CHRONICLES OF THE SEEKOEI RIVER BUSHMEN AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS, Volume 2 (1830-1899)

246pp., b/w & colour illus., maps, paperback, Occasional publications of the KwaZulu-Natal Museum 5, Pietermaritzburg, 2024

ISBN: 9780796185846

This third volume in the anthropological and historical series that includes The World of the Seekoei River Bushmen (2018) and Chronicles of the Seekoei River Bushmen and their neighbours, Volume 1 (1770–1830) (2021) details the later history, interactions, and ultimate fate of indigenous hunter-gatherers and neighbouring groups in the upper Karoo's Seekoei River Valley.

"I couldn't put this manuscript down ... On and around the Seekoei valley colonial villages gradually expanded with their churches and general-dealer stores. And, ever in the shadows, were the Seekoei River Bushmen, the real protagonists of this book. Increasingly marginalized through the century, they featured in documents most commonly as perpetrators of crime and as indentured labourers. Those remaining 'wild' survived the relentless environment by living out-of-sight in the mountains. The others became increasingly exploited by their white invaders, most of them living on stock farms, while a few drifted to the villages to eke out a living. Meanwhile those Bushmen to the north of the Seekoei valley were displaced, hunted and enslaved by the invading Griquas. Bushman numbers remained unknown and often confused with resident Khoekhoen herders. As the century closed, they were ignored by census-takers and subsequently forgotten." Lynn Wadley, University of the Witwatersrand

"Like its predecessors, this third volume of the Seekoei River Bushmen series is immaculately produced, intensively referenced and very well illustrated ... Data on the continuing presence of Bushmen and people of Bushman descent are somewhat spare, but Sampson and Neville have achieved a near-exhaustive study of the available material. They admirably succeed in delivering the historically informed background to inferences drawn from multiple excavations of 19th century deposits in the Seekoei valley rock shelters." Peter Mitchell, University of Oxford

South African anthropologist Garth Sampson (1941-2025) taught briefly at the University of Cape Town (1967–1968) and Berkeley (1969–1970) before accepting an Assistant Professorship at the University of Oregon. He moved to Southern Methodist University in 1972, where he remained until he retired as an Emeritus Professor in 2007. In 1979 he began a long-term National Science Foundation-funded project in the Seekoei Valley in the eastern Karoo near Hanover and Middelburg, continuing to work on this project until his death. It began with 15 months of survey called the Seekoei Valley Archaeological Project and then transitioned to a surface analysis of Later Stone Age ceramics. After he moved back to South Africa in 2013 he begin writing this series of monographs on his research.

Dennis Neville is a freelance archaeologist and runs a non-profit project from Johannesburg helping orphaned and vulnerable youth.