THEAFRICANS
There are no traditions of massive waves of migration into Southern Africa,
and it seems probable that the first mixed farmers filtered into the region in
small groups. Their movements are best described as a migratory drift, or a
gradual territorial expansion. Throughout
southeastern Africa, with its
poor soils and intermittent
droughts, it became customary for families,
headed, for example, by energetic younger sons, to break from established
village settlements and found new ones further south, or for chiefs to
extend their power by placing relatives with their followers in new localities
to extend their power.P Such events were still occurring in Lesotho and to
the west of the Kei River in the early nineteenth century. 26
Many aspects of the origins and spread of mixed farming in south-
eastern Africa are still unresolved. Most archaeologists
emphasize the
changes that took place in the farming culture toward the end of the first
millennium: expansion into higher ground, greater use of pastoralism in
addition to crop agriculture, and changes in pottery styles. They attribute
those changes to a shift in the source of immigration from an easterly to a
westerly srream.s? Others emphasize internal dynamics, as farming com-