A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Johannesburg 2017. / Pre-colonial Stone Walled Structures (SWS) in southern Africa have been studied since the 17th Century. Studies focused on establishing the origins of SWS, classification and other socio-economic components associated with these settlements. The physical environment played a significant role in shaping these communities, therefore making it important to establish the correlation between these pre-colonial cultures and the physical environment. Using Google Earth and GIS Sadr and Rodier (2012) undertook a settlement analysis of a 350 area near the Suikerbosrand nature reserve in southern Gauteng. They observed that settlement patterns revealed a shift from small and dispersed egalitarian societies to more stratified communities between the 15th and 19th century. Using the same techniques that Sadr and Rodier (2012) employed, a settlement pattern analysis was conducted on the rest of the research area in southern Gauteng which is slightly under 9000. Results from an exploratory and a statistical analysis from the research area revealed observations made by Sadr and Rodier 2012 from a 350 concur with the observations made from the rest of the study area. / LG2018

Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Science, School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, 2018. / There are thousands of Stone Walled Structures (SWS) located in the southern half of the Gauteng Province. In the absence of relevant historical documents, these SWS are all the information we have about how pre-colonial societies were organized in this area. Unfortunately, they are threatened by rapid urbanization and development. This research attempts to estimate how many Iron Age SWS have been lost to urban development in Johannesburg South during the last 80 years. I mapped and quantified the SWS and urbanization in four chronological snapshots using remote sensing techniques. Aerial photographs from 1937 and 1961 were used as well as Google Earth satellite images from 2005 and 2015. The data was analyzed on the ESRI software ArcGIS 10.3. The four snapshots show the trend in urban sprawl and destruction of SWS and this information is valuable for mitigation strategies. Fortunately, there are legislations and procedures in place to ensure that not all these sites are lost forever. / EM2018