On signalling

While it may be tempting to read OES as a costly signal, it risks misrepresenting underlying cultural logics. For objects to serve as costly signals, they need to indicate the bearer’s investment as a marker of their fitness or status, but the temporal dynamics of hxaro exchange complicate simple cost-benefit assessments. Exchange is delayed in hxaro and its analogues because immediate reciprocation ‘indicates a desire to balance a partnership so that no obligations remain and it can be cancelled’ (Wiessner Reference Wiessner1998, 515). Only one exchange partner would possess hxaro goods at a given moment, incurring relatively little in the way of meaningful cost until the obligation is called upon by the other. Accordingly, possession typically signals displaced costs—those incurred by the maker, and then by those travelling to make the exchange, rather than the one who ultimately bears the beads. This displacement of investment makes attribution of cost, and thus of any related advantage, ambiguous if not misleading.

It remains that the objects do have significant information density, although perhaps not for cost. While Struthio camelus is ubiquitous on the subcontinent, OES bead distributions sometimes significantly diverge from the species’ historic range (as above; Stewart et al. Reference Stewart, Zhao, Mitchell, Dewar, Gleason and Blum2020). Explicitly thought of as (informational) exchange media, they imply the existence of social others at a distance, underwriting a capacity for human societies to imagine an extended social world. This is underwritten in turn by dimensional standardization. To standardize an artefact is to settle on its intended function or meaning (Stiner Reference Stiner2014, 61) with care for a recipient’s knowledge limitations (cf. Saint-Gelais Reference Saint-Gelais and Vakoch2014, 81). This is borne out by studies which have identified that, during periods of population (and thus information) siloing, the dimensions of OES beads increasingly vary between regions (Hatton et al. Reference Hatton, Collins, Schoville and Wilkins2022; Miller Reference Miller2019). During periods where intergroup interactions re-establish, this trend instead favours interregional standardization, reflecting an increasing dependence on reliable abstraction and messaging (Miller & Wang Reference Miller and Wang2022, 238). Interregional standardization of OES beads serves to downplay cultural differences (Stewart et al. Reference Stewart, Zhao, Mitchell, Dewar, Gleason and Blum2020, 6461), allowing a wearer to ‘envelop […] oneself in others’ (Mitchell & Stewart Reference Mitchell, Stewart, Collins and Nowell2024), across the diverse potential meanings of the phrase. In the process, one’s expressed identity can take on the character of a mutually intelligible ‘third thing’.

Interpersonal identity transfer and fluidity is well established in southern African hunter-gatherer idiom (McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2014a; 2015b; discussion in Challis & Skinner Reference Challis, Skinner, Wallis and Carocci2021; Skinner & Challis Reference Skinner and Challis2022). OES beads are a palimpsest of animal components changed by human touch, and then by the compounded touch of all who have traded it in ritualized fashion. Wearing them, one ‘takes on’ or ‘takes in’ characteristic aspects of the social contacts who previously gifted the beads, those who carried them before, and the journeys taken in the process. In addition, there are the ‘homely’ connotations of OES as foodwaste-turned-artefact, and the ostriches and ostrich-places which are the points of origin. In this way, and considering their sometimes lengthy transits, the beads appear to signify more than just one’s capacity to invest time in making or trading in the objects themselves, but also a record of rich communication and social connectivity at a distance (Mitchell Reference Mitchell1996, 35; see modelling in Hamilton Reference Hamilton2022, 32–3).

As for what, precisely, is being communicated, there is a range of meaning-potentials. This includes animal potency, as Mitchell and Stewart identify (2024, 18–19; see also Sinclair Thomson Reference Sinclair Thomson2022). Ostriches have both physical and mythological stature, reflected in the taboos which apply to their consumption and use (Mitchell & Stewart Reference Mitchell, Stewart, Collins and Nowell2024, 18–19; citing Biesele Reference Biesele1993; Katz Reference Katz1982; Marshall Reference Marshall1999). Accounts emphasizing spiritual power have been influential in Kalahari contexts, bringing the extensive literature on San shamanism to bear (typically based, inter alia, on Lewis-Williams Reference Lewis-Williams1981; Lewis-Williams & Dowson Reference Lewis-Williams and Dowson1988). At the same time, other ethnographic contexts sometimes differ on the details. What follows is an examination of one such context—|Xam archival ethnography—not to foreclose other interpretations of subcontinental OES exchange on the longer term, but to assess what this particular corpus supports. Where the evidence diverges from that of other source contexts, divergence itself is a finding worth considering. In this case, subjects of particular concern are the taboos and energetics; not all restrictions map equally between source contexts, and animals can have ‘power’ even if they are not necessarily full of energy. Indeed, as I discuss below, the |Xam accounts suggest that spiritual potency was a matter of careful, skilled handling, precisely because of its dangerous and sometimes capricious potentials—a quality that might sit uneasily with objects intended to circulate widely among kin, children and other subjects of care, as stabilizing media of trust. Here I offer some further elaborations on these subjects, drawing from the |Xam source context both because interpretation is more rigorous when it proceeds from a broader analogical base (after Mitchell Reference Mitchell2009), but also because I think it better supports the overall conclusions being drawn (viz. those in Mitchell & Stewart Reference Mitchell, Stewart, Collins and Nowell2024; Stewart et al. Reference Stewart, Zhao, Mitchell, Dewar, Gleason and Blum2020).

