New Excavations at Border Cave, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

ABSTRACT

New excavations at Border Cave use high-resolution techniques, including FT-IR, for sediment samples and thin sections of micromorphology blocks from stratigraphy. These show that sediments have different moisture regimes, both spatially and chronologically. The site preserves desiccated grass bedding in multiple layers and they, along with seeds, rhizomes, and charcoal, provide a profile of palaeo-vegetation through time. A bushveld vegetation community is implied before 100,000 years ago. The density of lithics varies considerably through time, with high frequencies occurring before 100,000 years ago where a putative MSA 1/Pietersburg Industry was recovered. The highest percentage frequencies of blades and blade fragments were found here. In Members 1 BS and 1 WA, called Early Later Stone Age by Beaumont, we recovered large flakes from multifacial cores. Local rhyolite was the most common rock used for making stone tools, but siliceous minerals were popular in the upper members.

KEYWORDS:

• Middle Stone Age
• Later Stone Age
• geoarchaeology
• archaeobotanical remains
• lithic industry

Acknowledgements

The permit (SAH 15/7645) for the excavation was issued by Amafa. We thank the Oxford laboratory for the two ¹⁴C dates. Lucinda Backwell and Lyn Wadley are funded by African Origins Platform grants from the National Research Foundation, South Africa. The opinions expressed here are not necessarily held by the funding agency. Francesco d’Errico’s work is partly supported by the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme, SFF Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour (SapienCE), project number 262618, and the LaScArBx research programme (ANR-10-LABX-52). We thank Olga Vilane (Amafa) and Len van Schalkwyk and Chris Wingfield (eThembeni) for logistical support at Border Cave, 2015 - 2017. Lucinda Backwell thanks Prof L. Berger (Rising Star team) for logistical support in 2015.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributors

Lucinda R. Backwell (Ph.D. 2004, University of the Witwatersrand and University of Bordeaux) is affiliated to the Instituto Superior de Estudios Sociales (ISES-CONICET), Tucumán, Argentina. Her research interest is the Stone Age of South Africa, experimental taphonomy and the study of bone tools.

Francesco d’Errico (Ph.D. 1989 and H.D.R 2003, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris; University of Bordeaux) is a Research Director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. His research focuses on the origin of symbolic behavior and bone technology in Europe, Africa, and Asia, Neanderthal extinction, and the impact of climate change on cultural evolution.

William E. Banks (Ph.D. 2004, University of Kansas) is a permanent Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. His research interests include the Middle Stone Age, the late Middle Palaeolithic and the Upper Palaeolithic of Europe, culture–environment relationships, and the application of ecological niche modeling methods and theory to the archaeological record.

Paloma de la Peña (Ph.D. 2011, Universidad Complutense de Madrid) is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Evolutionary Studies Institute and an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Her main research interests lie in understanding cultural evolution within Homo sapiens societies. She conducts technological studies of lithics.

Christine Sievers (Ph.D. 2013, University of the Witwatersrand) is a senior lecturer in the Archaeology Department, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. She specializes in archaeobotany and experimental archaeology and focuses on macrobotanical remains from the Middle Stone Age, particularly fruits, seeds, geophytes and bedding materials such as sedges and grasses.

Dominic Stratford (Ph.D. 2011, University of the Witwatersrand) is a senior lecturer of Geoarchaeology in the Archaeology Department, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa and also Research Director at the Sterkfontein Caves, one of the premier hominin sites in South Africa. His research interests are geoarchaeology, karst geomorphology, archaeological excavation methods, vertebrate taphonomy, sedimentology, sediment micromorphology, palaeoanthropology and stratigraphy.

Sandra J. Lennox (Ph.D. 2016, University of the Witwatersrand) is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. She specializes in anthracology and has identified woody species from charcoal at Sibudu and Border Cave.

Marine Wojcieszak (Ph.D. 2014, Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC), Paris VI) is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand. She obtained her Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry and Analytical Chemistry. Her current research involves the non-destructive analysis of Middle Stone Age (MSA) artifacts and their context for understanding the behavior and cognition of MSA people. Specifically, she is using a multi-analytical approach (including Raman spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, Scanning Electron Microscopy and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy) to characterize, for example, ochre pieces, stone tools and their residues, sediments and resins excavated from Sibudu, Rose Cottage, and Border Caves.

Emese M. Bordy (Ph.D. 2001, Rhodes University) is a lecturer at the University of Cape Town. Her main research interest lies within the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic deposits of Africa with a strong focus on the quantification of the climatic and tectonic signatures in sedimentary and biogeographic processes. She is passionate not only for applying sedimentology, stratigraphy, continental ichnology, and palaeontology to palaeoenvironmental reconstructions, but also for integrating multidisciplinary observations at various scales to obtain robust palaeoecological snapshots of the African geological past.

Justin Bradfield (D.Litt et Phil. 2014, University of Johannesburg) is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He specializes in the study of bone tools and micro-tomography and has an interest in poisons used in the past.

Lyn Wadley (Ph.D. 1986, University of the Witwatersrand) is an Honorary Professor of Archaeology in the Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Her research interests include the Middle Stone Age, experimental archaeology and cognitive archaeology. She has excavated at many South African sites, for example, Sibudu and Rose Cottage Caves.

ORCID

Lucinda R. Backwell http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5816-3353

Francesco d’Errico http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2422-3079

William E. Banks http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1835-6315

Paloma de la Peña http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9731-7001

Christine Sievers http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5704-6913

Dominic Stratford http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9790-8848

Sandra J. Lennox http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0078-3685

Marine Wojcieszak http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9508-4697

Emese M. Bordy http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4699-0823

Justin Bradfield http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6139-6227

Lyn Wadley http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0053-0813