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[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using material provided by eThembeni Cultural Heritage Management, 2018: In 1974 and 1975 members of the Archaeology Department of the University of Cape Town (UCT), led by Parkington, Mike Cronin, Cedric Poggenpoel, and Heinz Ruther, a survey specialist, explored the size and layout of the site and excavated. Parkington noted to the FHYA that his primary interest in the site related to the organisation of space. They were further assisted by Jeremy Baskin, John Wright, Chrissie Sievers, Simon Hall, Polly Scott and Frank Silberbauer. In 1975 advice was also provided by Martin Hall and Tim Maggs. During these fieldwork periods, permanent datum points were established over an area of the hillside that probably contained the whole site. Some 184 daga floors were plotted and recorded photogrammetrically, and 36 were excavated as individual units. One half of the pit in the Bheje area was also excavated. Amafa Pietermaritzburg holds 40 large cardboard boxes of artefacts excavated in 1974 and 1975. This material includes thousands of fragments of diagnostic and adiagnostic pottery sherds; also, some beads; and a small quantity of fragments of adiagnostic teeth and bones. The KwaZulu-Natal Museum houses most of the Parkington and Cronin material from these excavations. The FHYA arranged this material into 1974 and 1975 ‘subseries’ in which ‘files’ containing digital ‘items’ which consist of the boxes and their contents.]

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using material provided by eThembeni Cultural Heritage Management, 2018: In 1978 Oliver excavated material at uMgungundlovu. Amafa houses 5 cardboard boxes of this material. It was during these excavations that the bulk of the material excavated from Dingane’s floor was reputed to have been collected and this quite clearly constitutes the material now stored at the KZN Museum. The Amafa Pietermaritzburg material consists of some ‘metal remnants, faunal materials (teeth and bone), clay pipes, wooden remains, shells, ear plugs, earthenware, European glass and porcelain’. This material appeared to have been accessioned by Amafa Pietermaritzburg in 1978 and 1983. The FHYA arranged this material into 1978 and 1983 ‘subseries’ in which ‘files’ containing digital ‘items’ which consist of the boxes and their contents.]

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using material provided by eThembeni Cultural Heritage Management, 2018: In 1986 and 1987, Rob Rawlinson excavated at the uMgungundlovu site. In 1986 Rawlinson was employed as at the University of Zululand and secured research funding through the National Monuments Council to conduct his ancillary excavations at the site, under Franz Roodt’s excavation permit. Rawlinson transferred to Rhodes University in the early 1990’s and subsequently died in a motor accident. His collection of excavated material was later discovered at the University of Zululand and was returned to Amafa Pietermaritzburg post 2000. Rawlinson’s material is listed within the Amafa Register, where it is outlined as an integral part of the Roodt collection, even though Rawlinson’s excavation was entirely independent of Roodt’s work. Rawlinson’s excavation work took place around the uMgungundlovu lower entrance area and included hut floors and a refuse dump near to the lower entrance of the site. The FHYA arranged this material into 1986 and 1987 ‘subseries’ in which ‘files’ containing digital ‘items’ which consist of the boxes and their contents.]

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using material provided by eThembeni Cultural Heritage Management, 2018: Between 1983 and 1994 Frans Roodt excavated at the uMgungundlovu under the auspices of the Natal Provincial Museums Service. These excavations focused on the hut floors from the Bheje areas as well as the isigodlo and the eastern side of uMgungundlovu. eThembeni notes that they are unable to explain exactly which part of uMgungundlovu was excavated on each of Roodt’s field seasons, although this might be able to be done by cross-referencing the trench numbers in the Amafa Collections Register with excavation plan maps and sequencing data. Roodt’s most notable success whilst working at uMgungundlovu arrived in the form of the very important discovery of King Dingane’s hut, with its six-sided star shaped hearth, found within the isigodlo. Roodt’s work at Umgungundlovu was also supported through the work of archaeologist, Hester Lewis, who worked on site with Roodt for several years. Roodt did not excavate in 1984 and 1993. The 1984 excavations were probably postponed as a result of the proposed use of the site for the filming of the SABC Shaka Zulu series. The excavation work done in 1983 was financed by SABC and focused on determining the size and location of the huts in the isigodlo area so that the film series crew could reconstruct a portion of this area. Roodt’s material is housed in AMAFA. Roodt was also employed as the curator of the uMgungundlovu site and the associated museum that was planned for development. The FHYA arranged the Roodt excavation material into 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, and 1994 ‘subseries’ in which ‘files’ containing digital ‘items’ which consist of the boxes and their contents.]