Specifically, I look to a southern arm of the San ethnographic corpus: the |Xam of the nineteenth-century Orange River frontier, southern Africa, whose testimonies are recorded in the Bleek-Lloyd archive ^{Footnote 1} (see Bleek Reference Bleek1874; Bleek & Lloyd Reference Bleek and Lloyd1911; Hollmann Reference Hollmann2004; and, inter alia, Hewitt Reference Hewitt2008; McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2012). They speak ably to rock-art interpretation alongside northern (viz. Kalahari) sources (Lewis-Williams Reference Lewis-Williams1992), and have much to offer considerations of OES exchange, precisely because of the divergences in interest and emphasis from the Kalahari materials. Most significant are the things the |Xam archives articulate explicitly—we can look to how other hunter-gatherer lineages imagined ostriches’ tangible and intangible properties, and how these properties then inflected the objects which then became part of interpersonal human–animal palimpsests.

I describe below how the |Xam emphasize the territorialized nature of ostriches as resources, and how this fits into the defining fields of the landscape; how ostriches’ connections to human communities translate to a duty of care from those humans whose lives intersect with theirs, and how this frames the habitual role of ostriches and ostrich eggs as highly socialized fallback resources; how the transit of bodily properties is not primarily one of tangible characteristics, but rather metaphorical ones, descended from the social significance of ostriches; and how these manifest notions of origin, home, social responsibility and the characteristics of humanity. OES beads contribute to one’s ‘embodied capital’ (Stutz Reference Stutz2020, 15), the social cache held by one’s physical form, identity and ontological composition.

To trade in OES is to reference ‘home’ as the foundation of stable social interaction. OES is a domestic material, part of the register of objects and behaviours that are part of making home what it is. On shifting, fluid hunter-gatherer landscapes (see Skinner Reference Skinner2023), the world is ‘contextually delimited’ (Ingold Reference Ingold2000, 47); that is, space is defined less by fixed locations than by the types of relationships and activities that are routine within them. We could say, simply, that space is ‘what people do, not where they are’ (Corsín Jiménez Reference Corsín Jiménez2003, 140). In this context, home becomes a quality of social interaction rather than a set of coordinates. It is created wherever people engage in the reciprocal relationships that are characteristic of domestic life.

In such a world, OES beads act as a beacon. They are a standardized indicator of home which communicates the corresponding notions even if the bearer walks in unfamiliar, unhomely places. Rather than viewing OES beads ‘as assurances of access to resources’ (Stewart et al. Reference Stewart, Zhao, Mitchell, Dewar, Gleason and Blum2020, 6453) per se, they additionally act as powerful assurances of conduct. They indicate that one has been trusted before, presumably by a third party who thought it in their interest to draw such a person into a web of mutual obligation. To see OES described as a maker of ‘human-ness’, as Dowson does (1989; see Mitchell & Stewart Reference Mitchell, Stewart, Collins and Nowell2024, 17), we can understand them as a kind of surety, even to a hitherto stranger, that the bearer would hold to the standards of humanity.

On kin

The strength of hxaro-analogue exchange is in its capacity to invoke a predetermined relationship selectively, and this discussion deals at length with the mechanics of relation. It is, however, hard to deal with relation without touching on the notion’s own conceptual relative: kinship, a baggage-laden topic in anthropology. As the (in)famous quote goes, ‘kinship is to anthropology what logic is to philosophy or the nude is to art; it is the basic discipline of the subject’ (Fox Reference Fox1967, 10; cf. Lévi-Strauss Reference Lévi-Strauss1965; Radcliffe-Brown Reference Radcliffe-Brown1941). Like any pivotal concept, it has subsequently been subject to extensive contestation and redefinition (e.g. Kuper Reference Kuper2018), although its legacies are persistent (Godelier Reference Godelier2011). Relevant here is how patterns of exchange, sharing and gifting are typically contoured by kinship (Ingold Reference Ingold, Lee and Daly1999).

For example, in the |Xam archive there are explicit contrasts drawn between kwai:i (‘to distribute’ to other people: Bleek Reference Bleek1956, 110) and |ken (‘to share’ with ‘mates’/family: Bleek Reference Bleek1956, 309; discussion in McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2012, 258). Taking this at face value, there is risk in apprehending kin relationships in primarily consanguineal or affinal terms, as may be the anthropological prerogative. While genealogical kinship structures do regulate sharing of subsistence yields (McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2012, 184–8, 192–3), these structures come with some significant fluidity.

