Bokoni (meaning 'land of the people from the north') was a pre-colonial, agro-pastoral society found in northwestern and southern parts of present-day Mpumalanga province, South Africa.
[1] In spite of inaccuracies surrounding the term 'Koni' (having been used to describe an incorrect background as Nguni in a modern ethnolinguistic sense), it is still used in reference to the communities associated with Bokoni.
[8][9] Bokoni communities generally consisted of centralized, large villages, found on valley hills; with smaller settlements bearing similarities surrounding them.
The archaeological record for some sites depicts multi-layered roads, and excavations at Rietvlei have revealed cattle grazing areas placed directly on top of former agricultural terraces.
[14] Roads found at Bokoni sites are recognized to be the longest and most complex in pre-Colonial South Africa, and have few comparable systems elsewhere in the world.
These roads connect homesteads, and would have limited the movement of cattle throughout the area, while keeping terraced agricultural zones safe from grazing.
Terraces here succeed in not only organizing plots of farmland, but in making cultivation possible on the steeper slopes of the area, where soil erosion would otherwise prove problematic.
[14] These petroglyphs are known to be of high detail, and present artistically stylized depictions of structures in a manner that many other forms of South African Iron Age community engravings do.
[9] There is also an aspect of 'masculinity' argued by some to be present in the engravings of the Boomplaats area and beyond, potentially created by young male artists during cattle tending activities.
[14] Due to their classification as rock art, the Bokoni homestead engravings are protected under South Africa's National Heritage Resources Act of 1999.
[20] Location for these more strategically sound settlements has also been attributed to desire for better vantage points for hunting, or as culturally significant elevations to display dominance or leadership over other groups.
[24] Agriculture provided the primary source of food supplies for the Koni, proving exceptionally vital in a society where cattle were not a constant.
[25][27] At some point in the 19th century, possibly coinciding with a brief visit by David Livingstone, missionaries introduced plows and oxen as farming technologies to various groups of the Bokoni.
[32][33][20] Cattle were grazed at night to avoid the majority of insects, and vegetation associated with the harmful tsetse flies and mosquitoes were destroyed by means of fire and clearing.
[24] Resulting from a number of well-placed connections and many desirable exports, the Koni experienced great economic success throughout the occupation of the Bokoni sites.
At sites near Lydenburg, Badfontein, and Carolina, tools, facilities, coal; as well as finished products such as axes, picks, knives, spears, and hoes, were found.
The Koni are, for this reason, thought by many to be middlemen in a trade network, moving various metals and other items outwards and onwards towards the Delagoa Bay.
[1] Delagoa would have been one of many trade centers beginning to appear by the 1700s in the greater geographical region surrounding Bokoni - the Mpumalanga was starting to gear towards large scale economies.
Prinsloo[7] is usually considered to have collected the most thorough oral histories of Bokoni, having learned the local language of Sekoni, and having grown up among those who identified in the early 20th century as Bakoni.
[52] Motivations for this conflict vary between oral histories, but there is general agreement in that the Maroteng were interested in expanding, and sought to do so after the Koni-associated death of Mohube.
[3] Shortly following Dikotope's arrival at Orighstad, Thulare learned of the to-be alliance, and struck quickly against approaching Mongatane forces.
[52] While there was mild interest by academics during and around 1918 regarding the region's petroglyphs,[14] early studies of Bokoni sites between Orighstad and Carolina were undertaken starting in the 1930s.
[3] Beginning in the very late 1970s and continuing on through the 1980s, Dave Collet (at the time a masters student at the University of Witwatersrand) focussed on the Badfontein region to the south of areas studied by both Evers and Mason.
[3][18] Recent studies in the area include chemical analyses of stone terrace soil samples, as well as spatial analysis from GIS perspectives.
[49][14] Heine and Tellinger make claims of Bokoni sites to be, resulting from alignment with Great Zimbabwe and the Pyramids of Egypt, portals to other worlds.
[49] Early theories regarding site construction, especially those by van Hoepen in the late 1930s, attributed Bokoni to native populations of sub-saharan Africa.
[49] In spite of legislation, petroglyphs are frequently damaged by visitors: touching, scratching and graffitiing; but also by the natural movements of cattle and fires as well as illegal looting operations.
[1] While the sites of the Koni are generally considered abandoned in the modern era, the Bokoni landscape has been continuously occupied through all phases and into the present.
These groups carried totems that included the scaly-feathered finch, hyena, elephant, duiker, buffalo, crocodile, leopard, lion, and baboon.
[2] Some groups of Koni are noted to have found refuge and new lifeways at local missions, as highlighted at Botshabelo in the 2015 documentary Forgotten World.