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Archival Descriptions
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Stander Series

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA, 2018, using material provided by eThembeni Cultural Heritage Management: eThembeni Cultural Heritage, working on a mandate for the FHYA, identified the Ds. Stander collection at the Msunduzi Museum incorporating the Voortrekker Complex as being relevant to the uMgungundlovu archaeological sie, as Ds. Stander's collection consists of material collected in the eMakhosini region and the uMgungundlovu archaeological site is situated in this region. The museum agreed to allow the FHYA to put the digital images of 9 objects, as well as their associated metadata which were individually catalogued on a two-sided A4 paper record held by the museum, with artefact and provenance details listed in Afrikaans. The FHYA organised this material into separate files, with the objects and their associated materials housed in each file.]

FHYA collation of items pertinent to the testimonies of individual interlocutors from six published volumes of the James Stuart Archive

[Source - Carolyn Hamilton for FHYA, 2019: Series contains 6 subseries arranged by date of published volume. Each subseries contains files named by interlocutor and comprise: a placeholder for photocopies of James Stuart's handwritten notes of his conversations, with handwritten annotations by John Wright; the version published in an edited volume by Colin de B. Webb and John Wright; a placeholder for a Hyperlinked Archival Research Tool; the Killie Campbell African Library's James Stuart Papers inventory; and John Wright's summary of the James Stuart Papers.]

FHYA selection of associated materials held by John Wright

[Source - FHYA, 2019: Series contains a circumscribed version of scans of annotated photocopies of handwritten originals from the James Stuart Papers, which John Wright, one of the editors of the published volumes of The James Stuart Archive of Recorded Oral Evidence Relating to the History of the Zulu and Neighbouring People (6 vols.), arranged, used and annotated to prepare the published texts; and a selection of papers by John wright regarding James Stuart's interlocutors as sources.]

FHYA selection from Parkington, Cronin and Poggenpoel Series

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA, 2018, using material provided by eThembeni Cultural Heritage Management and material provided through personal communication with Gavin Whitelaw: In 1974 and 1975 members of the Archaeology Department of the University of Cape Town (UCT), led by Parkington, Mike Cronin, Cedric Poggenpoel, and Heinz Ruther, a survey specialist, explored the size and layout of the site and excavated. Parkington noted to the FHYA that his primary interest in the site related to the organisation of space. They were further assisted by Jeremy Baskin, John Wright, Chrissie Sievers, Simon Hall, Polly Scott and Frank Silberbauer. In 1975 advice was also provided by Martin Hall and Tim Maggs. The excavations included clay floors in the isigodlo area, part of the isigodlo midden, hut floors from the Bheje, and hut floors associated with the warrior quarters. During these fieldwork periods, permanent datum points were established over an area of the hillside. 184 daga floors were plotted and recorded photogrammetrically, and 36 daga floors were excavated as individual units. One half of the pit in the Bheje area was also excavated. The material from the excavations is housed with Martin Hall’s material from his 1975 excavation at the KwaZulu-Natal Musuem as a result of a curatorial decision on the part of the museum. eThembeni was tasked with photographing the contents of a randomly chosen single sorting tray for each type of undiagnostic and diagnostic material, and for each field season. The FHYA has not endeavoured to check precisely how eThembeni interpreted this specification. The FHYA arranged this material external to the Hall material into a Parkington and Cronin series, in which a 1974-1975 subseries containing ‘files’ sits. These files contain digital ‘items’ which consist of the boxes and their contents.]

FHYA selection from Davies Series

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using material provided by eThembeni Cultural Heritage Management, 2018: In 1978 Oliver excavated material at uMgungundlovu. Amafa houses 5 cardboard boxes of this material. It was during these excavations that the bulk of the material excavated from Dingane’s floor was reputed to have been collected and this quite clearly constitutes the material now stored at the KZN Museum. The Amafa Pietermaritzburg material consists of some ‘metal remnants, faunal materials (teeth and bone), clay pipes, wooden remains, shells, ear plugs, earthenware, European glass and porcelain’. This material appeared to have been accessioned by Amafa Pietermaritzburg in 1978 and 1983. The FHYA arranged this material into 1978 and 1983 ‘subseries’ in which ‘files’ containing digital ‘items’ which consist of the boxes and their contents.]

FHYA selection from the Von Hügel Series

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using MAA website, 2017: Baron Anatole von Hügel was appointed the first Curator of what was then called the Museum of General and Local Archaeology at the University of Cambridge in 1884, a position he would hold for the next thirty-eight years. During his time as Curator, he donated his own materials from his time in Fiji, he raised money to construct the new premises of the museum at Downing Street and oversaw the move to this location. He also corresponded with collectors, travellers, and researchers from around the world, and steadily built up the collections at the Museum. He died in 1928. The FHYA selection of this material consists of objects from the FHYA target area of KwaZulu-Natal and immediately adjacent regions.]