These are among numerous other overlapping systems of kin classification (e.g. Bleek Reference Bleek1923; see also Wiessner Reference Wiessner1998, 515), typically composed of invoked or volitional partnerships, although these are in several respects practically equivalent to genealogical ones. This includes the ‘name relationship’, binding like-named individuals in both kinship and the corresponding exchange/sharing obligations. More well known in the Kalahari (Lee Reference Lee, Biesele, Gordon and Lee1986), there are parallels in the |Xam archive (the ‘old-name-young-name’ relationship: Bleek Reference Bleek1923, 57-701; cf. Lee Reference Lee, Biesele, Gordon and Lee1986, 77; ‘name-sake relationships’: McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2015b, 271). However, appellative practices also open the door for even more abstract, affective connection, and/or connections made in recognition of shared history (see gen, ‘to give a name’: Bleek Reference Bleek1956, 46; glossed as nicknaming: LL.VIII.32.8808’; McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2012, 395). Amongst one’s names, one might count a number of names received from others, or arrived at through defining moments in one’s life, each offering novel forms of connection to their namers. These translate to diverse kinship possibilities, which are ‘obviously of great benefit in tying society together by making close kin out of distant strangers’ (Lee Reference Lee, Biesele, Gordon and Lee1986, 90), while at the same time greatly complicating the number and variety of obligations one may be called upon to address.

This range of obligations notably extends to nonhumans as well, best seen in the regulation of hunting. As a practice, hunting marks a significant and somewhat risky moment of human/animal, interpersonal relation. The hunter takes on a predatory role relative to the prey animal (cf. Viveiros de Castro Reference Viveiros de Castro1998), risking the negative connotations and ontological consequences of assuming a ‘monstrous’ identity relative to a social other (sensu McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2014a, 12). This may be mitigated by recognizing, and more specifically invoking, their mutual obligations under the institution of !nanna-se (‘respect practices’: Hollmann Reference Hollmann2004, 66–75; to show respect, to avoid: Bleek Reference Bleek1956, 473). !nanna-se practices involve approaching an animal with ‘understanding’, a defined capacity for interpreting their demeanours, gained through immersion in their lifeways and empathy for their conditions (see McGranaghan & Challis Reference McGranaghan and Challis2016). Done correctly, the hunter’s conduct imposes a reciprocal understanding on the animal’s part, compelling the animal to recognize the hunter’s need, and thus to give of itself in a manner analogous to ‘correct’ sharing of resources amongst humans (McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2012, 188–91; Reference McGranaghan2014a, 12–13; McGranaghan & Challis Reference McGranaghan and Challis2016, 588–90; cf. Willerslev Reference Willerslev2007). In a striking parallel to hxaro, this sometimes assumes delay. ‘These respect rules all centred on the same principle: by behaving in a particular manner toward a certain creature, a person set up obligations that require it to behave in a certain way in its future relationships with people’ (McGranaghan & Challis Reference McGranaghan and Challis2016, 587).

In such a complex social environment, one could expect to be bound by obligations to a large variety of relations, both genealogical and invoked, human and nonhuman, with certain categories largely equivalent to each other. Simply navigating the world would involve a near-constant process of actively relating to others with this in mind, assessing first the signals of identity that structure encounters between social agents, and then the concomitant obligations each contact imposed (discussion in Skinner Reference Skinner2023; see also Challis & Skinner Reference Challis, Skinner, Wallis and Carocci2021). Exchange goods have a powerful impact in this context, first by externalizing a marker of obligation and standardizing it. This makes it possible to read certain patterns of obligation simply by seeing the bodies, and discerning the embodied capital, of those bound by it. Second, as these objects are physical mnemonics of (temporarily) abstract obligation, they permit one to greatly simplify their social surroundings, specifying ‘which of this myriad of relations one is responsible for, whom one “holds”’ (Wiessner Reference Wiessner1998, 515), by strategically placing the objects which themselves specify terms of obligation. In some ways, exchange stands in and perhaps supersedes less controllable forms of relation, affording a flexible, volitional path to kinship.

Struthio camelus

With some clarity on the structures of signalling and relation into which it falls, we can assess the implications of making exchange objects from—and making objects with—parts of Struthio camelus. ‘An object never ceases to be the material from which it was made’ (Parkington Reference Parkington2002, 44), and this remains true here. The human adorned with animal components is a palimpsest of their own physical properties and the ‘animal envelope’ around them, still infused with the qualities of the being it once was (Guenther Reference Guenther2020, 376; see also Lewis-Williams Reference Lewis-Williams2015, 121; Skinner & Challis Reference Skinner and Challis2022, 122). There is an immutable ‘link between the artefact and its origin[s]’ (Parkington Reference Parkington2002, 44) that retains even as the artefact becomes more abstracted from its source. To relate so intimately to an animal that one wears its body against theirs is to take on its status and associations, and one comes to be determined by many of the social characteristics as the animal is/was. In effect, what we can assess is how ostrich ‘gets into the skin’. This is largely regulated by !nanna-se, just as other interpersonal entanglements are (McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2012, 140). One negotiates physical changes or connections through their social implications (cf. McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2014a).

