John Parkington | |
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Alma mater | Cambridge University |
Known for | Hunter-gatherers Paleoenvironmental reconstruction and Human ecology Prehistoric art Coastal archaeology |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Archaeology |
Institutions | University of Cape Town |
Thesis | Follow the San: an analysis of seasonality in the prehistory of the south western Cape (1977) |
Doctoral students | Hilary John Deacon Janette Deacon |
Website | John Parkington at UCT |
John Parkington FRSSAf is an Emeritus professor in archaeology and hunter-gatherers, Paleoenvironmental reconstruction and human ecology, prehistoric art, and coastal archaeology. [1] [2] He has suggested that since fish provide an important nutrient for the brain, the consumption of fish led to the emergence of the first really intelligent humans in the Western Cape region of South Africa. [3] In February 2000 South African President Thabo Mbeki mentioned the letter he had received from Parkington, regarding the protection of archaeological heritage sites, in his address at the opening of South Africa's Parliament. [4]
Parkington received his education at Cambridge University where he completed a BA (Hons.) in Paleolithic Archaeology in 1966. In the same year he was appointed Junior Lecturer at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and promoted to Lecturer in 1971. He completed his MA at Cambridge in 1973 and was appointed Associate Professor of Archaeology at UCT in 1976. [1]
Parkington completed his PhD in Paleolithic Archaeology in 1977 with a thesis entitled: "Follow the San: an analysis of seasonality in the prehistory of the south western Cape" and was appointed Professor of Archaeology at UCT in 1986. [1]
He has been a Visiting Professor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley in semesters during 1983, 1984, 1985 and 1995. In 1988 he was Visiting Professor at the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University and in 1996 at Institut du Quaternaire, University of Bordeaux, Talence, France. [1]
In 2002 Parkington started the Clanwilliam Living Landscape Project, a sustainable jobs initiative, in which local inhabitants of the area were trained to interpret rock art and act as tour guides. [6] [7]
The Northern Cape is the largest and most sparsely populated province of South Africa. It was created in 1994 when the Cape Province was split up. Its capital is Kimberley. It includes the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, part of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park and an international park shared with Botswana. It also includes the Augrabies Falls and the diamond mining regions in Kimberley and Alexander Bay.
The University of Cape Town (UCT) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university status in 1918, making it the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest university in Sub-Saharan Africa in continuous operation.
Elands Bay is a town in South Africa, situated in the Western Cape Province, on the Atlantic Ocean, at 32°18′S18°19′E. The town is located about 220 kilometres north from Cape Town. It is a world class surfing location and is also noted for its caves, which have a number of rock paintings.
The Rhodes Memorial is a large monument in the style of an ancient Greek temple on Devil's Peak in Cape Town, South Africa, situated close to Table Mountain. It is a memorial to the English-born South African politician Cecil John Rhodes, was designed by architect Herbert Baker and finished in 1912.
James David Lewis-Williams is a South African archaeologist. He is best known for his research on southern African San (Bushmen) rock art. He is the founder and previous director of the Rock Art Research Institute and is currently professor emeritus of cognitive archaeology at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS).
The ǀXam and ǂKhomani heartland World Heritage Site consists of regions located to the South and North of Upington, respectively, in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa. The ǀXam and ǂKhomani people were linguistically related groups of San (Bushman) people, their respective languages being part of the ǃKwi language group. Descendants of both the ǀXam and Nǁnǂe include Afrikaans-speaking ‘Coloured’ people on farms or in towns in the region amongst whom the precolonial languages are either entirely extinct or can be spoken by but a very few people.
Wildebeest Kuil Rock Art Centre is a rock engraving site with visitor centre on land owned by the !Xun and Khwe San situated about 16 km from Kimberley, Northern Cape, South Africa. It is a declared Provincial Heritage Site managed by the Northern Cape Rock Art Trust in association with the McGregor Museum. The engravings exemplify one of the forms often referred to as ‘Bushman rock art' – or Khoe-San rock art – with the rock paintings of the Drakensberg, Cederberg and other regions of South Africa being generally better known occurrences. Differing in technique, the engravings have many features in common with rock paintings. A greater emphasis on large mammals such as elephant, rhino and hippo, in addition to eland, and an often reduced concern with depicting the human form set the engravings apart from the paintings of the sub-continent.
