Idiophones or Palettes? An Analysis of Flat Bone and Shale Implements from Matjes River Site, Southern Cape of South Africa

ABSTRACT

Flat bones and shale implements have been recovered from archaeological contexts dated to the Later Stone Age from the site of Matjes River in the southern Cape of South Africa. However, their use has remained speculative. One of the interpretations that have been considered is that these flat bones were used as “palettes” for the grinding of ochre, possibly for the preparation of paint. However, in this research it is proposed that these “palettes” could have been used as clappers for music or sound production. The analysis included morphological analysis, an experimental approach and microscopic use-wear analysis of both the archaeological pieces and the experimental pieces. Microscopic use-wear analysis was conducted on the archaeological pieces to look for any ochre residues and any other use-wear signatures. This was done to test the earlier hypothesis that the palettes could have been used for ochre processing. The assumption is that if the palettes were used for pigment preparation the probability of finding ochre/paint residues on them is high. Some shale palettes have ochre residues, but none was found on the bone palettes. Experimental bone clappers were made from an eland rib, then analysed microscopically to compare the experimental use-wear results with the use-wear patterning on the archaeological pieces. Results indicated that the replicas developed minimal shiny polish and the archaeological bone clappers also have minimal polish, but it is difficult to tell whether the bone palettes were used as clappers since they have other taphonomic features like pitting, cracks and manganese stains that are superimposing the polish.

KEYWORDS:

• Flat bones
• shale palettes
• idiophones
• microscopic use-wear
• ethnography
• experiment

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the National Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, South Africa, whose funding made this publication possible. I want to thank my supervisor Dr. Sam Challis for hosting me at the Rock Art Research Institute. I want to thank Catherine Namono and David Pearce for their support. I want to thank Jerome Reynard for giving me an eland rib that I used to make clapper replicas. I want to thank the Wits research office for funding my trips to Bloemfontein. I want to thank the National Museum Bloemfontein staff for their help, and I am extremely grateful to Will, Myra, Thys and Gerda. To my colleagues Lebo and Witness thank you for reading my earlier drafts of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Palette refers to flat bones and shale objects that have been analysed which are proposed to have been played as sound producing implements (clappers).

2 A digital calliper was used to measure the artefacts and a digital beam scale was used to weigh the artefacts. All measurements were recorded in MS Excel.

3 An Olympus SZ61 fluorescence microscope was used for the purposes of this analysis. This microscope has a 10x eye piece with magnifications ranging from 0.67 to 4.5 connected to a camera EP50_67002939. Only low power magnification was used because it provided the required results.

4 See: Lithophone en ardoises âgées de 285,000,000 années—YouTube and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uQAelWmuaw.

Additional information

Funding

I would like to thank the Re-centring AfroAsia Project: Musical and Human Migrations in the Pre-Colonial Period 700–1500 CE funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for funding my postdoctoral fellowship.