A cultural proxy for drought: ritual burning in the Iron age of Southern Africa

In traditional Bantu-speaking societies in southern Africa, drought is caused by breaches in rules of pollution. At times of severe drought (3–5 consecutive seasons), rainmakers ascend special hills to perform special rituals. The archaeological signature of this unique activity forms a cultural proxy for drought. New research shows that burnt daga structures also correlate with high δ15N values for small stock. Burnt structures thus form a new component to the proxy. According to the ethnography, farmers implicated in the cause burnt their grain bins, and sometimes houses, as a ritual of cleansing. The dating of these structures provides a revised climatic sequence for the plateau portion of the summer rainfall region. Among other new results, there was a drought at the end of the Mapungubwe period (ca. AD 1300). At about AD 1650, droughts associated with the arrival of maize caused people to stop growing it as food for a while.