A familiar account emphasizes the spiritual potency of ostriches, and how this carries into objects made of them. There are reasons to consider this quite seriously. For example, it can be argued that the birds are associated with notions of rebirth or resurrection (e.g. Low Reference Low2009, 82; Mitchell & Stewart Reference Mitchell, Stewart, Collins and Nowell2024, 16; citing Bleek & Lloyd Reference Bleek and Lloyd1911, 139; see WB.XII.1171–1190; Hewitt Reference Hewitt2008, 182; ‘with the exception of the moon and the Male Ostrich, all other things mortal are said to die outright and not to come to life again’: Bleek Reference Bleek1875, 13–14). Similarly, some prominent avoidances apply to ostrich products at inflection points in people’s lives (e.g. with respect to young women’s puberty rituals: Mitchell & Stewart Reference Mitchell, Stewart, Collins and Nowell2024, 18, citing Marshall Reference Marshall1999; see also Hewitt Reference Hewitt2008, 205–11; Wessels Reference Wessels2007), further implying that the energetics are significant.

There is a question to ask at this juncture: what does ostrich potency do in the context of OES exchange objects? What motivates the choice of something powerful for this application? It could be that an object’s energetic profile imbues the bearer with a capacity to draw out and achieve ‘things of consequence’ from the cosmos (Mitchell & Stewart Reference Mitchell, Stewart, Collins and Nowell2024, 17, citing Low Reference Low2011, 300). It is also reasonable to say that taboos imply energetics; things of power are consequential precisely because of their capacity to change the world, and thus avoidance of powerful influences—especially at formative or important moments in one’s life—safeguards the process.

However, there are (a) a variety of reasons for these avoidances which are not necessarily connected to their energetics, and (b) specific consequences for agents or objects being ‘charged’ with energy/potency which would complicate the common, domestic use of OES artefacts. For example, some notable avoidances worked to guide new adults in navigating their changing, often performatively gendered relationships to other members of their home range (McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2014a, 4). A good example of this is the use of a xabbu, an OES drinking flask, by new maidens amongst the |Xam (LL.V.2.3879'), starkly contrasting the ‘most stringent’ prohibition on use or even contact between young women and OES objects during menarche in the Kalahari (Mitchell & Stewart Reference Mitchell, Stewart, Collins and Nowell2024, 18, citing Marshall Reference Marshall1999). In the |Xam example, the xabbu flask works by way of a small aperture and thin reed straw to constrain a young woman’s consumption of water, a material metaphor for appropriate patterns of consumption as she transitions into adulthood. This is part of a wider complex of ‘modest’, restrictive material culture which helped frame her increasingly ‘contestable definitions of femininity, fertility and moderation’ (see McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2012, 155–6), particularly as those expressions played out amidst male kin (e.g. LL.V.6.4394'–4397').

Although I emphasize the |Xam account, these normative and social capacities of OES ornaments have strong parallels in the Kalahari. When families assessed marriage partners for their children, attention would be paid to how generous potential parents-in-law had previously been with distributing OES beads (Marshall Reference Marshall1959, 349). When establishing the terms of a betrothal, similar attention would be paid to the size of the strings of beads offered in parallel exchanges (Marshall Reference Marshall1959, 352; ‘the only thing they do not like about beads … is the shortness of the string’: Marshall Reference Marshall1961, 242). When the terms of betrothal were contested, or the betrothals themselves surfaced other points of tension (notably, when adjacent exchanges had not been adequately reciprocated), OES beads could be used to balance outstanding obligations. Marshall’s (Reference Marshall1976) recounting of the ‘affair about a knife’ is an illustrative example, in which the inappropriate diversion of a delayed gift held up a proposed marriage. When the ‘correct’ recipient did not receive a knife that was previously ‘making its way to him in the ever-flowing currents of gift-giving’, he used an objection to his step-daughter’s betrothal to highlight the breach of protocol, an affair ultimately settled with a gift of OES beads and a blanket (Marshall Reference Marshall1976, 272–3). Using beads as conflict mediators appears prominent enough a pattern that there is evidence of European travellers and missionaries offering trade beads to San polities in the upper Seacow Valley, with a (relatively small) fluorescence of oyster-white trade beads suggesting cognate use to that of OES-mediated brokerage between indigenous communities (Saitowitz & Sampson Reference Saitowitz and Sampson1992, 100–101).

