When ceramic sociology meets material science: Sociological and technological aspects of crucibles and pottery from Mapungubwe, southern Africa

This paper discusses the globally significant topic of gendered participation and socio-technical improvisation in technological systems hard set within deeply symbolic practices. The general belief in the anthropology of sub-Saharan Africa is that metallurgy (male domain) and pottery (female domain) are gendered technologies, regulated by strong taboos that exclude women from participating in male practices, and vice versa. This has promoted the untested generalisation that, in conformity with these gender dichotomies, taboos mandated that transformational stages of metallurgy such as smelting were always carried on outside settlements, without the participation of women. These ideas were empirically tested through a stylistic, petrographic and geochemical study of metallurgical crucibles from Mapungubwe, which at this site resemble pottery. It emerged that pottery and crucibles are one and the same. Since pottery was made by women, and men worked metal, the conclusion in this paper is that metallurgy was neither hermetically sealed nor accessible exclusively to men. Furthermore, depending on context, primary metal production was also practised within settlements. This demonstrates considerable fluidity and improvisation, with women and men participating in each other's technological domains, although such participation may have been staggered so that they undertook different tasks of the same process, at potentially different times and in different spaces.