Diepkloof Rock Shelter

Last updated

Diepkloof Rock Shelter
Diepkloof-general-view.JPG
General view of Diepkloof Rock Shelter
South Africa Western Cape location map.svg
Red pog.svg
LocationVerlorenvlei, Western Cape
Coordinates 32°23′12″S18°27′10″E / 32.38667°S 18.45278°E / -32.38667; 18.45278 Coordinates: 32°23′12″S18°27′10″E / 32.38667°S 18.45278°E / -32.38667; 18.45278
Geology Quartzitic Sandstone
General view of the excavation during 2009 field season Diepkloof-excavation-2009.JPG
General view of the excavation during 2009 field season
Excavation of the upper part of the deposit Diepkloof-excavation-2009-detail.JPG
Excavation of the upper part of the deposit

Diepkloof Rock Shelter is a rock shelter in Western Cape, South Africa in which has been found some of the earliest evidence of the human use of symbols, in the form of patterns engraved upon ostrich eggshell water containers. These date around 60,000 years ago. [1] [2]

Contents

The symbolic patterns consist of lines crossed at right angles or oblique angles by hatching. It has been suggested that "by the repetition of this motif, early humans were trying to communicate something. Perhaps they were trying to express the identity of the individual or the group." [3]

Site description

The cave is about 17 kilometres (11 mi) from the shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean in a semi-arid area, near Elands Bay about 150 kilometres (93 mi) north of Cape Town. [2] It occurs in quartzitic sandstone in a butte that overlooks in an east direction 100 metres (330 ft) above the Verlorenvlei River. It contains one of "most complete and continuous later Middle Stone Age sequences in southern Africa" [1] stretching from before 130,000 BP to about 45,000 BP and encompassing pre-Stillbay, Stillbay, Howiesons Poort, and post-Howiesons Poort periods. It is about 25 metres (82 ft) wide and 15 metres (49 ft) deep. Research is based upon finds discovered in a trench excavated within it that is 16 metres (52 ft) across and 3.6 metres (12 ft) in depth. The deposits consist of burnt and nonburnt organic residues and ash that came from hearths, ash dumps and burnt bedding. [1]

It was first excavated in 1973 by John Parkington and Cedric Poggenpoel. [4] Since 1999 it has been researched in a collaboration between the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cape Town and the Institute of Prehistory and Quaternary Geology at the University of Bordeaux. [2]

At Diepkloof Rock Shelter (DRS), from 70-74 ka bifaces and bifacial points are present while less complex forms such as backed artifacts occur from 70 ka through 60 ka and are subsequently replaced with unifacial points. Quartz and quartzite predominate the earliest unit with few occurrences of silcrete. During 70-74 ka unit, silcrete has replaced quartz while quartzite is still fairly dominant. From 65-70 ka quartz becomes dominant again with quartzite also being present. [5]

Engraved ostrich eggshell containers

Some 270 fragments of ostrich eggshell containers have been found covered with engraved geometric patterns. The fragments have a maximum size of 20–30 mm, though a number have been fitted into larger 80 × 40 mm fragments. It is estimated that fragments from 25 containers have been found. Eggshell fragments have been found throughout the period of occupation of the cave but those with engraving are found only in several layers within the Howiesons Poort period. These occur across 18 stratigraphic units, particularly those with the stratigraphic names Frank and Darryl. This suggests the tradition of engraving lasted for several thousand years. [1]

The engraving consists of abstract linear repetitive patterns, including a hatched band motif. One fragment has two parallel lines that might have been circular around the container.

It has been suggested that they form "a system of symbolic representation in which collective identities and individual expressions are clearly communicated, suggesting social, cultural, and cognitive underpinnings that overlap with those of modern people." [1] Moreover, they show "the development of a graphic tradition and the complex use of symbols to mediate social interactions. The large number of marked pieces shows that there were rules for composing designs but having room within the rules to allow for individual and/or group preferences." [1]

Earlier finds exist of symbolism, such as the 75,000-year-old engraved ochre chunks found in the Blombos cave, but these are isolated and difficult to tell apart from meaningless doodles. [3]

The engravings are found on ostrich eggshells that were used as water containers. Ostrich eggshells have an average volume of 1 litre. They may have had drinking spouts, holes to enable them to be strung as a canteen for easier carrying, and seem to have been part of "daily hunter-gatherer life". [1] They involved skill to make, with one of the researchers involved noting "Ostrich egg shells are quite hard. Doing such engravings is not so easy." [3]

