Current history textbooks state that the first livestock and ceramics were brought to the southern tip of Africa by Khoe-speaking herders from northern Botswana. Recent archaeological work on the west coast of South Africa, however, contradicts this scenario. The evidence points instead to local adoption of livestock and ceramic technology. In the absence of any evidence for immigrants, it is assumed that livestock and the associated new ideas were passed along from one group of southern African foragers to another, eventually reaching the west coast around 2000 years ago. At first, the new items seem to have had little effect on the local economy. But by the mid-first millennium AD a new type of site had appeared in the landscape. These sites, which have an abundance of sheep and seal bones, as well as broken pots used for pouring liquids, were perhaps feasting sites. They suggest a more complex social and economic organization than had hitherto been suspected for this time and place. Keywords: South Africa, first millennium AD, Archaeological work.