Coastal foraging on the West Coast of South Africa in the midst of mid-Holocene climate change

Abstract

The mid-Holocene (ca. 8200–4200 cal BP) brought about important climatic changes and environmental shifts to land and coastal systems, globally. Many of the human groups existing at that time were affected in various degrees by such important modifications to their foraging areas, including shorelines. Higher sea-levels (+1–3 m) were a prominent factor reshaping coastal landscapes and thus affecting coastal foraging in one or more ways. Hot and dry weather and relatively higher sea levels along the central west coast of South Africa impacted substantially on local coastal hunter-gatherer groups. These challenges were thought once to have been unsurmountable because of an apparent absence of sites dated to this period. Recently dated mid-Holocene assemblages allow us to gain insight into coastal resource procurement and overall subsistence, and also to derive more detailed coastal paleoecological data. The results show a predominantly terrestrial diet, while shellfish collection persisted amid prevailing environmental factors affecting mussel growth by supplementing their reduced mollusk takes with additional prey. Sizeable crustaceans were also procured in relatively large numbers in some localities, but not in all. This is the most-up-to date mid-Holocene subsistence record for the central west coast of South Africa which, apart from reconstructing changes in procurement strategies, reveals a trajectory of persistence in the face of climate change.

Keywords:

• Shellfish procurement
• marine sediments
• shell epibionts
• shell sizes
• Holocene Altithermal

Disclosure statement

No financial interest or benefit has arisen from the direct applications of this research.

Data availability

The dataset for this study is available from the author on reasonable request.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Herman and Kitta Burger of Steenbokfontein farm for their friendship, assistance and great hospitality during all field seasons. I am also in debt to Royden Yates for his considerable support during all excavation seasons, and to Gavin Anderson, Grant Hall, Emma Sealy, Natalie Swanepoel, Berdine van Linden, Elizabeth Wahl, Aaron Welteralen, and Trish Zweig for their hard work while excavating mid-Holocene material. Thanks also to René Navarro for conducting R software statistical analyses on black mussel and Cape rock lobster sizes. I am also thankful to Manuel Will and two anonymous reviewers who helped to improve this paper in various ways.

Additional information

Funding

Excavations between 1992 and 1997 and dating of Steenbokfontein Cave material was funded by the Swan Fund (no grant number), the Wenner-Gren Foundation (Grant Number 5699), and the Council for Science Development grant (no grant number) to the former Spatial Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Cape Town.