Local flora

The preservation of organic matter such as wood, grass, seeds and fruits at the site has been described as "exceptional". [2] Pollen remains allow the identification of the local animals and plants. The Howiesons Poort period shows evidence for thicket or shrubland vegetation now usually found in gorges, such as Diospyros, Cassine peragua, Maytenus, Rhus, and Hartogiella schinoides. Afromontane trees found in the area, include Ficus, Kiggelaria africana , Podocarpus elongatus , and Celtis africana . This suggests a more diversely wooded riverine environment than now present in the area. [1]

Animal remains

Animal remains include those of mammals, tortoises and intertidal marine shells. Most bones found in the cave come from rock hyrax, hares, cape dune mole-rats, steenbok and grysbok. Animals from rocky environments are also found including klipspringer, and vaalribbok. There is also evidence of local grasslands, with remains of zebras, wildebeest and hartebeest. Hippopotamus and southern reedbuck came from the local river. The sea coast seems to have moved up the river, as there are fragments from black mussels, granite limpets, and Cape fur seals. Although there are ostrich-shell remains, no ostrich bones have been found. [1]

Tortoise bones are mostly those of the angulate tortoise that is still found in the area. These are noted to have been "remarkably large compared with their Late Stone Age counterparts, suggesting different intensities of predation between MSA and Late Stone Age populations". [1]

Provincial heritage site

Badge indicating that the Diepkloof Rock Shelter is a provincial heritage site Provincial Heritage Site Marker, Diepkloof Rock Shelter, Elands Bay.jpg
Badge indicating that the Diepkloof Rock Shelter is a provincial heritage site

Diepkloof Rock Shelter was declared a provincial heritage site by Heritage Western Cape on 23 September 2014 in terms of Section 27 of the National Heritage Resources Act. [6] This gives the site Grade II status and provides it with protection under South African heritage law.

In 2015, the South African government submitted a proposal to add the caves to the list of World Heritage Sites and it has been placed on the UNESCO list of tentative sites as a potential future 'serial nomination' together with Blombos Cave, Pinnacle Point, Klasies River Caves, Sibudu Cave and Border Cave. [7]

Related Research Articles

Egg decorating Type of ritual art

Egg decorating is the art or craft of decorating eggs. It has been a popular art form throughout history because of the attractive, smooth, oval shape of the egg, and the ancient associations with eggs as a religious and cultural symbol. Egg decorating has been associated with Easter in recent times, but was practiced independently by many ancient cultures.

Behavioral modernity Transition of human species to anthropologically modern behavior

Behavioral modernity is a suite of behavioral and cognitive traits that distinguishes current Homo sapiens from other anatomically modern humans, hominins, and primates. Most scholars agree that modern human behavior can be characterized by abstract thinking, planning depth, symbolic behavior, music and dance, exploitation of large game, and blade technology, among others. Underlying these behaviors and technological innovations are cognitive and cultural foundations that have been documented experimentally and ethnographically by evolutionary and cultural anthropologists. These human universal patterns include cumulative cultural adaptation, social norms, language, and extensive help and cooperation beyond close kin.

African archaeology Archaeology conducted in Africa

Africa has the longest record of human habitation in the world. The first hominins emerged 6-7 million years ago, and among the earliest anatomically modern human skulls found so far were discovered at Omo Kibish, Jebel Irhoud, and Florisbad.

Blombos Cave Archaeological site in Western Cape, South Africa

Blombos Cave is an archaeological site located in Blombos Private Nature Reserve, about 300 km east of Cape Town on the Southern Cape coastline, South Africa. The cave contains Middle Stone Age (MSA) deposits currently dated at between c. 100,000 and 70,000 years Before Present (BP), and a Late Stone Age sequence dated at between 2000 and 300 years BP. The cave site was first excavated in 1991 and field work has been conducted there on a regular basis since 1997, and is ongoing.

Middle Stone Age Period in African prehistory

The Middle Stone Age was a period of African prehistory between the Early Stone Age and the Late Stone Age. It is generally considered to have begun around 280,000 years ago and ended around 50–25,000 years ago. The beginnings of particular MSA stone tools have their origins as far back as 550–500,000 years ago and as such some researchers consider this to be the beginnings of the MSA. The MSA is often mistakenly understood to be synonymous with the Middle Paleolithic of Europe, especially due to their roughly contemporaneous time span, however, the Middle Paleolithic of Europe represents an entirely different hominin population, Homo neanderthalensis, than the MSA of Africa, which did not have Neanderthal populations. Additionally, current archaeological research in Africa has yielded much evidence to suggest that modern human behavior and cognition was beginning to develop much earlier in Africa during the MSA than it was in Europe during the Middle Paleolithic. The MSA is associated with both anatomically modern humans as well as archaic Homo sapiens, sometimes referred to as Homo helmei. Early physical evidence comes from the Gademotta Formation in Ethiopia, the Kapthurin Formation in Kenya and Kathu Pan in South Africa.

