# Beyond the Shadow of a Desert: Aquatic Resource Intensification on the Roof of Southern Africa

> When the climate turned cold in Lesotho’s mountains, ancient hunter-gatherers went fishing. Fish bones from three sites spanning 30,000 years show catches peaking in each cold period, timed to the spawning runs of yellowfish and mudfish. The authors argue Africa’s past held ways of life never seen in the Kalahari.

Summary by Kersey Lawrence, Original Wisdom. Updated 9 November 2026. Page: https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2018-stewart-mitchell-beyond-shadow-desert-aquatic/

## Citation and access

- **Authors:** Brian A. Stewart and Peter Mitchell
- **Year published:** 2018
- **Journal or source:** Foraging in the Past: Archaeological Studies of Hunter-Gatherer Diversity (book chapter), University Press of Colorado
- **Full citation:** Stewart, B. A. and Mitchell, P. 2018. Beyond the shadow of a desert: aquatic resource intensification on the roof of southern Africa. In: Lemke, A. K. (ed.), Foraging in the Past: Archaeological Studies of Hunter-Gatherer Diversity, pp. 159-208. Louisville: University Press of Colorado.
- **DOI:** 10.5876/9781607327745.c006
- **Access status:** Publisher link only
- **Where to find it:** https://doi.org/10.5876/9781607327745.c006

## Tags

- **Species:** Fish > Largemouth yellowfish; Fish > Orange River mudfish; Fish > Rock catfish; Fish > Sharptooth catfish; Fish > Smallmouth yellowfish
- **Region:** Africa > Lesotho; Africa > South Africa
- **Behaviour and ecology:** Behaviour
- **Methods and technology:** Literature review; Minimum number of individuals (MNI)
- **Data type:** Existing data; Review
- **Observer qualification:** Not needed
- **Discipline:** Anthropology
- **Year published:** 2018

## Detailed keywords

- **Species:** Studied: freshwater fish remains from archaeological sites, mainly smallmouth yellowfish (Labeobarbus aeneus), Orange River mudfish (Labeo capensis), rock catfish (Austroglanis sclateri), largemouth yellowfish (Labeobarbus kimberleyensis) and sharptooth catfish or barbel (Clarias gariepinus); also humans (Later Stone Age hunter-gatherers) as the fishers. Other fish in the rivers today but too small to attract people: chubbyhead barb (Barbus anoplus) and the endemic Maloti minnow (Pseudobarbus quathlambae). Invasive rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and brown trout (Salmo trutta). Mammals in the archaeological faunas: leopard (Panthera pardus), water mongoose (Atilax paludinosus) and Cape clawless otter (Aonyx capensis), all rare; springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis), bluebuck (Hippotragus leucophaeus) and blesbok (Damaliscus pygargus phillipsi), which disappear about 7,000 to 6,000 years ago; common reedbuck (Redunca arundinum); plains zebra (Equus quagga) absent and black wildebeest (Connochaetes gnou) very scarce in the last 2,000 years; roan antelope (Hippotragus equinus), gone before the 1850s. Crabs, the main otter food in the KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg, are virtually absent. Fish at White Paintings Shelter, Botswana: cichlids (probably Serranochromis spp.) and sharptooth catfish.
- **Location and habitat:** Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains, highland Lesotho (with adjacent KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape, South Africa). Sites: Sehonghong (large sandstone rockshelter on the Sehonghong River, about 3 km from the Orange-Senqu River), Pitsaneng (small rockshelter about 1 km upstream) and Likoaeng (open-air site on the Orange-Senqu River, about 1,725 m above sea level). Also mentioned: Melikane, Ha Makotoko, Ntloana Tšoana, Rose Cottage Cave, Strathalan B, Tloutle, Moshebi’s Shelter, Ha Soloja, White Paintings Shelter (northwestern Kalahari, Botswana). Habitats: Senqu Montane Shrubland, Lesotho Highland Basalt Grassland, Drakensberg Afroalpine Heathland; deeply cut river valleys at about 1,800 m.
- **Topics:** zooarchaeology; prehistoric fishing; hunter-gatherer diet and adaptation; aquatic resource intensification; effective temperature (ET) and Binford’s storage threshold (15.75°C) and terrestrial plant dependence threshold (12.75°C); cold periods: Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), Antarctic Cold Reversal (ACR) and late Holocene Neoglacial; fish spawning runs and seasonality of site use; fat-rich foods in spring; mass capture of fish (baskets, weirs, drag screens) and fishing in rock art; Robberg Industry bladelets; food storage and delayed-return economies; seasonal mobility and overwintering at lower altitudes; limits of Kalahari ethnography as a model for the past; telling human from otter fish accumulations (burnt bone, no gnawing or digestion marks, otters eating and defecating at the water’s edge).
- **Statistics or models:** Number of Identifiable Specimens (NISP) and Minimum Number of Individuals (MNI) by layer and taxon; fish densities (NISP per cubic metre); fish/mammal index and large ungulate/fish index (after Broughton 1994); radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dates calibrated with OxCal 4.2.4 and SHCal13. Inconsistencies in the chapter: for Likoaeng Layer XIII the text gives a mammal NISP of 414 but Table 6.3 gives 910 (fish NISP 19,138 in both), and the text dates Layer XIII to 2978-2382 cal BP while Table 6.3 gives 3064-2382 cal BP. The Neoglacial layers at Likoaeng are given as Layers XIV-XI in one place and XV-XI in another.
- **Data type:** Existing data and review: fish and mammal bone from excavations at Sehonghong (1992), Likoaeng (1995 and 1998) and Pitsaneng (2000, John Hobart), all analysed by Ina Plug at the Transvaal (now Ditsong) Museum, Pretoria, combined with published palaeoenvironmental records. 14,333 identifiable fish specimens from Sehonghong, 918 from Pitsaneng and 61,241 from Likoaeng, plus about 1.3 million unidentifiable fish remains at Likoaeng. The records cover about the last 30,000 years.

