The Large Cutting Tools from Wonderboom, South Africa

ABSTRACT

Wonderboom remains largely excluded from discussions about the Earlier Stone Age of southern Africa, despite having one of the largest Acheulean assemblages for the region. With this contribution, we revisit its large cutting tool assemblage (namely the handaxes, cleavers, picks and knives) and investigate some of the tool manufacturing preferences of the hominins who used the site during the Earlier Stone Age. We also provide an inter-site comparison of handaxes with another later and two early Acheulean sites from South Africa, wherein the Wonderboom assemblage clusters with the later Acheulean and is distinguished from the early Acheulean assemblages. This tentatively places Wonderboom within the South African Acheulean chronology and provides the first characterization of later Acheulean LCT production strategies for the region that includes the Cradle of Humankind.

KEYWORDS:

• Wonderboom
• large cutting tools
• Acheulean production strategies
• canonical variate analysis
• UNESCO Magaliesberg International Biosphere Reserve

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the University of Johannesburg (GES Postdoctoral Research Fellowship awarded to MGL), and the Palaeo-Research Institute. We thank the late Prof. Revil Mason for informative discussions about the Wonderboom site. Thembi Russel and Faye Lander provided access to the material curated at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The authors provide all raw and supporting data in the supplemental files, which are listed at the end of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Johannesburg (GES Postdoctoral Research Fellowship awarded to MGL), and the Palaeo-Research Institute.

Notes on contributors

Matt G. Lotter

Matt G. Lotter is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Palaeo-Research Institute, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He received a PhD in archaeology in 2016 from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. His research is primarily focused on landscape-based geoarchaeological studies, and the cultural materials they contain. He has conducted research of this nature both locally, at sites across southern Africa, and internationally at sites in China. He is currently investigating artefact use-wear patterns, aspects of site formation, lithic technology, and landscape use through the application of geographic information system (GIS) software. He is particularly interested in understanding technological advancements during the Stone Age. He is also currently the co-permit holder and co-investigator of the Acheulean site of Wonderboom, in the UNESCO Magaliesberg International Biosphere Reserve, South Africa.

Matthew V. Caruana

Matthew V. Caruana is currently a lecturer at the Palaeo-Research Institute at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. He received a BA in cultural anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2000, an MA in archaeology from the University of Manchester, England and a PhD in archaeology from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa in 2015. His primary research interest is in the Earlier Stone Age archaeology of South Africa, focusing on stone tool production and reconstructing landscape use patterns. Since moving to South Africa in 2009, he has conducted field work at numerous Plio-Pleistocene sites including Swartkrans Cave, Drimolen Cave, Amanzi Springs, Barberspan, Maropeng, the Taung World Heritage Site, as well as in the Koobi Fora Formation in Kenya. He is currently a co-director of the Amanzi Springs Archaeological Project (ASAP).

Marlize Lombard

Marlize Lombard is Research Chair and Professor of Stone Age Archaeology at the Palaeo-Research Institute of the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. She leads the inter-disciplinary Palaeo-TrACKS (Tracing Ancient Cognition and Knowledge Systems through the Stone Age/Palaeolithic) Research Programme that is geared towards generating knowledge about the biological, behavioural and cognitive evolution of Homo sapiens in sub-Saharan Africa, and how these aspects relate to each other. She is also a Principle Investigator of the recently established Hu-MAP (Humans of the Magaliesberg Archaeological Project: A 4IR Exploration of a Southern Hominin Refuge) with colleagues from the Institute.