Heritage Cases

The cattle teeth for this project are derived from herds that belonged to local Zulu people who resided at uMgungundlovu. Given the difficulty of identifying cattle remains from pre-colonial archaeological sites (Horsburgh & Gosling 2020), these historic samples offer the best opportunity currently available to us of investigating the ancestry of Zulu cattle and in the longer term, exploring the genetic relationships between cattle kept by different cultural groups and urban centres in deeper time of southern Africa. Today, two groups of cattle exist. Bos taurus form the majority of herds in Europe, West Africa and northern Asia. Bos indicus cattle are more adapted to dry climates and exist mostly across sub-Saharan Africa. In Africa, a third type exists known as Sanga (Bos taurus cf. africanus) and is considered an independent domestication in northern Africa, or the result of interbreeding between B. taurus and B. indicus (Horsburgh 2020). Available genetic evidence for cattle in southern Africa is scanty. One herd of Nguni cattle show relative homogeneity and only 2 specimens of archaeological cattle have undergone genetic profiling. This is mainly due to poor preservation of the DNA, but also that some samples that had previously been thought to be cattle, were found to be wild species after aDNA analysis (Horsburgh and Gosling 2020). Therefore, we know very little of the genetic make-up and gene-flow of prehistoric cattle in southern Africa. uMgungundlovu was the royal amakhanda of the Zulu Kingdom. Archaeological excavations at uMgungundlovu have sampled deposits that date to its main military headquarters between 1829-1838. Studies have shown that 98% of the faunal assemblage at uMgungundlovu is made up of cattle (Plug and Roodt 1990). Investigation into the provisioning of cattle at uMgungundlovu have shown that cattle were brought into the centre from a wide area, with half the samples analyzed being raised locally, and the other half being imported. The movement of cattle into uMgungundlovu seems to be complex with evidence of cattle being raided from outlying areas, brought in through tribute, and exploitation of the animals by the Zulu King (Fowler, Yang et al. 2020). This makes a genetic study of the cattle remains at uMgungundlovu the only method available to untie this complexity and to identify gene flow of cattle within the Zulu Kingdom. This application seeks permission to sample 17 cattle tooth specimens from the uMgungundlovu excavations. At this stage, we do not know how well-preserved the DNA in these samples is, and it may vary considerably from one depositional context to another. Investigating samples from different areas will give the best chance of recovering at least some usable DNA and will be helpful in planning further work. We also request to sample five cattle teeth from KwaBulawayo (Shaka kaSenzangakhona’s capital between 1820 and 1827) at the discretion of SAHRA, to increase the chance of obtaining intact DNA, and to use it as a comparative to the uMgungundlovu material. Since we do not have facilities or equipment for ancient DNA work in South Africa, the analyses will be done in a dedicated ancient DNA lab at the Ludwig Maximilians University (LMU) of Munich, under the supervision of Prof. Laurent Frantz, who is a world-leading expert in the genomics of animal domestication and archaeogenetics (ancient DNA). Over the past 5 years his research group has published over 30 papers focusing on population genomics of animals, including the first ancient pig genome (in PNAS), the first ancient dog genome (in Science) and the first ancient dire wolf genome (in Nature). With respect to this application, Prof. Frantz is now co-leading a consortium, together with Prof. Marle-Köster at the University of Pretoria, that aims to sequence the genomes of >250 modern African cattle, including >50 from southern African cattle. This modern data set will be compared with the data generated from the sample from uMgungundlovu and KwaBulawayo, which will offer a unique perspective on the evolutionary history of cattle in southern Africa. Because it is critical that samples are taken in a clean lab free of any possible contaminating DNA, it will be best to export these teeth to Munich so that small samples can be removed there, then the rest of the specimens returned to South Africa. This follows the precedent set by several recent studies of ancient human DNA in South Africa, in which whole archaeological teeth were temporarily exported, sampled in the labs that did the aDNA analyses, then returned to the collections. Sampling for DNA will focus on the tooth roots and is expected to leave minimal damage. The sampling will not damage the tooth crowns. This application therefore seeks to build an international partnership with world-leading ancient DNA researchers, as well as to investigate important questions about ancient cattle in southern Africa. In the long term, we hope to be able to compare the genomes of Zulu cattle with those of cattle kept by ‘Iron Age’ communities, and thus to gain a greater understanding of the origins of cattle-keeping in southern Africa.