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Identifier: annalso11011220032004sout
Title: Annals of the South African Museum = Annale van die Suid-Afrikaanse Museum
Year: 1898 (1890s)
Authors: South African Museum
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: Cape Town : The Museum
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library
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About This Book: Catalog Entry
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the links and the wrapped beads.Ml231 P and Ml231 Q were the only two pieces in this category studied metallo-graphically. In cross section they were flattened on the outside through wear, and somecold work deformation was present on the outer margins. Strips of flat wire were cutfrom gold sheet with a blade and wrapped around a core to form a helix. Individualwindings had characteristic trapezoidal cross sections (Fig. 12). Invariably they had beenwound with the two cut edges on the inside of the helix, to provide a smooth outer surface.Short helices may have been used as beads. The longer ones were made into bangles ornecklaces, sometimes combining more than one wound strand in a plaited arrangement, asin the bangle from the female burial at Thulamela. Discs were flattened prills made by hammering flat a large nodule. Many of them hadcracked edges (Meyer 1998:251, 252), and their use is unknown, but they were probablyprecursors to making sheet. 92 ANNALS OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN MUSEUM
Text Appearing After Image:
Figure 12 Etched cross-section through one segment of a helically wound gold strip from Mapungubwe, showing residual burrs at each end from cutting with a chisel or a knife, and angular annealed grains (56 x). Secondary ornamentation was limited to indenting, as in the pentagonally groovedgold beads. From Mapungubwe there were small sheets with raised areas, some of themindented with a round indentor from the inside to produce rows of knobs on the outside(Oddy 1984). There were also raised sheets decorated with linear indentations arrangedlike hatch marks on the outside (Meyer 1998). The Mapungubwe gold rhinoceros wasscored similarly to indicate hair on its rump. It was clear that the basic fabrication technology of the gold artefact types producedwas the same for all three assemblages, and that a standardised means of fabrication wasused to produce each of the four main different types of finished artefacts – beads, wire,sheet, and tacks. The tool kits used to produce these artefacts
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