An Undisturbed Earlier Stone Age Locality on the Southern Coast of South Africa, Exposed by Fire

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Knysna Estuary and River Basin on the southern coast of South Africa provided attractive resources for Pleistocene foragers. Isolated Earlier Stone Age (ESA) finds, including large bifacially flaked core tools, are commonly found in upland areas around the basin, particularly during construction projects, but dense vegetation cover has thus far prevented the identification of the source sites for these finds. In 2017, extensive fires devastated Knysna, removing all surface vegetation across large parts of the region, including dense shrub cover. Here we report a concentration of ESA materials, including more than 100 stone tools, exposed by the fires in the undeveloped part of the Featherbed Private Nature Reserve in Knysna. Our survey results indicate the presence of well-preserved cores, handaxes, and flake cleavers. We selected 25 large core tools for on-site analysis to compare to other known South African ESA sites. Additionally, we identified a large core re-fit. Considering the poor representation of the ESA in coastal South Africa, it is critical to study this region to shed light on early hominin behavior. This paleoscape offered early hominins rich foraging opportunities across several ecotones, which gave rise to novel and innovative adaptations during the middle and late Pleistocene.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25839