A General Review of the Early Iron Age of the Southern Half of Africa

Summary The initial phases of the Iron Age in many areas of southern Africa have been recognised as forming a single inter-related archaeological complex which may be correlated with some confidence with the initial spread of Bantu speech. This article attempts to draw together the available archaeological evidence from the whole of this complex and to make deductions concerning the internal relationships between different parts of it, based mainly on a comparison of the ceramics.