The special features and status of the Saldanha skull

Drennan, M. R.

doi:10.1002/ajpa.1330130406

Cited by 27 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…This is the only other skull in sub-Saharan Africa, apart from the Broken Hill skull (and possibly the Eyasi skull), which shows distinct Neandertaloid characteristics (Drennan, 1953(Drennan, , 1953a(Drennan, , 1954(Drennan, , 1955Singer, 1954;Trevor, 1953). realized their significance (P1.…”

Section: Platementioning

confidence: 94%

Archaeological Investigations at the Saldanha Skull Site in South Africa

Singer¹,

Wymer²

1968

The South African Archaeological Bulletin

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Section: Platementioning

confidence: 94%

Archaeological Investigations at the Saldanha Skull Site in South Africa

Singer¹,

Wymer²

1968

The South African Archaeological Bulletin

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“…Historically the first of these to come to light was found at Kabwe (Broken Hill) in Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) in 1921 and in 1925. After being the victim of a variety of nomenclatural vicissitudes at the hands of Sir Arthur Smith Woodward (1921), William P. Pycraft (1928), and others, it became commonly classified as representing a subspecies, H. sapiens rhodesiensis (Campbell, 1962(Campbell, , 1972Tobias, 1968a; Howell, 19781, although Carleton S. Coon (1963) and some others regarded it as a subspecies of H. erectus.Another representative of this population was found by Ronald Singer and Keith Jolly in 1953 on the farm Elandsfontein, near the village of Hopefield, 24 km east of Saldanha Bay in the Cape Province (Drennan, 1953(Drennan, , 1954(Drennan, , 1955Singer, 1954;Drennan and Singer, 1955;Singer and Crawford, 1958;Howell and J.D. Clark, 1963).…”

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confidence: 99%

History of physical anthropology in Southern Africa

Tobias

1985

Am. J. Phys. Anthropol.

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A brief history of physical anthropology in Southern Africa is presented. Beginning with early accounts of settlers and visitors, detailed consideration of early and subsequent fossil discoveries and the individuals involved is given. A discussion of studies on the living peoples of Southern Africa follows and includes a historical summary of research on the interrelationships among Khoisan and Negro peoples, race, growth, nutrition, and secular trends.The roots of physical anthropology in Southern Africa are nearly as old as the recording of history on these shores. From the earliest times, visitors and settlers were wont to record their impressions of the diverse indigenous peoples of these African subtropics. Their rudimentary observations provide a corpus of what we may call the protohistory of physical anthropology in Southern Africa: a review of this phase provides the first section of this essay and it will take the story up to 1877; 1877 may be recognized as the year of the birth of anthropology as a scientific discipline in Southern Africa. Subsequent to that landmark, the major events of the past century under the rubrics of various subdivisions of physical anthropology will be considered. A map of Southern Africa showing the locations of several of the major historical and paleoanthropological sites mentioned in the review is given in Figure 1. THE PROTOHISTORY OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY (BEFORE 1877)Prior to 1877, most recorded data on the living peoples of the subcontinent were to be found in the annals of travelers, missionaries, and explorers. Some of the records go back to the Moslem geographers and merchants of the 10th to 14th centuries, who ventured down the east coast of Africa, well south of the equator, reaching at least 20°S, a t Sofala (later Nova Sofala in Mozambique). W. Hammond-Tooke (1908) reviewed some of the earlier contributions to anthropological work in his presidential address to Section F of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science in 1908. The writings of the very early Moslem travelers speak of two African peoples living along the East African littoral. There were the black Zenj or Zinj', who are thought to be progenitors of some of the Bantu-speaking peoples of southeast Africa and the yellow-skinned, click-speaking Waqwaq (or Wakwak), who were manifestly Khoisan peoples, although whether they were Khoikhoi (formerly known as Hottentots), San (previously Bushmen), or some other Khoisan group is not certain. The Zenj were encountered as far south as Sofala from the tenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth century. It would be wrong to infer from these writings of the earlier chroniclers that clickusing Bantu-speakers, such as the Zulu and Xhosa, were at that time no farther south than Sofala. Indeed, the latter view, as expressed for instance in W. HammondTooke's (1908) address and by George McCall Theal (19191, must be considered entirely false in the light of later historical and especially archeological research. The growth of knowledge in ...

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“…The artifacts and fossils were called to the attention of R. Singer, then at the University of Cape Town, who initiated research at the site in 1951. Surface collecting in 1953 resulted in the discovery of the now famous "Saldanha skull" (Drennan, 1953(Drennan, , 1955Singer, 1954Singer, , 1958Rightmire, 1976), widely recognized as very similar to the more complete and obviously archaic skull of "Rhodesian Man" found in 1921 at…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Fauna and Overall Interpretation of the “Cutting 10” Acheulean Site at Elandsfontein (Hopefield), Southwestern Cape Province, South Africa

Klein

1978

Quat. res.

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The Cutting 10 site at Elandsfontein (Hopefield), southwestern Cape Province, South Africa, is one of only three sites in southern Africa where bones and Acheulean artifacts have been documented together in primary or near primary context and the only such site where the association is in the open air. The Cutting 10 bones belong to a minimum of 15 mammalian species, which together suggest both a mid-Pleistocene age for the site and a vegetational setting in which grasses played a much more important role than they did historically. The absence of evidence for hearths, windbreaks, and other features, the composition of the artifact assemblage, the relatively sparse scatter of bones and artifacts, the relatively high bone to artifact ratio, the species composition of the fauna, and the numbers of different kinds of skeletal elements represented all indicate that the Cutting 10 occurrence was more a butchering site than a campsite. Although people are probably responsible for most of the bones, some of them probably come from animals that were killed by large carnivores or that died naturally.

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The special features and status of the Saldanha skull

Cited by 27 publications

References 1 publication

Archaeological Investigations at the Saldanha Skull Site in South Africa

Archaeological Investigations at the Saldanha Skull Site in South Africa

History of physical anthropology in Southern Africa

The Fauna and Overall Interpretation of the “Cutting 10” Acheulean Site at Elandsfontein (Hopefield), Southwestern Cape Province, South Africa

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