluence area during the last 2000 years. The shelter was occupied from 11 000 BP and appears to have been utilised as an aggregation site by hunter-gatherers for much of its occupation. Balerno Main is situated in an area with a 3–4 km radius where no archaeologically contemporaneousfarming settlements occur. Despite their interaction with various groups of farmers during the contact period, hunter-gatherers at Balerno Main do not seem to have been greatly impacted by the appearance of farmers in the area: no major changes occurred in the hunter-gatherers’ way of life between the pre-contact and thecontact period. This is most likely due to the shelter’s distance from farmer sites, which provided a space where hunter-gatherers could retreat from farmers, aggregate, and maintain their identity and way of life. This distance, though physically small, also allowed them the freedom to choose when and where to interact, sheltering them to some degree from many of the potential changes that farmers brought.