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using material provided by eThembeni Cultural Heritage Management, 2018: In 1986 and 1987 Rob Rawlinson excavated at the uMgungundlovu site. In 1986 Rawlinson was employed as at the University of Zululand and secured research funding through the National Monuments Council to conduct his ancillary excavations at the site, under Franz Roodt’s excavation permit. His collection of excavated material first housed at the University of Zululand and was returned to Amafa post 2000. Between 1983 and 1994 Frans Roodt excavated at the uMgungundlovu under the auspices of the Natal Provincial Museums Service. These excavations focused on the hut floors from the Bheje areas as well as the isigodlo and the eastern side of uMgungundlovu. This material is housed at Amafa. Rawlinson’s material is listed within the Amafa Register, where it is outlined as an integral part of the Roodt collection, even though Rawlinson’s excavation was entirely independent of Roodt’s work. Rawlinson’s excavation work took place around the Umgungundlovu lower entrance area and included hut floors and a refuse dump near to the lower entrance of the site. Note that the FHYA is not sure which material belongs to Roodt’s excavations and which belongs to Rawlinson’s excavations at this time. The FHYA arranged this material into 1986 and 1987 ‘subseries’ in which ‘files’ containing digital ‘items’ which consist of the boxes and their contents.]

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA, 2018, using information provided by eThembeni Cultural Heritage Management: Material relating to the uMgungundlovu historical site compiled by eThembeni Cultural Heritage Management with eThembeni for the FHYA.]

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA, 2018, using the CD booklet “Series 10 The Collection of Father Franz Mayr: Zulu Recordings 1908” and information provided by Gerda Lechleitner via email correspondence in 2016: The wide range of informants recorded by Mayr included young schoolgirls, an old "traditional" healer, non-Christian Zulu people, and Zulus who had already accepted Christianity and European customs (at least formally)

Mayr’s recordings were originally made with an Edison recorder on wax cylinders. This collection originally comprised of 50 recordings made by Mayr. However, the recordings listed in the first catalogue of the collection as Ph 1795A, Ph 1799A-1799B, and Ph 1800, no longer exist. Although these phonograms are missing from the Phonogrammarchiv, their original documentation still exists.

A book about Mayr, written by Clemens Gütl (Gütl, Clemens. ‘Adieu ihr lieben Schwarzen’: Gesammelte Schriften des Tiroler Afrikamissionare Franz Mayr (1865-1914). Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2004), prompted the Phonogrammarchiv to publish the Franz Mayr Collection in 2006.

Mayr’s original notes regarding the recordings were sporadic – in some cases he gave very few details about the interlocutor, while in other cases he was quite meticulous. In the case of interlocutors without a first or family name, or interlocutors with isiZulu names, this usually meant that the interlocutor had not converted to Christianity, where European-style names indicated an interlocutor who had converted to Christianity. Mayr had a wide range of interlocutors from the Natal area. Mayr stated that, with the exception of Ph 1773 [CD 2: 23] and Ph 1775 [CD 2: 24], which contain recordings in isiBhaca, considered by Mayr to be a dialect of siSwati, the recordings all document samples of isiZulu. Lechleitner notes that one should be cautious of sociohistorical context when approaching Mayr’s protocols. Importantly, modern research shows that the isiZulu spoken in Natal during Mayr’s stay was a specific dialect called the ‘Lala dialect’ or the ‘Tekeza language’.

The Mayr protocols are published on a data CD as digital images. They are divided into a protocol header and a free text section. The header contains standardised information such as: personal data of the phonographee, location and date of the recording, a brief summary of contents, technical details, as well as the phonographer’s name (and profession). The free text section contains texts, sometimes also translations and musical notations. Among these there may also be transliterations, unpublished or already published elsewhere, sometimes in historical transcriptions. Occasionally, one will also find texts which have not been recorded (e.g. additional verses of songs).

The series is arranged in 2 subseries for Disc 1 and Disc 2, and further laid out so that each song and the associated original protocols, transcriptions, and accompanying booklet is housed in a separate file.]

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA, 2018, using material provided by Kevin Carney-Thompson: The plant matter and accompanying material (labels and catalogue cards) were photographed together in a single image by the Herbarium. They have been presented by the FHYA as single digital items within files.The material is gathered together on the FHYA website as a ‘series’ named the ‘Father Franz Mayr Collection’. Alongside the scanned and barcoded Mayr ethnobotanical specimens, the Herbarium also includes a 10cm scale bar and a colour reference grid, photographed together with it's accompanying label, catalogue card, 10cm scale bar and a colour reference grid.]

[Source - Debra Pryor for FHYA, 2020: Series contains the complete record of the CD booklet of 'Series 10, The Collection of Father Franz Mayr: Zulu Recordings 1908', as well as 'A Short Study on Zulu Music' by Reverend Father Franz Mayr, reprinted from 'Annals of the Natal Government Museum, Vol. I, Part 3, May, 1908' extracted from the Data CD.]

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using Wits materials, 2017: In 1970, Philip Bonner recorded a series of interviews, as a part of his doctoral research at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, under the supervision of Professor Shula Marks. Bonner’s work constitutes the earliest independent investigation of Swazi oral traditions and is informed by a set of concerns very different from those of earlier researchers. Not only do his interviews focus on regional specificities, but they address a set of issues shaped by the Africanist currents which influenced the writing of southern African history in Britain in the early 1970s. His work locating and recording local traditions served as a counter weight to the better-known royalist traditions. He also investigated Swazi oral traditions as much for what they could reveal about the Swazi interaction with the broader context of southern Africa as for what they say about internal Swazi relations. His research formed the basis of his thesis, as well as the book he subsequently published in 1983. In 1985, a selection of Bonner’s recordings was transcribed and translated in Swaziland by a number of students or graduates from the University of Swaziland working with Carolyn Hamilton. This process took place at the Swazi National Archives. In 2014 the Five Hundred Year Archive commissioned Patricia Liebetrau, a metadata librarian who had worked on the Digital Imaging South Africa project, to undertake the digitization of a selection of the transcripts from the recordings made by Bonner. The transcripts selected were those for which a typed-up summary or typed edited typescript already existed. The rationale for this was that the typed version, unlike the handwritten versions could be subjected to optical character recognition and are thus searchable. The linked typed texts therefore act as a kind of index to the handwritten texts and the recorded audio. This selection of transcripts, as well as the already digitized audio, the rejected experimental edited typescripts, and associated materials such as collection boxes, index cards, folders, audio tape cassettes and case labels, and notebooks, formed the FHYA selection from the collection of Bonner recordings. The Bonner series is separated into ‘files’ named after each interlocutor.]

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using Wits materials, 2017: In 1983, a series of interviews on the ‘precolonial’ history of southern Swaziland was conducted by Carolyn Hamilton. The setting of spatial and temporal limits to this project resulted in the accumulation of a denser body of testimony, with greater detail and more versions of individual traditions than in any of the other series. In addition to recording historical narratives, forms of oral data not found in the other series, such as clan praises, interclan relationship claims, the origins of clan names, and myths of origin, have been collected. In 2014 the Five Hundred Year Archive commissioned Patricia Liebetrau, a metadata librarian who had worked on the Digital Imaging South Africa project, to undertake the digitization of a selection of the transcripts from the recordings made by Hamilton. The transcripts selected were those for which a typed-up summary or typed edited typescript already existed. The rationale for this was that the typed version, unlike the handwritten versions could be subjected to optical character recognition and are thus searchable. The linked typed texts therefore act as a kind of index to the handwritten texts and the recorded audio. This selection of transcripts, as well as the already digitized audio, the rejected experimental edited typescripts, and associated materials such as collection boxes, index cards, folders, audio tape cassettes and case labels, and notebooks, formed the FHYA selection from the collection of Hamilton recordings. The Hamilton series is separated into ‘files’ named after each interlocutor.]

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using Wits materials, 2017: During the mid-1960s through to the early 1980s, Dumisa Dlamini conducted a series of interviews for the Swaziland Broadcasting Services and recorded them for radio. These interviews cover a wide range of topics, including traditions, nursery tales, praise poems, and stories of past heroes. Radio was an important media format in Swaziland at the time, and broadcasted interviews are likely to have had a strong influence on the historical conceptions of Swazi people. The transcripts selected were those for which a typed-up summary or typed edited typescript already existed. The rationale for this was that the typed version, unlike the handwritten versions could be subjected to optical character recognition and are thus searchable. The linked typed texts therefore act as a kind of index to the handwritten texts and the recorded audio. In 2014 the Five Hundred Year Archive commissioned Patricia Liebetrau, a metadata librarian who had worked on the Digital Imaging South Africa project, to undertake the digitization of a selection of the transcripts from the recordings made by Dumisa Dlamini for the Swaziland Broadcasting Services. This selection of transcripts, as well as the already digitized audio, the rejected experimental edited typescripts, and associated materials such as collection boxes, index cards, folders, audio tape cassettes and case labels, and notebooks, formed the FHYA selection from the collection of Swaziland Broadcasting Services recordings. The Swaziland Broadcasting Services series is separated into ‘files’ named after each interlocutor.]

