Archaeologist debunks the myth of "the nearly naked Bushmen"
by Heritage Daily January 9, 2019
Bushmen of South Africa - Scanned 1880 Engraving
The San people of South Africa were not naked at all. They used clothes, jewellery, tattoos and scent to create and maintain social relations.
It is said that “clothes maketh the man”.
It is therefore a paradox that researchers have not shown more interest in the dress of the San hunter-gatherers, historically among the most studied groups of people in the world. Vibeke Maria Viestad, a senior lecturer at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History at the University of Oslo, believes this is so because of a prevailing myth about “the nearly naked bushman”.
“The San people dressed differently from us, often with a bare upper body, and were therefore perceived as naked when first met by Europeans. This view was commonplace in travel descriptions and early research and also found its way into modern anthropology of the 1950s,” she says.
The early research on “the others” – research often more racist than scientific – was often more concerned with the physiological differences between different peoples. Researchers measured the skull, rump and breast and were blind to the meaning of such cultural elements as clothes.
Extinct hunter-gatherer culture
Viestad makes up for these scientific sins of omission in a new book where she endeavours to find an answer to what dress practices meant to the San people who lived as hunter-gatherers in the area that is now the province of Northern Cape in South Africa.
More:
https://www.heritagedaily.com/2019/01/archaeologist-debunks-the-myth-of-the-nearly-naked-bushmen/122456