The implications of OES as power-full run somewhat contrary to these applications. What is n/um in the Kalahari (‘magic power’, Marshall Reference Marshall1969, 350; see McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2012, 415) is !gi: in the |Xam frame of reference (Bleek Reference Bleek1956, 382; cf. |ko:ξoξ-de, ‘magic things, magic doings, magic power’: Bleek Reference Bleek1956, 320; see McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2012, 408–9). !gi: was ‘the primary means by which !gi:tǝn [ritual specialists/shamans] “worked” their abilities to assist … or to harm others’ (McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2012, 414–15, citing LL.V.4.4179-4180; LL.V.10.4753; LL.V.20.5544-5545; LL.V.22.5758). Paralleling the occasional use of the term ‘fight’ for this energy (Marshall Reference Marshall1969, 351–2), the |Xam recognized the power itself as being potentially dangerous, to the point that it was characteristic of certain capricious/predatory identities on the landscape (discussion in Skinner Reference Skinner2017, 74–86). Where ritual specialists called upon these energies, they risked transgression in a process comparable to that of hunting—specifically, through the euphemism of (negative) energy transfer through arrows (Snow Reference Snow, Wingfield, Gibilin and King2020, 37–8), potentially entangling themselves with problematic identities (e.g. McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2012, 207–8). While !gi: usage certainly had positive applications, the corresponding mitigations required that the handling of !gi: be a domain of skilled, cautious behaviour, which had to be taught (LL.V.10.4744'; LL.V.22.5759).

This gives some context to Dowson’s (Reference Dowson1989, 90) statement that ‘the Kalahari Bushmen do not consider ostrich eggshell beads to contain n/um’, particularly as it came as a personal communication to Dowson from Marshall, Biesele and Wiessner, doyennes of Kalahari anthropology. Just like (poisoned) arrows, which could be used to acquire game by the same turns that they could murder, spiritual potency required caution and responsible handling. The widespread use of OES water flasks, described in fairly pragmatic terms without further observances (e.g. LL.II.6.629), and the conventional gifting of OES ornaments to children (Marshall Reference Marshall1959, 349) does not fully accord with something brimming with power, potential danger, and the attendant ontological complications. Rather, it seems that this would jeopardize the everyday use of otherwise straightforwardly domestic objects, to say nothing of the social implications of gifting something characterized by dangerous potential.

Returning to the notion of beads as communicative media, I believe it is useful to ground our interpretation based on what we can understand to be communicated in an exchange. What do the extended implications of trade in OES objects suggest about their significance? What would we expect if an object were defined more by its spiritual powers, than perhaps by its normative powers? Does the mother of a bride-to-be barter with an increasing density of spiritual charge? I argue that it is apt to see social commentary and negotiation as being where the ‘power’ lies here, and indeed, it seems that an emphasis on spiritual potency may too-narrowly frame the reasons something might be ‘of consequence’ (cf. Low Reference Low2011, 300). Power exists as the capacity to influence (McGranaghan & Challis Reference McGranaghan and Challis2016), but this has several forms. There is that which is notionally and sometimes phenomenologically (after Katz Reference Katz1982) equivalent to the boiling, buzzing energy of shamanistic practice, and then there is ‘power’ as a capacity for important interventions in the world. There are naturally some overlaps, but I urge caution when using potency—or ‘magical status’ (Low Reference Low2009, 82)—as the sole or primary explanation for the use of OES as reciprocal exchange media.

A thing of (social) consequence

From the above, it appears that |Xam material theory does not hold potency or energetic capacity as a defining characteristic of OES objects. Put another way, we can say with some confidence that spiritual power was not always the characteristic being invoked in exchange and, indeed, that it seems that an emphasis on spiritual potency risks too narrowly framing the reasons something might be of consequence. As we have seen, OES does have significant normative power, inasmuch as it is used to frame and condition ‘correct’ modes of behaviour. Aside from its role as the restricting/moderating xabbu flask, however, this does not speak to which properties of ostriches are invoked through the use of OES as the chosen material. However, given that OES exchange is a performative, highly socialized activity, we can ask: what are the social properties of ostriches?

For this, the following passage from the |Xam informant ǁKabbo is instructive:

The passage is long and dense, but we can draw out a few threads. The first is the evocative framing of the scene; a small group of people sit comfortably in the sun, grateful for the breeze on their skin. They share space and water, and talk ‘in peace’. They are not above subsistence concerns, however, and will soon need to hunt. Here ǁKabbo flags the appropriate course. They have no quarrel with their neighbours, and so should not interfere with the ostriches of others, but should rather ‘take our place’s ostriches; which they inhabit in quietness’. |Xam narratives frame quiet and stillness as markers of good temper, ‘correct’ upbringing and social maturity (McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2012, 392, 398), both synonymous with peacefulness (see definition of ǂgou: Bleek Reference Bleek1956, 648) and explicitly contrasted to antisocial/combative tendencies (LL.II.22.1986; LL.II.25.2264'–6; see McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2012, 452). Of interest is that quiet/stillness are also a characteristic property of ‘tame’ things, contrasted to ‘wildness’ (McGranaghan & Challis Reference McGranaghan and Challis2016, 585). While it may be tempting to understand ‘tameness’ here as a euphemism for agreeable tendencies, |Xam informants drew extensively on references to domesticated livestock to explain this and related notions (King & McGranaghan Reference King, McGranaghan, Wingfield, Giblin and King2020; McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2015a, particularly 534–7; McGranaghan & Challis Reference McGranaghan and Challis2016, 586, 590). Accordingly, this could be read as ǁKabbo describing ‘his’ or ‘our’ ostriches just as a pastoralist may describe ‘their’ herd of domestic stock.

