Excavation of buried Late Acheulean (Mid-Quaternary) land surfaces at Duinefontein 2, Western Cape Province, South Africa
Section snippets
History of discovery and excavation
Duinefontein 2 (DFT2) is a fossiliferous, multilayer Acheulean site stratified within a 10-m thick dune plume on the property of the Koeberg Nature Reserve, adjacent to the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station, about 35 km north of Cape Town, South Africa (Fig. 1;comptd;;center;stack;;;;;6;;;;;width> ). The plume covers an area of roughly 2.5 km2immediately adjacent to the Atlantic coast, and its deflated surface has provided wind-and-sand-scoured artifacts andanimal bones since at least 1956 [13]. In
Geomorphic/sedimentologic context
The surficial deposits at DFT2 are fine white drift sands that rest non-conformably on red (iron-stained) sands below. The paleosurfaces that we call Horizons 2 and 3 are sealed within the red sands (Fig. 1, top). Over the eastern half of the excavation, the red sands are capped by a sheet of calcrete that grows thicker and more continuous in the upslope (eastern) direction. In 2001, the excavations encountered a second similar calcrete buried within the red sands immediately above Horizon 3.
Geochronology
In theory, the DFT2 calcretes could be dated by Uranium (U)-series disequilibrium, the sands by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), and the animal teeth by electron spin resonance (ESR). In practice, ESR is precluded, partly because it works best on isolated teeth (H.P. Schwarcz, personal communication), while the DFT2 teeth remain almost entirely in jaws. Even more important, ESR depends on a reliable estimate of the annual radiation dose after burial, and the local dose must have varied
Paleoenvironment
So far, the DFT2 sediments and the fauna provide the only bases for environmental reconstruction. The sediments are too coarse to preserve pollen, but in continuing research, we hope to explore the possibility that hyena coprolites retain some. Horizon 2 has produced nearly 50 complete coprolites (Fig. 2;comptd;;center;stack;;;;;6;;;;;width> ) and scores ofsmall fragments. The fauna that accompanies Acheulean artifacts at Elandsfontein Main suggests broadly the same kind of vegetation we infer
Artifacts and features
The artifacts from Horizon 2 include a classicAcheulean handaxe, two broken handaxes, cores,retouched and unretouched flakes, chunks and chips (debris), and hammerstones (Table 4; illustrations in Ref. [23]). Silcrete and quartz, both of which are available within 10 km of the site, were the principal raw materials. So far, we have found no refits, even though flakes that could be from the same core sometimes occur within a meter of each other and we have refitted bones found up to 3 m apart.
The
The nature and meaning of the bone-and-artifact association
We have just noted that with one exception, artifacts appear to be more or less randomly distributed across the Horizon 2 surface. Patterning in the distribution of bones is far more obvious. The principal ungulates tend to be represented by clusters of skull bones, vertebrae, ribs, and other axial elements, often in near-anatomical order (Fig. 5;comptd;;center;stack;;;;;6;;;;;width> ). Limb bones, which bore the majority of edible meat, marrow, and grease on each animal, are dissociated and
Variation in species abundance across the Horizon 2 surface and in species mortality patterns
Clusters of buffalo bones tend to concentrate on the downslope (western) portion of the Horizon 2 exposure, closer to what must have been the margin of the ancient pond. Among the common ungulates present, buffalo were surely the most water-dependent, and the positioning of the clusters suggests that they represent individuals who died as they drank or wallowed. The dentitions show that the animals were mainly older (post-reproductive) adults (Fig. 7;comptd;;center;stack;;;;;6;;;;;width> ), who
Skeletal part representation
Bone fragmentation at DFT2 is minimal, and most bones are identifiable to both skeletal part and species. This stands in stark contrast to the situation at most regional archeological sites, where fragmentation isalways much greater. Most bones at these sites cannot be confidently assigned to skeletal part, and bones that can be are often impossible to separate among closely related species of similar size. The problem of species identification is particularly acute for fragmentary bovid
Median tortoise size
Based strictly on the number of identifiable bones, the single most abundant species in DFT2 Horizon 2 is the angulate tortoise (Chersina angulata). The bones include limb elements, occasional complete or nearly complete shells, and thousands of shell (carapace and plastron) fragments widely scattered across the ancient surface. The fragments tend to be sharp-edged, and we attribute their breakage and scatter mainly to large ungulate trampling and kicking. The fragments are useful for defining
Summary and conclusions
DF2 preserves at least two buried land surfaces, each of which existed for perhaps a few centuries in the interval between roughly 500,000 and 250,000 years ago. Excavation so far has focused on the upper surface (‘Horizon 2’), because the lower one lies mainly below the water table. Future work will focus on the lower surface (‘Horizon 3’) where it emerges above the water table on the upslope margin of the excavation. The sediments and fauna show that animal bones andassociated Late Acheulean
Acknowledgements
This material is based on the work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 9601021, on additional financial support from the LeakeyFoundation, and on logistical and laboratory support from the South African Museum, Iziko Museums of Cape Town. We thank Gert Greef, ConservationManager, ESKOM Nuclear Sites, for permission and encouragement to excavate, and Teresa Steele and Tim Weaver for helpful comments on the draft.
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Variability in hunting behaviour during the Middle Stone Age in the Eastern and Western Cape of South Africa
2022, Journal of Archaeological Science: ReportsCitation Excerpt :Some of these deposits either completely lack, or contain few signs of hominin activity and were largely accumulated by carnivores, mainly hyenas. These samples are from Sea Harvest (Grine and Klein, 1993), Pinnacle Point PP30 (Rector and Reed, 2010), Herolds Bay (Brink and Deacon, 1982), Swartklip 1 (Klein, 1983; Klein et al., 2007), Duinefontein 2 (Cruz-Uribe et al., 2003; Klein, 1976b), Hoedjiespunt 1 (Stynder, 1997) and Elandsfontein Bone Circle (Klein, 1983). At Boomplaas, the faunal remains were likely accumulated primarily by leopards (Faith, 2013).
Differential accumulation of large mammal remains by carnivores and humans during the Middle Stone Age in the Eastern and Western Cape, South Africa
2021, Journal of Archaeological Science: ReportsThe lithic assemblage of the Acheulean site of Namib IV (Central Namib, Namibia)
2021, Anthropologie (France)The Fauresmith of South Africa: A new assemblage from Canteen Kopje and significance of the technology in human and cultural evolution
2020, Journal of Human EvolutionCitation Excerpt :Another issue is that some sites referred to the late Acheulean may be transitional. For example, Duinefontein 2 in the Western Cape, South Africa, has two horizons with OSL results of ca. 270 and 290 ka, with fauna supporting an age range of 250–300 ka (Klein et al., 1999; Cruz-Uribe et al., 2003). However, the diagnostic Acheulean types published for this site are limited to one complete and two broken handaxes and some handaxe trimming flakes, and so the assemblage may be transitional.