Stable carbon and oxygen isotopes in faunal tooth enamel from Boomplaas and Nelson Bay Cave record Late Pleistocene/Holocene environments in the southern Cape, South Africa

Summary

The Pleistocene palaeoclimates and palaeoenvironments of southernmost Africa are important in both global climate studies and studies of human evolution, but remain poorly documented through time and space. In order to contribute to this project, we have analysed δ13C and δ18O in approximately 350 samples of faunal tooth enamel from Boomplaas Cave and Nelson Bay Cave, in the southern Cape, South Africa. The Boomplaas samples span the last ca. 70 kya, and show fluctuations in δ13C indicating C3-dominated vegetation ca. 65 kya, between 26-20 kya and in the early Holocene. C4 grasses are markedly more common during the warm interval  36-38 kya, corresponding to Antarctic Isotope Maximum 8, and between 18-14 kya. The Last Glacial Maximum shows a strongly C3 signal, confirming the pattern in the nearby Cango speleothem. The faunal record from Nelson Bay Cave extends back only as far as OIS 2, but there is less variation in δ13C through the sequence, indicating a mixture of C3 and C4 grasses from the LGM through to the Holocene. Comparison of records from multiple sites will help us to understand the extent to which patterns are regional or local, and perhaps shed light on the dynamics of climate systems.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Building the hunter-gatherer’s paleoscape on the South African coast: Environment, landscape, and foraging resources   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

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