Container

Museum number:

5-9872

Permalink:

ark:/21549/hm21050009872

Accession number:

Acc.2542

Description:

San ostrich egg with ash etchings and string. Used to collect water from sources in wet season and drunk from in dry season. Could be a missing stopper.

Donor:

Lynne Farmer and University Appropriation

Collection place:

Kalahari Desert, Southern Africa

Verbatim coll. place:

Kalahari Desert; Bushmen

Culture or time period:

San

Materials:

Eggshell (animal material) (ostrich)

Object type:

ethnography

Object class:

Containers (receptacles)

Function:

1.5 Household

Accession date:

1969

Context of use:

These are San water containers made from ostrich eggs with stoppers and an ash design meaning they were most likely used for drinking. In the Kalahari Desert, people get their water from wells in calcrete areas and groundwater trapped in upper sand layers. Pools also form during the wet season in which water can be obtained and wells were deepened in order to access even more water. Accessing water in the dry season was often a challenge, one of the ways San people coped with this was by storing water from the wet season in these ostrich eggs and then storing them so they were readily available when most of the sources were dry. It’s clear that the San were frugal when it came to water in the wake of climate change, but they also do receive aid from the Bostwanan government and also engaged in shamanistic-like rain-making rituals. However the government’s intervention in this case is a double-edged sword since it also groups people into denser settlements and increases competition for water. Climate change is a salient issue in the Kalahari Desert since it continues to see reduced rainfall and make the existing water less safe to drink. San people have voiced their concern for their environmental predicament and have advocated for wind-powered borehole drilling and pumping, for example. Overall, the San have become further impoverished and have made the connection that much of this is due to climate change. Ostrich eggs are hardly as effective as they once were.

Department:

Africa (except Ancient Egypt)

Comment:

cf. 5-515, 5-9871 Crate, Susan A., and Mark Nuttall, eds. Anthropology and climate change: from encounters to actions. Routledge, 2016.

Loans:

S1974-1975 #70: M. H. de Young Memorial Museum (March 4, 1975–May 7, 1975)

Images:

Legacy documentation: