Unmodified Cobbles and Boulders from the Middle Stone Age Occupation of Witberg 1, Southern Kalahari, South Africa

Summary

This is an abstract from the "A Tribute to the Contributions of Lawrence C. Todd to World Prehistory" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Witberg 1 is an open-air Middle Stone Age (MSA) occupation within diatom-rich sediments in the southern Kalahari, suggestive of a small ancient lake system (~360,000–140,000 years-ago). The occupation horizon is dense with flakes, blades, cores, and MSA points, mostly less than 10 cm. However, there are numerous large (>25 cm) unmodified quartzite boulders associated with the artifacts that are not present in the rest of the profile. The first question asked is whether these are occurring naturally in the deposit, or if humans brought them in? And if humans brought them in, why? We conducted a systematic pedestrian survey of geogenic clasts on the landscape with the Looking At Rocks RigorouslY (LARRY) method, to identify potential source locations of the clasts. A hillside 600 m west of the excavation area is a candidate; however, the purpose of the stones requires further investigation. This research is informed by Larry Todd’s approach to science—first think about what natural processes are at play, collect all the data, stay busy outdoors, and include junior scientists in research. Our results point to future experiments needed on the taphonomic “disarticulation” of stacked stone structures in open semiarid environments.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• A Tribute to the Contributions of Lawrence C. Todd to World Prehistory   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35586.0