The Art of South Africa

An assortment of African drums, carvings, and sculptures

The Lydenburg Heads During the 1950s, a young boy discovered a stash of pottery shards, modelled earthenware, and beads and metal ornaments in a gully. He began to collect them, and not until many years later did he take them to a archaelogist, Ray Inskeep, at the University of Cape Town. Inskeep realized that the artifacts were possibly very important, so he reported their find, and organized an excavation of the site. The excavators found these heads, named them the "Lydenburg Heads" after the site where they found them. Later, the heads were dated back to the sixth century A.D.
	Bushman Diorama This diorama is a reconstruction of a camp of /Xam (San) hunter-gatherers who lived in the semi-desert Karoo region of the Cape. The /Xam lived in the early 19th-century, and moved their camp around, according to where they found plants, water, and game. They avoided overusing food and water supplies by roving around their hunting territories. By the middle of the 19th century most /Xam had been killed in ongoing fighting with advancing colonists and Khoekhoen. The survivors were drawn into colonial society as labourers and servants, and their descendants still live on farms and in villages in the Karoo today.