Search

Researchers in the tightly enmeshed disciplines of leadership, strategy, organizations, and management have long found it helpful to test their theories through variable-based, process-based, and episode-based studies of organizational resilience in extreme enacted environments, such as wildland firefighting, high-altitude mountaineering, and special warfare operations. One of the foundational tools in the study of organizational resilience is cosmology episode studies, the rigorous analysis of the complex processes that take place before, during, and after a perturbation, disruption, crisis, disaster, or catastrophe. This cosmology episode study of the 17 July 2014 shootdown by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) helps expand resilience leadership judgment from a simple three-phase model (before, during, after) to a more accurate five-phase model (anticipating, sense-losing, improvising, sense-remaking, renewing). More specifically, anticipating takes place before a potential catastrophe, sense-losing occurs in response to the appearance of a catastrophe, improvising generates potential solutions in the critical liminal period of a catastrophe, sense-remaking enacts a path out of the catastrophe, and renewing takes place after a catastrophe.

This study examines mid- to late Holocene Later Stone Age archaeological residues – specifically flaked stone artefacts, ostrich eggshell beads and pottery – from Namaqualand, north-western South Africa. Through its implication in all models so far proposed, Namaqualand is crucial to understanding the introduction of herding to the southern African subcontinent. Despite numerous publications on early herding, many key debates remain unresolved. The study focuses on the northern and central Namaqualand coastline, but sites from other parts of Namaqualand are also described. The stone assemblages are grouped according to variation in materials and retouch and then, along with data from ostrich eggshell beads and pottery, analysed graphically for temporal and other patterning. A cultural sequence is then presented. Using this sequence, key debates on early herding are explored and a hypothesis on its origins is constructed. Indigenous hunter-gatherers occupied the region throughout the Holocene and made Group 1 lithic assemblages from quartz and cryptocrystalline silica with frequent retouched tools primarily in cryptocrystalline silica. A new population – likely Proto-Khoekhoe-speaking hunter-gatherers with limited numbers of livestock – entered the landscape approximately 2000 years ago. They made Group 3 assemblages from clear quartz focusing on backed bladelets. Diffusion of stock and pottery among the local population occurred during this period. Later, c. AD 500, a new wave of migrants appeared. These last were the ancestors of the historically observed Khoekhoe pastoralists; they made Group 2 lithic assemblages on milky quartz without retouched tools. Bead diameter generally increases with time and contributes nothing to the debate. The pottery sequence is still too patchy for meaningful interpretation but differs from that elsewhere. Overall, the differing cultural signatures in western South Africa suggest that, although many questions will likely remain unanswered, a better understanding of southern African early herding will only be possible with a study addressing all regions simultaneously.

This paper presents the preliminary results of an analysis of bifacially-worked artefacts from Soutfontein (SFT)-OOl, an open site in the Knersvlakte region of southern Namaqualand, South Africa. For over a century, finely- worked bifacial points have been known to occur throughout southern Africa (e.g. Lubbock 1869; Johnson 1907a,b). Such artefacts were first recognized in open-air contexts around Cape Town and in dune field sites such as Kleinjongensfontein and Biombos Sands (Minichillo 2005), and were subsequently noted in shelter sites from Namibia to Zimbabwe and from the Cape to KwaZulu-Natal (Peers 1927, 1929; Armstrong 1931; Jones 1949; Malan 1955; Wendt 1976; Kaplan 1990; Evans 1994; Vogelsang 1998). In recent history the focus of attention has been strongly directed towards assemblages of bifacial points recovered from stratified shelter contexts (e.g. Henshilwood et al. 2001; Rigaud et al. 2006; Jacobs et al. 2008; Wadley 2007; Villa et al 2009). This focus has largely resulted from the need to resolve outstanding issues concerning the relative position of bifacial point-bearing assemblages in southern Africa's cultural stratigraphy and more recently to provide Chronometrie ages for their occurrence. The results of this researchave been highly rewarding, with bifacial point-bearing assemblages having been dated to various periods in Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 5, 4, and 3 (Villa et al. 2005; Beaumont & Vogel 2006; Jacobs et al. 2008; Tribolo et al. 2009). While the production of bifacial points appears to peak in association with the Still Bay industry in which they are the dominant implement form, such artefacts are not restricted to that industry and occur both earlier and later.

This paper contributes to the very limited body of archaeological knowledge from the Northern Cape Namaqualand coastline. Excavations at two Later Stone Age open shell middens from this area are described and discussed. Both sites have finely crafted lithic assemblages and, although one contains possible cow bones, their faunal remains indicate a subsistence strategy consistent with a foraging economy. Although the bead and pottery samples are small, provisionally they may indicate a different interpretation to that offered for similar materials from the Western Cape. The spatial patterning among the shellfish at one of the sites supports our suggestion that the archaeological content of deflation hollows generally represents palimpsests of occupation. It is clear that further research will be required before significant patterns can be described for the Later Stone Age of Namaqualand