ABSTRACT
South Africa has a long and proud history in physical anthropology, although the bulk of past research has focused on palaeoanthropology. However, as a result of the long time depths, wealth of archaeological sites and also the increasing numbers of remains found in forensic contexts, research into more recent skeletal material has gained considerable momentum. Historically South Africa followed the British system with regard to the training and educa-
tion of physical/biological anthropologists, resulting in the fact that most physical anthropologists are trained in medical faculties, or sometimes enter the discipline through the biology route. Therefore there tends to be a somewhat artificial barrier between archaeologists and physical anthropologists, with little cross-over between the two disciplines. Due to the unique burial practices in this part of the continent, there are very few large
archaeological skeletal collections from any specific site. Extensive formal burial grounds are rare, and it seems that in local Iron Age contexts it frequently happened that men were buried in the cattle kraal, while women and children were interred under hut floors or in living areas (Huffman 2007: 55). Most collections from particular sites are therefore small and resulted from accidental discovery. Notable exceptions here were the remains from the Mapungubwe and K2 sites (AD 900 – 1300) (Fouché 1937; Gardner 1963; Meyer 1998), but these skeletons were all repatriated and reburied (Nienaber et al. 2008). A catalogue of all archaeological skeletons housed in various collections across the country was published by Morris (1992a), although this needs to be updated. In contrast to the relative paucity of remains from archaeological contexts, South Africa has
some of the best modern skeletal collections in the world. The two most well-known collections are the Raymond Dart Collection at the University of the Witwatersrand (Dayal et al. 2009) and the Pretoria Bone Collection housed at the University of Pretoria (L’Abbé et al. 2005). These collections are unique, since they are both still growing due to the addition of recent, modern skeletons. This is very important, since research results based on these collections are not influenced by secular trend. Both these collections are large, and are frequently used by national and international researchers.