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using Wits materials, 2017: In the mid-1960s King Sobhuza II commissioned a series of interviews about the history of Swaziland. These interviews were conducted across the length and breadth of Swaziland from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. They embrace a range of historical topics, notably the origins of the people of Swaziland, as well as the origins of its many chieftaincies. These interviews display a strong regional emphasis, and were conducted, in part, as a part of a program undertaken by the Swazi monarchy for the recovery and reinvigoration of Swaziland’s customs and traditions in the 1960s and 1970s. The transcripts selected were those for which a typed-up summary or typed edited typescript already existed. The rationale for this was that the typed version, unlike the handwritten versions could be subjected to optical character recognition and are thus searchable. The linked typed texts therefore act as a kind of index to the handwritten texts and the recorded audio. In 2014 the Five Hundred Year Archive commissioned Patricia Liebetrau, a metadata librarian who had worked on the Digital Imaging South Africa project, to undertake the digitization of a selection of the transcripts from the recordings made by Isaac Dlamini for the Royal House of Dlamini. This selection of transcripts, as well as the already digitized audio, the rejected experimental edited typescripts, and associated materials such as collection boxes, index cards, folders, audio tape cassettes and case labels, and notebooks, formed the FHYA selection from the collection of Royal House of Dlamini recordings. The Royal House of Dlamini series is separated into ‘files’ named after each interlocutor.]

[Source - Debra Pryor for FHYA, 2019: Series contains the A2760 finding aid, the Wits inventory for the Swaziland Oral History Project at Wits Historical Papers, as well as any other material pertinent to the collection.]

[Source - Cambridge University Library website, 2017: The Haddon Papers are housed in the Manuscripts and University Archives within the Special Collections of the Cambridge University Library. The collection includes items relating to Haddon’s life and expeditions, as well as lecture notes, professional correspondence, and a large collection of offprints. The FHYA selection of the Haddon papers focuses on material about Haddon and his involvement in the 1905 Natal leg of the British Association for the Advancement of Science tour of southern Africa. The FHYA ordered this material according to the arrangement set out by the CUL whereby each series is named ‘Haddon Papers’ followed by an identifying number demarcating different sets of material. Within these series, there are ‘files’, in which ‘items’ are housed.]

[Source - Cambridge University Library website, 2017: The Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives collection is housed in the Manuscripts and University Archives within the Special Collections of the Cambridge University Library. The collection includes all of the surviving historical paper records of the Royal Observatory from 1675 until around 1980. The FHYA selection of the RGO material focuses on the correspondences and the associated items relating to the 1905 Natal leg of the British Association for the Advancement of Science tour of southern Africa. The FHYA ordered this material according to the arrangement set about by the CUL whereby each series is named ‘Royal Greenwich Observatory’ followed by an identifying number demarcating different sets of material. Within these series, there are ‘files’, in which ‘items’ are housed.]

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using materials provided by Nessa Leibhammer, 2018: The FHYA selection of the items within the Brenthurst Collection was made by Nessa Leibhammer, who curated the Traditional Collections from 1994 to 1996, and then again from 2005 to 2013. This selection currently contains 16 items, and their associated material, which Leibhammer identified as probably dating to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and as coming from the FHYA target area of KwaZulu-Natal and immediately adjacent regions.]

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using materials provided by Nessa Leibhammer, 2018: The core of what would become the Maritz Collection at JAG was assembled by Jonathan Lowen in London. This was then purchased by Nicholas Maritz who added further items to it before selling the collection, which he classified as ‘Northern Nguni’, to the JAG in 2013. The Maritz Collection is housed within Traditional Collections in JAG. The FHYA selection of the items within the Maritz Collection was made by Nessa Leibhammer, who curated the Traditional Collections from 1994 to 1996, and then again from 2005 to 2013. This selection contains 62 items, and their associated material, which Leibhammer identified as probably dating to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and as coming from the FHYA target area of KwaZulu-Natal and immediately adjacent regions. Leibhammer further selected items within these criteria for which images were readily available.]

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using materials provided by Nessa Leibhammer, 2018: In 1987, the Johannesburg Art Gallery purchased a selection of 114 items from Reverend A. A. Jaques’ headrest collection. The FHYA selection of the items within the Jaques Collection was made by Nessa Leibhammer, who curated the Traditional Collections from 1994 to 1996, and then again from 2005 to 2013. This selection comprises 1 item, and associated material, which Leibhammer identified as probably dating to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and as coming from the FHYA target area of KwaZulu-Natal and immediately adjacent regions. Leibhammer further selected this item because there was an image of the object readily available.]

[Source - Chloe Rushovich for FHYA using materials provided by Nessa Leibhammer, 2018: The Johannesburg Art Gallery purchased 532 pieces, predominantly beadwork, from Mordechai Brodie in the latter part of 1994. This selection comprises 1 item, and associated material, which Leibhammer identified as probably dating to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and as coming from the FHYA target area of KwaZulu-Natal and immediately adjacent regions. Leibhammer further selected this item because there was an image of the object readily available.]