FHYA selection from the Wootton-Isaacson and Beaumont Series

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using The Complete Peerage by George Edward Cokayne; the St Mary’s Slindon website (www.stmarysslindon.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Beaumont-Lady-Violet.doc); and the Slindon Village website, 2017: Frederick F. J. Wootton Isaacson was the son of MP for Stepney, Frederick Wootton Isaacson, and Elizabeth Isaacson, well-known milliner who operated under the trade-name ‘Madame Elise’, and the brother of Lady Violet Beaumont. Frederick F. J. Wootton Isaacson lived in Slindon with his sister, living in Slindon House as Lord of the Manor. In 1917, Slindon House became a Convalescent Hospital, overseen by Lady Beaumont. Post war the house was cleared, and Lady Beaumont and Wootton Isaacson were able to resume normal life. Lady Beaumont donated material collected by her brother to the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. This material was accessioned in 1948. The FHYA selection of this material consists of objects from the FHYA target area of KwaZulu-Natal and immediately adjacent regions.]

Hamilton's Swaziland Oral History Project Maps

[Source - Carolyn Hamilton for FHYA, 2017: These maps were discarded by the Government of the Kingdom of Swaziland’s Surveyor General and given to the Swaziland National Archives in Lobamba. The Swaziland National Archives did not want to maintain custody of the maps, and offered them to Carolyn Hamilton who was working in the Swazi National Archives on the Swaziland Oral History Project.]

FHYA selection from the Hamilton Series

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using Wits materials, 2017: In 1983, a series of interviews on the ‘precolonial’ history of southern Swaziland was conducted by Carolyn Hamilton. The setting of spatial and temporal limits to this project resulted in the accumulation of a denser body of testimony, with greater detail and more versions of individual traditions than in any of the other series. In addition to recording historical narratives, forms of oral data not found in the other series, such as clan praises, interclan relationship claims, the origins of clan names, and myths of origin, have been collected. In 2014 the Five Hundred Year Archive commissioned Patricia Liebetrau, a metadata librarian who had worked on the Digital Imaging South Africa project, to undertake the digitization of a selection of the transcripts from the recordings made by Hamilton. The transcripts selected were those for which a typed-up summary or typed edited typescript already existed. The rationale for this was that the typed version, unlike the handwritten versions could be subjected to optical character recognition and are thus searchable. The linked typed texts therefore act as a kind of index to the handwritten texts and the recorded audio. This selection of transcripts, as well as the already digitized audio, the rejected experimental edited typescripts, and associated materials such as collection boxes, index cards, folders, audio tape cassettes and case labels, and notebooks, formed the FHYA selection from the collection of Hamilton recordings. The Hamilton series is separated into ‘files’ named after each interlocutor.]

FHYA selection from the Feilden Series

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using the obituary of Henry Wemyss Feilden published in (1921), Obituary. Ibis, 63: 726–732. doi:10.1111/j.1474-919X.1921.tb01297.x, 2017: Colonel Henry Wemyss Feilden was born in 1838, and was the second son of Sir William Feilden. He served in the army in South Africa during the Boer Campaign of 1881 and the Boer War of 1890, where he worked as the Paymaster of Imperial Yeomanry. The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge acquired some ethnographic material from Foster. This material was accessioned in the late 1800s. The FHYA selection of this material consists of objects from the FHYA target area of KwaZulu-Natal and immediately adjacent regions.]

FHYA selection from the Haddon, E. B. Series

[Source - Nessa Leibhammer for FHYA using MAA materials, 2017: Ernest Balfour Haddon was the son of Alfred Cort Haddon. He was Assistant District Commissioner in Gondokoro in the southern Sudan, then worked in Uganda. During WWI he was an Honourable Captain in the Uganda Carrier Corps. He worked as the Postal Censor in Uganda from 1935-1945. Some of the items of anthropological importance collected by E.B. Haddon are housed in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. The FHYA selection of this material consists of objects from the FHYA target area of KwaZulu-Natal and immediately adjacent regions.]

FHYA James Stuart archival research tool

[Source - Debra Pryor for FHYA, 2019: File contains a circumscribed version of an Archival Research Tool which was made by the FHYA team in 2018. They made a digital copy of John Wright’s set of hand-annotated photocopies of the notes of James Stuart’s conversations and linked them to the published text across all six volumes of James Stuart Archive of Recorded Oral Evidence Relating to the History of the Zulu and Neighbouring Peoples. The Killie Campbell Africana Library (KCAL), which holds the original handwritten notes, has given permission for the photocopies and research tool pertinent to only one interlocutor, Socwatsha kaPhaphu, to be made available online.]