John Hewitt (herpetologist)

John Hewitt was a South African zoologist and archaeologist of British origin. He was born in Dronfield, Derbyshire, England, and died in Grahamstown, South Africa. He was the author of several herpetological papers which described new species. He also described new species of spiders and other arachnids.

Mumba Cave, located near the highly alkaline Lake Eyasi in Karatu District, Arusha Region, Tanzania. The cave is a rich archaeological site noted for deposits spanning the transition between the Middle Stone Age and Late Stone Age in Eastern Africa. The transitional nature of the site has been attributed to the large presence of its large assemblage of ostrich eggshell beads and more importantly, the abundance of microlith technology. Because these type artifacts were found within the site it has led archaeologists to believe that the site could provide insight into the origins of modern human behavior. The cave was originally tested by Ludwig Kohl-Larsen and his wife Margit in their 1934 to 1936 expedition. They found abundant artifacts, rock art, and burials. However, only brief descriptions of these findings were ever published. That being said, work of the Kohl-Larsens has been seen as very accomplished due to their attention to detail, especially when one considers that neither was versed in proper archaeological techniques at the time of excavation. The site has since been reexamined in an effort to reanalyze and complement the work that has already been done, but the ramifications of improper excavations of the past are still being felt today, specifically in the unreliable collection of C-14 data and confusing stratigraphy.

Canteen (bottle)

A canteen is a reusable drinking water bottle designed to be used by hikers, campers, soldiers, bush firefighters, and workers in the field in the early 1800s. It is usually fitted with a shoulder strap or means for fastening it to a belt, and may be covered with a cloth bag and padding to protect the bottle and insulate the contents. If the padding is soaked with water, evaporative cooling can help keep the contents of the bottle cool. Many canteens also include a nested canteen cup.

Art of the Middle Paleolithic

The oldest undisputed examples of figurative art are known from Europe and from Sulawesi, Indonesia, dated about 35,000 years old . Together with religion and other cultural universals of contemporary human societies, the emergence of figurative art is a necessary attribute of full behavioral modernity.

Sibudu Cave is a rock shelter in a sandstone cliff in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It is an important Middle Stone Age site occupied, with some gaps, from 77,000 years ago to 38,000 years ago.

Howiesons Poort is a lithic technology cultural period in the Middle Stone Age in Africa named after the Howieson's Poort Shelter archeological site near Grahamstown in South Africa. It seems to have lasted around 5,000 years between roughly 65,800 BP and 59,500 BP.

Howieson's Poort Shelter is a small rock shelter in South Africa containing the archaeological site from which the Howiesons Poort period in the Middle Stone Age gets its name. This period lasted around 5,000 years, between roughly 65,800 BP and 59,500 BP. This period is important as it, together with the Stillbay period 7,000 years earlier, provides the first evidence of human symbolism and technological skills that were later to appear in the Upper Paleolithic.

Border Cave Rock shelter in South Africa

Border Cave is a rock shelter on the western scarp of the Lebombo Mountains in KwaZulu-Natal near the border between South Africa and Eswatini. Border Cave has a remarkably continuous stratigraphic record of occupation spanning about 200 ka. Anatomically modern Homo sapiens skeletons together with stone tools and chipping debris were recovered. Dating by carbon-14, amino acid racemisation and electron spin resonance (ESR) places the oldest sedimentary ash at some 200 kiloannum.

Nelson Bay Cave

Nelson Bay Cave also known as Wagenaar's Cave is a Stone Age archaeological site located on the Robberg Peninsula and facing Nelson's Bay near Plettenberg Bay in South Africa, and showing evidence of human occupation as far back as 125,000 years ago.

Apollo 11 Cave

The Apollo 11 Cave is an archeological site in the ǁKaras Region of south-western Namibia, approximately 250 km (160 mi) southwest of Keetmanshoop. The name given to the surrounding area and presumably the cave by the Nama people was “Goachanas”. However, the cave was given its name by German archaeologist Wolfgang Erich Wendt in reference to Apollo 11's then recent return to Earth

Paternoster Midden is a megamidden on the west coast of South Africa. This megamidden has particular value, as it is one of the few megamiddens in existence that has such a rich and diverse faunal and artefactual content.

