Kalahari Debate they are insufficient to be able to make such a claim. The same is true of the cattle bones found in Botswana. The small numbers of cattle bone fragments found on San archaeological sites have made scholars question Wilmsen’s argument. Kalahari Debate The Kalahari Debate is a series of back and forth arguments that began in the 1980s amongst anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians about how the San people and hunter-gatherer societies in southern Africa have lived in the past. On one side of the debate were scholars led by Richard Borshay Lee and Irven DeVore, considered traditionalists or "isolationists." On
Kalahari Debate Iron Age technologies at San sites, which both sides use to back their arguments. The San are a relatively small group of people whose communities are scattered throughout the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. They are well known for practicing a hunter/gatherer subsistence strategy (also known as a "foraging" mode of production). Traditionalists, including Richard Lee and other anthropologists, view the San as maintaining this old but adaptable way of life, even in the face of changing external circumstances. These anthropologists view the San as isolates who are not, and have never been, part of a greater Kalahari economy. The