Investigating the Formation History of Surface Archaeology in the Doring River Valley, 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.

Southern Africa’s Late Pleistocene archaeology is pursued through the lens of rockshelter deposits. However, their spatial coverage is small and geographically biased, distorting our understanding of human behavioral evolution. To overcome this, researchers are increasingly turning to open-air archaeology. However, few open-air studies investigate the depositional and erosional phenomena involved in the formation of surface archaeology. Uitspankraal 7—located in the Doring River valley—is an eroding dune draped across bedrock and paleoterrace. The surface archaeology implies occupation from the Still Bay to the Historic period. Combining artifact and random clast mapping, OSL dating, geochemistry, geomorphometry, and geophysical survey, this paper explores the complex formation history of Uitspankraal 7’s surface archaeology. Results show that the spatio-temporal distribution of exposed artefacts is a function of depositional history and Holocene land use. Uitspankraal 7 formed through rapid, pulsed sediment accumulation over the last >50 kyr, with periods of surface deflation and exposure facilitating artifact redistribution. Holocene aridification coupled with historic farming practices have differentially erased younger deposits, exposing the dune core and the more ancient material it preserves. This study cautions against simplistic behavioral interpretation of surface material and underscores the need for incorporating geoarchaeological methods into southern Africa’s Late Pleistocene open-air research.

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)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33173