Diepkloof Rock Shelter is a rock shelter in Western Cape, South Africa in which has been found some of the earliest evidence of the human use of symbols, in the form of patterns engraved upon ostrich eggshell water containers. These date around 60,000 years ago.
Bongani Mawethu Mayosi BMedSci, MB ChB, FCP(SA), DPhil, was a South African professor of cardiology He was the Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Cape Town and an A-rated National Research Foundation researcher. Prior to this, he was head of the Department of Medicine at the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital. his research interests included rheumatic fever, tuberculous pericarditis and cardiomyopathy. He was a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa and a former President of the College of Physicians of South Africa and he headed numerous other biomedical organisations during his career.
Mussel Point also known as Mike Taylor's Midden (MTM) is possibly the largest of 13 megamiddens found along the South African West Coast. MTM is the only open site with remains from the early pottery period in the Elands Bay and Lamberts Bay areas at 32°18′S18°19′E.
Verlorenvlei Heritage Settlement is situated in the Piketberg District, South Africa. 32°19′ S 18° 23′ E. The settlement consists of surviving Langhius structures in what was once a thriving Hamlet on the shores of the Verlorenvlei. A remnant of this sort is unique and is the reason behind the site being declared a provincial heritage site.
Paternoster Midden is a megamidden on the west coast of South Africa. This megamidden has particular value, as it is one of the few megamiddens in existence that has such a rich and diverse faunal and artefactual content.
Judith Sealy is a Professor and South Africa Research Chairs Initiative Research Chair in Archaeology and Paleoenvironmental Studies and director of the Stable Light Isotope Lab in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cape Town.
#FeesMustFall was a student-led protest movement that began in mid-October 2015 in South Africa. The goals of the movement were to stop increases in student fees as well as to increase government funding of universities. Protests started at the University of Witwatersrand and spread to the University of Cape Town and Rhodes University before rapidly spreading to other universities across the country. Although initially enjoying significant public support the protest movement started to lose public sympathy when the protests started turning violent.
Elands Bay Cave is located near the mouth of the Verlorenvlei estuary on the Atlantic coast of South Africa's Western Cape Province. The climate has continuously become drier since the habitation of hunter-gatherers in the Later Pleistocene. The archaeological remains recovered from previous excavations at Elands Bay Cave have been studied to help answer questions regarding the relationship of people and their landscape, the role of climate change that could have determined or influenced subsistence changes, and the impact of pastoralism and agriculture on hunter-gatherer communities.
Floretta Avril Boonzaier is a South African psychologist and Professor of Psychology at the University of Cape Town. She is noted for her work in feminist, critical and postcolonial psychologies, subjectivity in relation to race, gender and sexuality, and gender-based violence, and qualitative psychologies, especially narrative, discursive and participatory methods. She heads the Hub for Decolonial Feminist Psychologies in Africa with Shose Kessi.
Brian A. Stewart is an anthropological archaeologist, assistant professor of anthropology, and curator of Paleolithic archaeology at the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology. He is also an honorary research fellow at the Rock Art Institute of the University of the Witwatersrand. His research focuses primarily on prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies of Africa, especially southern Africa. He is particularly interested in determining when, how, and where humans developed adaptive plasticity. Brian Stewart has directed excavations of many sites, mostly in Lesotho and South Africa, among the most notable are Spitzkloof, Sehonghong, and Melikane.
Kate Jagoe-Davies was a South African artist and anti-apartheid and disability rights activist.
Carolyn Williamson is a South African virologist and microbiologist who is a professor of medical virology at the University of Cape Town. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa and the African Academy of Sciences, and a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. Her research focuses on HIV vaccine development and prevention of the disease.