Update on Research at the Site of Waterfall Bluff, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

Summary

This is an abstract from the "From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Excavations at Waterfall Bluff, South Africa, document evidence of occupation in a persistent coastal context from MIS3 to the Middle Holocene. Remains of marine mollusks and fish show for the first time that coastal foraging was a component of some hunter-gatherer groups’ subsistence practices during glacial phases in the Late Pleistocene, and that this practice continued into the Early Holocene. Here, we provide updates from recent excavations in deposits dating to the Last Glacial Maximum (26.5–19 ka), which show a complex depositional history of lateral (i.e., from the shelter outward) and vertical sediment accumulation over time. A complete LGM sequence has now been recovered from which we have recovered two human teeth (a molar and canine). Only three human remains in Africa date to the LGM, yet none are well-dated, and all come from questionable contexts. The precise sedimentological, geochronological, and archaeological context of our teeth is supported by laser total station and photogrammetric mapping, sediment micromorphology, and geochronology analyses using >40 radiocarbon ages and 5 OSL ages. Our robust radiocarbon sampling strategy now makes Waterfall Bluff one of the best dated sites from this time period in southern Africa.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• From Veld to Coast: Diverse Landscape Use by Hunter-Gatherers in Southern Africa from the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33423