Cedarberg

The centrality of the Olifants River to human endeavors in the Cedarberg is evident in long-term patterns of land use, the geography of colonial land claims, and the history of human interactions in the region.

Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa 2008

Evidence of gender differentiation emerges in Cedarberg rock art, a sign of social structures that left few other traces.

Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa 2008

Although vexing, the absence of independent Khoisan or mixed-race buyers in Cedarberg auctions is understandable, given their liminal status in colonial society.

Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa 2008

Evidence of gender differentiation emerges in Cedarberg rock art, a sign of social structures that left few other traces.

Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa 2008

Despite the vagaries of individual fortune, we can see real continuities among settler households in the Cedarberg from the 1780s to the 1830s.

Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa 2008

6Recovering the contested history of the Cedarberg is a version of Norman Etherington's "heartland" shift. 5 Adjusting our field of vision lets us appreciate a different historical perspective.

Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa 2008

9Social diversity characterized the Cedarberg from the time of the first land claims until well into the nineteenth century.

Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa 2008

1Although inhospitable, the Cedarberg is far from uninhabitable or innavigable.

Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa 2008

The end of the frontier period in the Cedarberg was a culmination rather than a climax, a conjunction of processes whose cumulative effects were entrenched by the end of the 1830s — the point at which settler orthodoxy was unassailable.

Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa 2008

Homesteads in outlying areas such as the Cedarberg were almost exclusively loan farms — annual permits granted by the VOC to free burghers.

Belongings: Property, Family, and Identity in Colonial South Africa 2008