Elands Bay Cave is located near the mouth of the Verlorenvlei estuary on the Atlantic coast of South Africa's Western Cape Province. The climate has continuously become drier since the habitation of hunter-gatherers in the Later Pleistocene. The archaeological remains recovered from previous excavations at Elands Bay Cave have been studied to help answer questions regarding the relationship of people and their landscape, the role of climate change that could have determined or influenced subsistence changes, and the impact of pastoralism and agriculture on hunter-gatherer communities.

Melkhoutboom Cave is an archaeological site dating to the Later Stone Age, located in the Zuurberg Mountains, Cape Folded Mountain Belt, Sarah Baartman District Municipality in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa.

John Parkington is an Emeritus professor in archaeology and hunter-gatherers, Paleoenvironmental reconstruction and human ecology, prehistoric art, and coastal archaeology. He has suggested that since fish provide an important nutrient for the brain, the consumption of fish led to the emergence of the first really intelligent humans in the Western Cape region of South Africa. In February 2000 South African President Thabo Mbeki mentioned the letter he had received from Parkington, regarding the protection of archaeological heritage sites, in his address at the opening of South Africa's Parliament.

Rose Cottage Cave (RCC) is an archaeological site in the Free State, South Africa, situated only a few kilometers away from Ladybrand close to the Caledon River on the northern slopes of the Platberg. RCC is an important site because of its long cultural sequence, its roots of modern human behavior, and the movement of early modern humans out of Africa. Rose Cottage is the only site from the Middle Stone Age that can tell us about the behavioral variability of hunter-gatherers during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. Berry D. Malan excavated the site between 1943 and 1946, shortly succeeded by Peter B. Beaumont in the early 1960s, and the most recent excavations occurred from 1987 to 1997 by Lyn Wadley, and Philip Harper in 1989 under Wadley's supervision. Humans have inhabited of Rose Cottage for over 100,000 years throughout the Middle and Later Stone Ages. Site formation and sediment formation processes at Rose Cottage appear to be primarily anthropogenic. Archaeological research focuses primarily on blade technology and tool forms from the Middle Stone Age and the implications of modern human behavior. Structurally, the cave measures more than 6 metres (20 ft) deep and about 20 by 10 metres. A boulder encloses the front, protecting the cave, but allowing a small opening for a skylight and narrow entrances on both the east and west sides.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Texier, PJ; Porraz, G; Parkington, J; Rigaud, JP; Poggenpoel, C; Miller, C; Tribolo, C; Cartwright, C; Coudenneau, A; Klein, R; Steele, T; Verna, C (2010). "A Howiesons Poort tradition of engraving ostrich eggshell containers dated to 60,000 years ago at Diepkloof Rock Shelter, South Africa". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107 (14): 6180–6185. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0913047107 . PMC   2851956 . PMID   20194764.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Tribolo, C. Mercier; Valladas, H. Joron J.L.; Guibert, P.; Lefrais, Y.; Selo, M.; Texier, P.-J.; Rigaud, J.-Ph.; Porraz, G.; Poggenpoel, C.; Parkington, J.; Texier, J.-P.; Lenoble, A. (2009). "Thermoluminescence dating of a Stillbay–Howiesons Poort sequence at Diepkloof Rock Shelter (Western Cape, South Africa)". Journal of Archaeological Science. 36 (3): 730–739. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2008.10.018.
  3. 1 2 3 Amos, J. (2010). Etched ostrich eggs illustrate human sophistication. BBC News
  4. ↑ Parkington, J., Poggenpoel, C. (1987). "Diepkloof Rock Shelter". In: Parkington, J., Hall, M. (Eds.), Papers in Prehistory of the Western Cape, South Africa, vol. 332. BAR International, pp. 269–293. ISBN   978-0-86054-425-8
  5. ↑ Mackay, Alex; Marwick, Ben (2011). "Costs and benefits in technological decision making under variable conditions: examples from the late Pleistocene in southern Africa". Keeping your Edge: Recent Approaches to the Organisation of Stone Artefact Technology.
  6. ↑ Provincial Notice 253/2014, Province of the Western Cape Provincial Gazette Extraordinary, No. 7310, Cape Town: 23 September 2014
  7. ↑ "The Emergence of Modern Humans: The Pleistocene occupation sites of South Africa". UNESCO. Retrieved 3 April 2015.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.