This is further reinforced by the reference to human interventions in these ostriches’ lives. ‘He says to us, that his ostriches are here. Those he who, did take care of them; that it may scratch [and lay eggs] for him’. Ostrich eggs ‘“belonged” to the !xoe [place: Bleek Reference Bleek1956, 500], and created obligations to take of and treat “nicely” these resources’ (McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2012, 439). This compares closely to Ju|’hoan n!ore territories (e.g. Lee Reference Lee1972), typically associated with named individuals (see Deacon Reference Deacon1986) who had a say over their use. While ownership is implied here through controlled right-of-access to ostriches and ostrich-places, it comes with the obligation to manage both so as to ensure their future flourishing (McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2015a, 537–8). Ostrich eggs are a resource which ‘with the application of “care” can be relied upon to regenerate themselves’ (McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2012, 357). This can be directly compared to the management of bee hives by hunter-gatherers (Russell & Lander Reference Russell and Lander2015) and that of domestic bovids by pastoralists (McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2015a, 538), which allow for the ongoing extraction of honey and milk, respectively. The Ju|’hoan made similar comparisons, although it is also of note that ‘sharing of milk [and other regenerating resources] rather than the animal itself can allow for the acquisition of stock without transgressing ethical limits’ (McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2012, 357, citing Smith Reference Smith1990, 62). As one of Lee’s informants described, ‘we are not of /ai/ai’, where the interview was taking place; ‘/dwia is our earth. We just came here to drink the milk’ (Lee Reference Lee1972, 142).

Accordingly, while ownership is a strong thematic element here, the equally strong implication is a duty of care, and a capacity to share without compromising one’s own subsistence position. This becomes relevant as the passage implies its seasonal context. ‘The springbok went away to the springbok’s place [i.e. migrated]; he cannot perceive the springbok. Therefore, he must hunt, for he must eat old food’ (above). Springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis) are an antelope species prominent in |Xam narratives and subsistence strategies, to the point that it was characteristic of |Xam identity to be ‘people who kill springbok’ (LL.II.36.3244'–3245'; McGranaghan & Challis Reference McGranaghan and Challis2016, 591). Informants recognized that springbok population sizes were heavily influenced by prevailing rainfall, and that their migration appearances corresponded to the wet season (Roche Reference Roche2005). That the springbok had migrated away identifies ǁKabbo’s vignette as happening in the drier season. In this lean moment, however, ostriches—and specifically ostrich eggs—appear as a fallback resource; ‘for, he did take care of the ostrich which here, that he may do so, he go to bring its eggs, when the children are hungry’. Archaeological records substantiate this characterization. Ostriches are more resistant to drought, seasonal fluctuation, and latterly, European overhunting, than many other species, with their relative presence in archaeological contexts increasing as other faunal signatures decreased (e.g. Sampson Reference Sampson1994).

Ostriches are sedentary, and sometimes aggressively territorial (Lambrechts et al. Reference Lambrechts, Cloete, Swart and Pfister2000). The contrasting seasonality of resources like springbok is exactly the reason for ‘care’ towards ostrich resources; correct management involved controlling demand on resources which could otherwise be over-exploited (McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2012, 234), which then allow emplaced resources to stand in reliably for more seasonal ones. This practical concern translates ably to social ones; meeting one duty of care (to the ostriches one ‘owns’) facilitates the meeting of others (to one’s human obligation partners). While this is one passage, coherent logics can be found across the archive (see discussion of ‘nice’ behaviour in McGranaghan & Challis Reference McGranaghan and Challis2016, 587– 90; contrast with monstrosity in McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2014a, 12). It is not enough only to subsist, but to do so in the right way.

This doing of things ‘the right way’ was also what characterized home, with home being the place where social contracts ‘ran thickest’ (see discussion of the camp vis à vis the !kau:xu, ‘hunting ground’ in Skinner Reference Skinner2017, 154–7). It is the realm of the correct kinds of relation—the ‘nice’ (see twai:ĩs: Bleek Reference Bleek1956, 243; cf. McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2012, 40, 139–40, 169–71) or ‘understanding’ (ǁkwakka: Bleek Reference Bleek1956, 596; McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2012, 169–70) kinds—particularly as they relate to food and consumption (McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2014b, 676; see also soxa in the Kalahari; Vinnicombe Reference Vinnicombe1972, 201). Following the socially instructive, moderating and framing effects of OES flasks discussed earlier, and in the way that ostrich eggs are critical to meeting collective subsistence needs in tough times, the social properties of the OES material substrates become very clear indeed. Through the territorial character of ostriches, and the innate connection between the ostriches’ homes and the characteristic domains of responsibility of certain persons, the material evokes emplacement, responsibility and duties of care. From the principle that ‘the person who finds and takes the eggs in an ostrich nest owns the shells’ (Marshall Reference Marshall1976, 77), we can assume that it is the owner’s responsibilities and social relations being evoked when those shells become exchange artefacts. As those artefacts transit afield from the primary collection site/context, the hypothetical message becomes quite interesting:

