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In fact she even liked doing her own cooking when she could, with cowtail pepper soup being a favourite, a Financial Times interview revealed in 2015.

Buried alongside the woman's small, huddled corpse were selected pieces of animal bone, a cowtail, an eagle wing, the foot of another human, and, most curiously, some fifty tortoise shells deliberately arranged around the woman's body � all tell-tale signs, experts say, of her lofty social status at the time.

Squads of twenty and thirty could be seen pouring in to swell the already formidable number, glancing through the bush and long grass, all in war-gear, with flowing tufts of red or white cowtail, and wearing the isiqoba, or ball of feathers, on the forehead.