FHYA selection from the Bonner Series

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using Wits materials, 2017: In 1970, Philip Bonner recorded a series of interviews, as a part of his doctoral research at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, under the supervision of Professor Shula Marks. Bonner’s work constitutes the earliest independent investigation of Swazi oral traditions and is informed by a set of concerns very different from those of earlier researchers. Not only do his interviews focus on regional specificities, but they address a set of issues shaped by the Africanist currents which influenced the writing of southern African history in Britain in the early 1970s. His work locating and recording local traditions served as a counter weight to the better-known royalist traditions. He also investigated Swazi oral traditions as much for what they could reveal about the Swazi interaction with the broader context of southern Africa as for what they say about internal Swazi relations. His research formed the basis of his thesis, as well as the book he subsequently published in 1983. In 1985, a selection of Bonner’s recordings was transcribed and translated in Swaziland by a number of students or graduates from the University of Swaziland working with Carolyn Hamilton. This process took place at the Swazi National Archives. In 2014 the Five Hundred Year Archive commissioned Patricia Liebetrau, a metadata librarian who had worked on the Digital Imaging South Africa project, to undertake the digitization of a selection of the transcripts from the recordings made by Bonner. The transcripts selected were those for which a typed-up summary or typed edited typescript already existed. The rationale for this was that the typed version, unlike the handwritten versions could be subjected to optical character recognition and are thus searchable. The linked typed texts therefore act as a kind of index to the handwritten texts and the recorded audio. This selection of transcripts, as well as the already digitized audio, the rejected experimental edited typescripts, and associated materials such as collection boxes, index cards, folders, audio tape cassettes and case labels, and notebooks, formed the FHYA selection from the collection of Bonner recordings. The Bonner series is separated into ‘files’ named after each interlocutor.]

FHYA selection from Maggs Series

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA, 2018, using material provided by eThembeni Cultural Heritage Management and material provided through personal communication with Gavin Whitelaw: Following a visit to uMgungundlovu with George Chadwick, who worked at the Natal Education Department and was a National Monuments Council representative for a number of years, Oliver Davies created a Natal Museum archaeological site record for the site. He recorded the owner of the site as the National Monuments Commission. Davies wrote in his site record that “[a] number of huts have recently been uncovered, of a regular pattern: beaten clay floors which is fairly well preserved; clay hearth with raised rim, preserved in many cases; in one or two cases the sockets of the posts which formed the hut-walls. Also, several depressions which are thought to be collapsed grain-silos, and an area where slag and fragments of copper have been found, probably the site of the workshops. Some low banks with bone-fragments in the earth, thought to be middens.” The phrasing of Davies’s report suggests that Chadwick had already exposed hut floors on the site in 1971 through a process of shovel-clearing. Gavin Whitelaw contends that Chadwick might have asked Davies to accompany him to the site to view the progress of this shovel-clearing work. By 1973, Chadwick and E. Wally Hyde, a National Monuments Council Honorary Officer, were shovel clearing on the brewery hut in the isigodlo at uMgungundlovu. Whitelaw suggests that Chadwick asked Tim Maggs, at the time newly appointed to the Natal Museum, to view the shovel-clearing action taking place on the site. Maggs intervened to curb this action. Maggs then conducted a preliminary survey of the Royal iKhanda area along with George Chadwick. 1973. A National Monuments Council communication dated 1 November 1973 incorporates a report from George Chadwick in which he states that in July 1973 he and Maggs had uncovered several floors, collected pottery and beads, and surveyed in detail the floors already uncovered. Two floors were notable: the brewery hut (labelled as Hut 11 in Parkington and Cronin’s 1979 article ‘The Size and Layout of Mgungundlovu 1829-1838’) and the weapon storage hut (probably the hut labelled as Hut 23 in Parkington and Cronin’s 1979 article ‘The Size and Layout of Mgungundlovu 1829-1838’). The physical work was apparently undertaken largely by Hyde and his labour team. The material from this preliminary survey and the curbed shovel clearing was excavated and collected in 1973, but is housed with Martin Hall’s material from his 1975 excavation at the KwaZulu-Natal Museum as a result of a curatorial decision on the part of the museum. eThembeni was tasked with photographing the contents of a randomly chosen single sorting tray for each type of undiagnostic and diagnostic material, and for each field season. The FHYA has not endeavoured to check precisely how eThembeni interpreted this specification. The FHYA arranged this material external to the Hall material into a Maggs series and further 1973 subseries, in which ‘files’ sit. These files contain digital ‘items’ which consist of the boxes and their contents.]