In the ways that ostrich eggs have conditioned your social education in the past, I oblige you to condition yourself in future. Here comes this thing from an animal someone fostered, to whom they were connected in a place which was theirs; here is a piece of something someone called upon in a dire time, which they shared with their fellows. In the ways that others have previously met their responsibilities of care, in the ways that others have shared homes and relied upon others, and in the ways that others have relied upon ostriches in times of need, I desire to rely upon you.

Beautiful things

Aesthetic considerations remain—after all, OES beads are not simply stockpiled as exchange currency. Dress allows expressive modulation of the comparatively fixed properties of the body, making it a material metaphor for some combination of one’s intended and encultured interpersonal relations (Viestad Reference Viestad2018). This is helpful at this juncture. As far as dress both conditions and ‘sustains social reality’ (Hamilton & Hamilton Reference Hamilton and Hamilton1989), its signals are readable to social others. Thus, in the readings insiders offer of OES artefacts as dress, we can validate some of the implications of OES as the material substrate of those signals. This summary by Dowson offers an apt starting point:

Much like the earlier quote from ǁKabbo above, this benefits from layered interpretation. While the notion of ‘looking attractive’ seems straightforward—people use adornments to achieve positive assessments of their appearance—the |Xam understanding of attractiveness was deeply moral. Monstrous identities had physical traits which evoked disgust, characterized as a ‘moral judgement as well as an offence to aesthetic sensibilities’ (McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2014a, 5–6, citing Mittman Reference Mittman2003, 8; emphasis added). The contrast was ‘looking well’ or ‘looking nice’, derived from concepts of a:kən. This is ‘to be nice, good, comfortable, handsome, beautiful; to do nicely, well; beauty’ (Bleek Reference Bleek1956, 7). The notion strongly incorporates (social) competence alongside aesthetic value, and was ‘used to evaluate the attractiveness of traits, as when discussing physical appearance [while] less tangible traits, such as “sweet” behaviour in personal relations, might also be described in these terms … as were evaluations of expertise and skill: pots … and karrosses … were said to have been made or worked “nicely”’ (McGranaghan & Challis Reference McGranaghan and Challis2016, 588).

The equivalence between social competence and practical skill translates directly to ornamentation with OES artefacts. A good design should be subtle like a ‘person who walks softly through the bush back to camp’ (Wiessner Reference Wiessner1984, 201). This quiet- or still-ness is aligned to notions of domesticity, and in general, to the equivalence between signature minimization and ‘good sense’ (discussion in Skinner Reference Skinner2023, 475–8). A loud, immodestly talkative person was also read as one with impaired morality, and violent/consumptive tendencies, while the ‘still’ hunter was more successful (McGranaghan & Challis Reference McGranaghan and Challis2016, 585–6; LL.II.28.2531), and the ‘quiet’ listener able to hear the moral instruction contained in stories and talk. They were able to hear with all their ears (Rusch Reference Rusch2016, 884–5).

In this respect, we can read OES beads as a:kən material culture. Simply, they made one look ‘attractive’ in the sense that they communicated positive social attributes. This derived from both their normative power (as with the xabbu flasks) and their origins in the eggs which were curated fallback resources, which were in turn intimately bound in notions of care and the meeting of obligations. The aesthetic usefulness of OES beads when approaching spirits is instructive. Spirits of the dead (|nu-ka-!k’e: Bleek Reference Bleek1956, 74, 350, 419) retain some residual human identity, but at once have a characteristic empathetic and moral myopia (McGranaghan Reference McGranaghan2014a, 10; see discussion on ‘bad people’ and the |nu complex/assessment in Skinner Reference Skinner2017, 80–86). Spirits have lost their capacity for understanding behaviour, and thus offer us the gaze of the prototypical social other. Both |Xam and Kalahari sources encode some variant of this: by describing the perspective of spirits, they detail how OES beads would read from the simulated perspective of someone who does not share a moral framework. OES evokes social moderation through an appeal to the combined moral/aesthetic judgement of doing things ‘well’/‘handsomely’. From its material origins, OES brings the closeness of home, duties of care and mutual aid. In sum, it tells an other that ‘we are (good) people’.

