Coastal adaptation at Klasies River main site during MIS 5c-d (93,000–110,000 years ago) from a southern Cape perspective

Abstract

Coastal adaptation in the southern Cape can be seen around 100,000 years ago in sites such as Klasies River, Blombos Cave, and Pinnacle Point, representing the occupation of a new niche by early Homo sapiens in this region. However, there is relatively little information available on the details involved in fully entering this niche from a regional perspective. At Klasies River main site (KRM), evidence for coastal adaptation occurs in early MIS 5. Here we explore the variability in shellfish exploitation and how it links to lithic technology, in deposits dating to ca. 93,000–110,000 years ago. We compare this to broadly contemporaneous assemblages from Pinnacle Point 13B and Blombos Cave. The lithics in all the layers from KRM investigated here have been produced according to a unidirectional reduction system, but the lowermost assemblages contain more small debitage and bladelets, and no tools. These 110 ka layers are associated with a lower shellfish density and more diverse range of shellfish species and a higher lithic density. This points to a lesser dependency on shellfish coinciding with higher mobility in the lower layers. For the younger MIS 5c layers higher volumes of shellfish and the dominance of certain species is evident. The lithics show that all the stages of the reduction system are present and tools are produced and used on-site. This indicates a residential (provisioning of place) occupational strategy. Compared to other sites on the southern Cape coast, KRM shows exceptionally high densities in lithic artifacts while the shellfish densities are comparable to the Blombos M3 phase. The results of the analysis of the shellfish and lithic densities, technological patterns, and shellfish species exploited at Klasies River, Blombos Cave and Pinnacle Point, demonstrate a more diverse onset and expression of coastal adaptation during early MIS 5 than apparent from current literature.

Keywords:

• Coastal adaptation
• MIS 5
• Klasies River main site
• southern Cape
• Middle Stone Age

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to the KRM excavation team who helped generate the data. We also thank two reviewers for their insightful comments.

Additional information

Funding

Data collection and research at Klasies River were funded by the National Research Foundation of South Africa, grant no 98826 to SW; any opinion, finding, conclusion or recommendation expressed in this article is that of the authors, and the NRF does not accept any liability in this regard. Funding for KR’s post-doctoral research was provided by an NRF/Department of Science and Technology-funded South African Research Chair (SARChI) in the Origins of Modern Human Behavior at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, held by Christopher Henshilwood at the Evolutionary Studies Institute in the University of the Witwatersrand.