## Synopsis

### 1. What they did

Much of what archaeologists think about Africa’s ancient hunter-gatherers comes from studies of living groups in warm, dry places such as the Kalahari Desert. The authors argue that this picture is too narrow, because Africa’s past climates were often much colder than today. Studies of hunter-gatherers worldwide (by Lewis Binford) suggest that people living in cold places cannot rely mainly on plants and tend to turn to fish and other water foods.

To test this, they looked at one of southern Africa’s coldest regions, the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains of Lesotho, “the roof of southern Africa”. They:

- Pulled together the climate record for the region over about the last 25,000 years, from plant remains, soils, glacial landforms and dated layers.

- Compared fish bones and mammal bones layer by layer at three archaeological sites close together on the Orange-Senqu River system: Sehonghong, Pitsaneng and Likoaeng. Together these hold one of the largest collections of freshwater fish remains in Africa south of the Sahara.

- Asked whether people fished more in cold periods, which fish they caught and in which season, and what this means for how people moved, made tools and stored food.

### 2. What they found

Climate

- There were at least three sharply cold periods: about 24,000 to 18,000 years ago (the Last Glacial Maximum, LGM), about 14,800 to 13,700 years ago (the Antarctic Cold Reversal, ACR), and about 3,500 to 2,000 years ago (the Neoglacial).

- In these periods, cold alpine grasses, which are poor food for grazing animals, spread hundreds of metres down the slopes into the river valleys. At Likoaeng the Neoglacial drop was at least 400 m, with temperatures at least 2.5°C lower than today.

Fishing and cold

- Fishing peaked at Sehonghong about 25,000 to 24,000 years ago (start of the LGM) and about 14,900 to 12,600 years ago (the ACR), and at Likoaeng about 3,000 to 1,750 years ago (the Neoglacial). In warmer periods people ate relatively little fish.

- At Likoaeng, fish bones massively outnumber mammal bones from about 3,000 years ago, and hunting of large hoofed animals dropped sharply at the start of the Neoglacial.

- One exception: after the Neoglacial, fishing stayed high at Likoaeng into the first millennium AD, and Sehonghong’s richest fish layer also dates to this time.

Which fish, and when

- The smallmouth yellowfish made up at least 80% of fish at Sehonghong in every layer, which suggests the site was used mainly in summer.

- At Likoaeng the Orange River mudfish dominates most layers. The mudfish spawns in the rapids next to the site from spring to midsummer, mainly in November, so people probably camped there to catch the spawning runs. Mudfish build up fat before breeding, which would have made them valuable in spring, when game animals are thin and few plant foods are ready.

- During the coldest Neoglacial layers the smallmouth yellowfish, which tolerates colder water and spawns later (peak in January), took over, so people probably camped there later in summer.

- The Neoglacial layers also hold the most small and immature fish, which may point to non-selective mass capture with baskets, fences and drag screens. Fishing and fish traps appear in the region’s rock art, including a panel next to Likoaeng.

Who left the bones

The authors are confident people, not animals, collected the fish: many bones are burnt, none show gnawing or digestion, and they lie with charcoal and stone tools. Otters, the only regular fish-eaters among the animals found, usually eat in the water and leave droppings at the water’s edge, and the crabs that make up much of their diet are almost absent.

Storage and movement

- There is no sign that fish were dried or smoked for storage at Likoaeng; the large catches more likely fed spring and summer gatherings.

- In cold periods people seem to have crowded into the deep river valleys, with higher ground visited less often.

- The earliest known Robberg bladelet tools in southern Africa appear at Sehonghong just before the LGM.

### 3. What they concluded

- Highland hunter-gatherers turned to river fish when cold periods made game and plant foods harder to find, as Binford’s worldwide studies predict.

- Cold periods probably pushed people into the river valleys, and may have encouraged mass-capture fishing and more reliable multi-part hunting tools.

- People did not appear to store fish. They may have avoided needing to by spending winters at lower, warmer altitudes in KwaZulu-Natal or the Eastern Cape, but seasonal movement in the region is still poorly understood.

- Ancient hunter-gatherers in southern Africa did things with no parallel in Kalahari ethnography. Archaeologists should test the record against wider theory about hunter-gatherers rather than relying on Kalahari groups as the model.

### 7. Implications for conservation (from the paper)

- Fish were probably far more plentiful in highland Lesotho before soil erosion, overgrazing and invasive trout. Archaeological fish were larger than any recorded recently in highland Lesotho and larger than the southern African angling records.

### 8. Implications for tracking (Original Wisdom's observations)

_These are Original Wisdom's observations, not the authors'._

- The authors’ reasoning about who collected the fish reads like sign interpretation: burning, the absence of gnawing and digestion marks, what lies alongside the bones, and where otters usually feed and leave their droppings.

## Cite this summary

Lawrence, K. 2026. Summary of: Beyond the Shadow of a Desert: Aquatic Resource Intensification on the Roof of Southern Africa (Stewart and Mitchell, 2018). Original Wisdom, Tracking Literature. https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2018-stewart-mitchell-beyond-shadow-desert-aquatic/