The place beyond the trees: renewed excavations of the Middle Stone Age deposits at Olieboomspoort in the Waterberg Mountains of the South African Savanna Biome

Abstract

Olieboomspoort is one of the few rock shelters in the vast interior of southern Africa documenting pulses of occupation from the Acheulean until the end of the Later Stone Age. Revil Mason excavated the site in 1954 and attributed the large Middle Stone Age (MSA) lithic assemblage to his middle phase of the so-called Pietersburg Industry. Recent work at the site has focused on the Holocene layers, but little is known about the earlier phases of shelter use. Here, we provide some background to the shelter, give a history of past research and present initial results following renewed fieldwork at the site. The MSA deposits contain abundant lithic artefacts and ochre, and we present an initial description of these cultural remains. Palynological analysis reveals limited potential for palaeoenvironmental reconstructions, but some faunal remains indicate open grasslands. We dated two equid teeth that provided highly consistent combined U-series-ESR estimates, resulting in a mean age of 150 ± 14 ka (1σ). Even when considering potential sources of uncertainty such as variations in water-intake, these fossils can securely be dated to Marine Isotopic Stage 6. Our reappraisal of site formation processes highlights the fact that the archaeological assemblage is strongly time-averaged. We discuss these different results in the context of a recently rekindled interest in the so-called Pietersburg Industry.

Environmental influences on human innovation and behavioural diversity in southern Africa 92–80 thousand years ago

“…Almost all Pietersburg assemblages do appear to produce some bifacial points, however. Like other MIS 5 groupings, raw material selection appears to be highly localised, with quartzite the dominant rock at Mwulu's Cave and Olieboomspoort (168,169), hornfels and quartz at Bushman Rock Shelter (167), and rhyolite, hornfels and basalt at Border Cave (173). There is no discussion of heat treatment in any Pietersburg sites, but it seems unlikely that any of the main raw materials would be suitable.…”

“…We take a two part approach to this review. We start by using the defining characteristics of the prevailing MIS 5 culture-historic taxonomies (ie., 'technocomplexes') in the region, including Klasies River / Mossel Bay / pre-Still Bay (158,159,166), and the recently reemerging Pietersburg (167)(168)(169). Following (170) we appreciate that these culture-historic taxa are normative and typically act to supress inter-and intra-assemblage variation, creating the appearance of coherence where it may not exist (156).…”

“…As with the 'pre-Still Bay', though it is long-established (188)(189)(190), whether the Pietersburg can be considered a coherent taxon is still unclear (168). Sites with published ages are few but include 227-77 ka at Border Cave (173), 150 ±14 ka at Olieboomspoort (169), 97 ±10 ka to 73 ±6 ka at Bushman Rock Shelter (167), and potentially 90 ka at Mwulu's Cave (191). Other sites that have been assigned to this grouping are Cave of Hearths and Lincoln Cave (172).…”

Red Balloon rock shelter Middle Stone Age ochre assemblage and population’s adaption to local resources in the Waterberg (Limpopo, South Africa)

“…The situation in the interior of southern Africa remains understudied despite the recent works carried out in different parts of the interior of southern Africa (e.g. van der Ryst 2007 ; Backwell et al 2014 ; Porraz et al 2015 , 2018 ; Stewart and Mitchell 2018 ; de la Peña et al 2019 ; Val et al 2021 ; Wadley et al 2021 ). With these studies, archaeological interest in mountainous regions has waxed in recent years.…”

The remediation of Kruger Cave: A Later Stone Age and living heritage site in the western Magaliesberg

“…Analytical and digital recording technologies, such as aDNA and DStretch, that were not available 40 years ago can provide new information about a site that contributes to broader archaeological questions. A host of southern African Pleistocene and Holocene sites have been re-excavated in recent years, including Olieboomspoort(van Der Ryst 2006;Val et al 2021), Elands Bay Cave(Porraz et al 2016), Grassridge Rockshelter(Collins et al 2017), Border Cave(Backwell et al 2018), Mwulu's Cave (de laPeña et al 2019), and Klipfonteinrand (Mackay et al 2020), all with encouraging results. Several others are ongoing (e.g., Justin Pargeter's re-excavation of Boomplaas Cave).…”