This modelling of (human) personhood is strikingly echoed by Dowson and Biesele’s (above) observations. A Kalahari San man looked for the presence of OES beads to confirm that a shelter was once inhabited by humans; !Kung informants indicated that OES beads were among the physical markers of humanity. From this we can determine that the properties they communicate—the signals they encode—are the characteristic parameters of humanity. On a landscape where humans are not the only class of person (see Challis & Skinner Reference Challis, Skinner, Wallis and Carocci2021), the ‘set of habits and processes that constitute bodies are … the location from which identity and difference emerge’ (Skinner & Challis Reference Skinner and Challis2022; Viveiros de Castro Reference Viveiros de Castro1998, 480). In this case, human identity emerges from a characteristic tendency to exchange, to share, and to meet one’s obligations. This is embodied by a material which originates in the homely, care-ful relations between humans; and before that, in the tame, cared-for ostriches which could be depended upon in times of need.

Conclusion: a beacon of home

In a famous (and likely apocryphal: Lasco Reference Lasco2022) quote attributed to the anthropologist Margaret Mead, it is said that the earliest spark of civilization could be seen in a healed femur. As with much else, reality is likely more complicated than this, although the notion remains evocative. We can understand that human persistence and flourishing depends on collective adaptation, manifesting as delayed exchange and mutual aid. These principles reverberate through the hxaro-analogue trade in OES beads.

In this model, exchange is a defining characteristic of human communities. To engineer relationships intentionally within the respect conventions of |Xam ontology, and to meet the corresponding obligations, is as well. Thus, to wear beads—which carry associations with domesticity, reciprocity and mutual aid in difficult times—is to show one’s capacity for humanity. Dowson’s observation of the beads as markers of ‘humanness’ borders on the entirely literal. The beads are standardized to enhance their communicative capacity, acting as a readable indicator that the bearer has persistent relations of care and trust. Even to social others—even to those not even notionally human—that much is understood to carry over. Even an ontological stranger can read the implications of the human–animal palimpsest that is a person wearing OES beads.

Zooming out to the scales of time and space that these artefacts were used for, the OES material metaphor also incorporates notions of long-distance travel. An artefact which has transited hundreds of kilometres, just as such artefacts have previously done for time beyond generational memory, evokes the journey as much as it does the properties of the bearer. Travel, in turn, involves a process of continuous relation. One will meet strangers, human or otherwise, with whom one likely does not share precedent (see Challis & Skinner Reference Challis, Skinner, Wallis and Carocci2021). This risks problematic or dangerous encounters that come about due to misunderstanding or one-sided awareness of obligation. In these moments, the beads imply the negotiations which brought them about in the first place; intelligible expectations, and homely relations between people who understand each other at levels comparable to that of kin. As one moves from places of established trust, they carry a sign that they have been trusted before and thus may be trusted again, expressing the parameters of a particular humanity.

For this purpose, ostrich eggshell is an efficient conceptual currency, able to power the infrastructure of intergroup cooperation. It is a medium which vouchsafes certain kinds of conduct, and as social currency, its basic unit communicates safety, trustworthiness and the capacity for positive social entanglement. The presence of OES beads in archaeological contexts can be read just as the !Kung man reading them in the archaeological deposit in the Brandberg did: they show where the humans are. While I think it is worth highlighting some cross-cultural differences in the taboos, and thus the implied energetics, of OES artefacts, I believe that the depiction of the beads as a gloss of social difference and tool for cooperation (Mitchell & Stewart Reference Mitchell, Stewart, Collins and Nowell2024; Stewart et al. Reference Stewart, Zhao, Mitchell, Dewar, Gleason and Blum2020) is ultimately better supported for it. This is not to foreclose the possibility that potency was considered in OES exchange, generally or in other contexts, only to note that the |Xam materials do not appear to directly evidence it, nor would the point be entirely coherent with |Xam theory of OES energetics. The normative dimensions have greater support given these considerations, adding a perhaps under-appreciated consideration to the study of OES exchange writ large.

I conclude with another vignette; the death of one of the ‘last Bushmen of the Maloti-Drakensberg’ (Mitchell Reference Mitchell2010, 155), a near-mythical figure called Soai. The leader of a group of Maloti San in the mid- to late 1800s, he was among a group who raided cattle and horses from a range of pastoralist and settler communities in southern Lesotho and what is now the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu Natal provinces of South Africa. Although there are deviations in the exact sequence of events (Mitchell Reference Mitchell2010, 155–7), Soai and his followers were subject to retaliatory raids, and eventually cornered in the Sehonghong rock-shelter. What is less conjectural is his final appearance: the ‘last Bushman chief’ (Germond Reference Germond1967, 425) was wearing heavy, ‘beautifully worked’ belt(s) of ostrich beads around his body (Dornan Reference Dornan1909, 450). The characterization as the ‘last chief of the bushmen’ may seem ironic, given the typical assumption of hunter-gatherer egalitarianism, but it remains that he was remarkable in his way. Heavy with OES beads, he may have looked powerfully ‘handsome’, bearing the approval and normative power of engagements with a plurality of others, while ‘home’ for him was probably almost anywhere he knew. Such networks carried a protective weight: the accumulated assurance of allies, obligations, and places of refuge across a wide landscape. Reading the social significance of his dress, we might say that Soai met his end enveloped in the record of all the people who had trusted him.