FHYA selection from Hall Series

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA, 2018, using material provided by Gavin Whitelaw and eThembeni Cultural Heritage Management: In 1975 Martin Hall, an ethno-archaeologist, who was completing his PhD at the University of Cambridge and who worked at the Natal Museum from 1975 to 1980, excavated Midden 3 as a part of a pilot project. Hall was granted a permit, per/1/156, “for excavation and removal of archaeological material from archaeological sites in the Umfolosi catchment river area, Zululand, for purposes of study and preservation”. It was granted 10 November 1975, and lapsed 30 Nov 1978. In 1978 Hall ran a winter school at the uMgungundlovu site (this winter school was probably run in conjunction with the UCT archaeology department). Martin Hall was granted a permit, per/1/183, “for excavation and removal of archaeological material from Mgungundlovu or the purposes of research”. It was granted 14 February 1978, and lapsed 28 February 1981. Martin Hall’s material is housed in the KZNM in boxes 75/139/002, 75/139/020, 75/139/021 and 78/132/1-82. This material includes 21 boxes of diagnostic and adiagnostic Zulu pottery sherds; 53 boxes of unanalysed, waste and diagnostic bone and teeth; 3 boxes of analysed beads with the analysis cards; 1 box of hut floor fragments; 2 boxes of carbon and seeds from all layers of the excavation; and also 2 boxes of metal and waste stone, iron remains, polished stones, dagga pipes, copper and brass bangle remains, slag, grindstones, glass, china and porcelain. Some of the material that has been incorporated into Hall's accessioned boxes of material were excavated by Tim Maggs in 1973, most notably the isicoco polisher, or polishing stone, housed in box 75/139/021. The KZNM has used the museum’s index cards to produce a succinct digital record of the contents of the boxes excavated by Martin Hall in 1975 and in 1978. This is located within the KZNM’s Asset Register. eThembeni was tasked with photographing the contents of a randomly chosen single sorting tray for each type of undiagnostic and diagnostic material, and for each field season. The FHYA has not endeavoured to check precisely how eThembeni interpreted this specification. The FHYA arranged this material into 1975 and 1978 ‘subseries’ in which ‘files’ sit. These files contain digital ‘items’ which consist of the boxes and their contents.]

FHYA selection from Roodt Series

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using material provided by eThembeni Cultural Heritage Management, 2018: Between 1983 and 1994 Frans Roodt excavated at the uMgungundlovu under the auspices of the Natal Provincial Museums Service. These excavations focused on the hut floors from the Bheje areas as well as the isigodlo and the eastern side of uMgungundlovu. eThembeni notes that they are unable to explain exactly which part of uMgungundlovu was excavated on each of Roodt’s field seasons, although this might be able to be done by cross-referencing the trench numbers in the Amafa Collections Register with excavation plan maps and sequencing data. Roodt’s most notable success whilst working at uMgungundlovu arrived in the form of the very important discovery of King Dingane’s hut, with its six-sided star shaped hearth, found within the isigodlo. Roodt’s work at Umgungundlovu was also supported through the work of archaeologist, Hester Lewis, who worked on site with Roodt for several years. Roodt did not excavate in 1984 and 1993. The 1984 excavations were probably postponed as a result of the proposed use of the site for the filming of the SABC Shaka Zulu series. The excavation work done in 1983 was financed by SABC and focused on determining the size and location of the huts in the isigodlo area so that the film series crew could reconstruct a portion of this area. Roodt’s material is housed in AMAFA. Roodt was also employed as the curator of the uMgungundlovu site and the associated museum that was planned for development. The FHYA arranged the Roodt excavation material into 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, and 1994 ‘subseries’ in which ‘files’ containing digital ‘items’ which consist of the boxes and their contents.]

FHYA selection from Brodie Series

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using materials provided by Nessa Leibhammer, 2018: The Johannesburg Art Gallery purchased 532 pieces, predominantly beadwork, from Mordechai Brodie in the latter part of 1994. This selection comprises 1 item, and associated material, which Leibhammer identified as probably dating to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and as coming from the FHYA target area of KwaZulu-Natal and immediately adjacent regions. Leibhammer further selected this item because there was an image of the object readily available.]

FHYA selection from Karner Series

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using materials provided by Nessa Leibhammer, 2018: The FHYA selection from the Karner Collection comprises 1 item, and associated material, which Leibhammer identified as probably dating to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and as coming from the FHYA target area of KwaZulu-Natal and immediately adjacent regions. Leibhammer further selected this item because there was an image of the object readily available.]

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