Bokoni Terracing

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The stonewalled and terraced settlement in Bokoni between the towns of Ohrigstad and Coralina in Mpumalanga Province is believed to be dated around the sixteenth century. The geographic location, in its political and economic context, suggests that the Bokoni community acted as intermediaries for international trade between the east coast around Maputo, supplied cattle and agricultural surplus from inland regions to the coast, and also facilitated regional trade with inland agriculturally less-productive areas. Thus, the Bokoni community had a need to develop methods to produce agricultural surplus for international and regional trade by introducing new crops - principally  maize - to the area.
        The extensive agricultural terracing, as well as the walled cattle roads, suggest that there was a close integration between animal husbandry and crop cultivation in Bokoni. The terraces show a wide variation from well-built vertical walls to low irregular lines of stone and earth. The stone boundary served several purposes, including clearing stones from the farm land to facilitate cultivation, retaining soil at the site of the alignments, and impeding and spreading water runoff. The research on the profile of soil in Verlorenkloof suggested that the terrace was not formed as a singular effort before mass cultivation but rather as an incremental process of clearing the land, building walls, turning back soil, and smoothing back soil.

Image source:  Widgren, Mats, Tim Maggs, Anna Plikk, Jan Risberg, Maria H. Schoeman, and Lars-Ove Westerberg. “Precolonial Agricultural Terracing in Bokoni, South Africa: Typology and an Exploratory Excavation.” Journal of African Archaeology 14, no. 1 (November 1, 2016): 9, 16. https://doi.org/10.3213/2191-5784-10281.