Lucinda Backwell

National Scientific and Technical Research Council | conicet · Arqueología Andina (ARQAND)

Here we present the results of a taphonomic study of the faunal assemblage associated with the hominin fossils (Australopithecus sediba) from the Malapa site. Results include estimation of body part representation, mortality profiles, type of fragmentation, identification of breakage patterns, and microscopic analysis of bone surfaces. The diversit...

Ju/'hoan hunters from Nyae Nyae, near Tsumkwe in Namibia, demonstrate the manufacture of three fixative pastes made from plant extracts, and poison made from grubs and plant extracts. Ammocharis coranica and Terminalia sericea produce simple glue. Ozoroa schinzii latex mixed with carbonized Aristeda adscensionis grass is a compound adhesive. Compos...

The El Molle 1 archaeological site is located in a mountainous area of the province of Tucumán, in northwest Argentina. It is a human burial that was found partially eroded on the edge of the Amaicha Riverbed. The individual has been dated to 2210 ± 20 years BP and isotopic analyses have established that the individual’s diet was that of a hunter-g...

Border Cave in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, preserves a long and continuous archaeological record from 227 ka to 24 ka years ago, rendering it a key Middle Stone Age site in southern Africa. It has yielded the skeletal remains of eight anatomically modern Homo sapiens individuals, a lithic sequence that includes MSA 1, MSA 2, MSA 3, and Early Later...

Fragments of land snail (Achatinidae) shell were found at Border Cave in varying proportions in all archaeological members, with the exception of the oldest members 5 WA and 6 BS (>227,000 years ago). They were recovered in relatively high frequencies in Members 4 WA, 4 BS, 1 RGBS and 3 WA. The shell fragments present a range of colours from lustro...

Border Cave is a well-known South African Middle and Early Later Stone Age site located in KwaZulu-Natal. The site has exceptional plant preservation, unparalleled in the African Middle Stone Age archaeological record. This study focuses on the phytolith and FTIR analysis of two Members (2 BS and 2 WA) of the under-documented post-Howiesons Poort o...

Border Cave is a well-known South African Middle and Early Later Stone Age site located in KwaZulu-Natal. The site has exceptional plant preservation, unparalleled in the African Middle Stone Age archaeological record. This study focuses on the phytolith and FTIR analysis of two Members (2 BS and 2 WA) of the under-documented post-Howiesons Poort o...

Border Cave hosts a rare Middle and Early Later Stone Age sequence of deposits that extends as far back as ca. 250 thousand years (ka). The site's chronology has been built mainly on Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) ages obtained from teeth, conducted at the end of the 1990s, and on radiocarbon dating for the more recent layers. In order to refine the...

This contribution focuses on the recently excavated lithic assemblage from Border Cave Members 1 RGBS, 3 BS, 2 WA and 2 BS. These members were attributed by Beaumont to the Howiesons Poort and post-Howiesons Poort Industries of the southern African Middle Stone Age. Here we consider lithics as indicators of cultural behaviour, site formation proces...

During her palaeoanthropological and ethnoarchaeological research at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, between 2007 and 2014, Lucinda Backwell privately collected a significant amount of objects produced by the San communities who currently live in Kalahari reserves, assigned to them by the governments of Botswana and Namibia: the...

Lithic assemblages immediately following the Howiesons Poort, often loosely referred to as the 'post-Howiesons Poort' or MSA III, have attracted relatively little attention when compared to other well-known phases of the South African Middle Stone Age (MSA) sequence. Current evidence from sites occurring in widely-differing environments suggests th...

Fully shaped, morphologically standardized bone tools are generally considered reliable indicators of the emergence of modern behavior. We report the discovery of 23 double-beveled bone tools from ~ 80,000-60,000-year-old archaeological layers at Sibudu Cave in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. We analyzed the texture of use-wear on the archaeological b...

Border Cave is a key Middle Stone Age (MSA) site in southern Africa, with a 4 m-deep sedimentary sequence that dates from more than 227 000 (227 ka) to 44 ka ago. Lithic assemblages vary considerably during this period and artefacts made from organic materials become common at the end of the MSA sequence. Here we describe charcoal from the 10 membe...

Border Cave (BC) has accumulated over 200,000 years of archaeological deposits that document remarkable evidence of human behaviour during the Middle and Later Stone Age. For nearly fifty years, researchers have relied on the stratigraphic framework established by Peter Beaumont in 1973, in which the deposits are lithostratigraphically categorized...

In 2015, which marked 35 years since Beaumont had worked at the site, we renewed excavations at Border Cave. Our primary aims were to reassess the stratigraphic context of the sedimentary and cultural sequence, gain insight into site formation processes, make a detailed study of organic remains, identify long term cultural trends, and characterize...

Besides providing a unique archaeological assemblage that documents the early emergence of complex behaviour in the human lineage, Border Cave (South Africa) is noteworthy for having yielded hominin remains of at least nine individuals, including the partial cranium Border Cave 1. While the exact provenance of Border Cave 1 is unknown, sequence str...

Extraordinary preservation of plant remains provides an insight into the construction and materials of bedding at Border Cave, South Africa. Towards the back of the cave there are particularly thick layers of desiccated and charred grass and our botanical study is from bulk samples of these approximately 60,000 to 40,000 year-old layers (Members 3...

RESUMEN Border Cave es una cueva ubicada en las montañas de Lebombo, en la frontera entre la región de KwaZulu-Natal (Sudáfrica) y Esuatini. Las excavaciones arqueológicas se iniciaron en 1934, se retomaron en los 70’ y el sitio vuelve a investigarse en la actualidad. Border Cave es una ventana al conocimiento de la prehistoria sudafricana debido a...

Insects are of interest to forensic scientists, because they enable them to reconstruct length of body exposure, a subsequent sequence of decomposition events, and local environment. Relatively little attention has been paid to insects and other invertebrates as agents of bone modification. In order to rectify this, we conducted mostly laboratory e...

Bone tool-use by Early Pleistocene hominins is at the centre of debates in human evolution. It is especially the case in South Africa, where 102 bone tools have been described from four Early Stone Age archaeological sites, which have yielded Oldowan and possibly Acheulean artefacts, as well as Paranthropus robustus and early Homo remains. Here we...

Comment

En este trabajo presentamos los resultados de un análisis integral sobre el contexto funerario más antiguo detectado en la Quebrada de Los Corrales, la cual se ubica a una altitud promedio de 3.100 msnm en el sector norte del sistema montañoso Aconquija, en el oeste de la provincia de Tucumán, Argentina. Este contexto mortuorio fue detectado en el...

Bedding of grass and ashes The Border Cave site in the KwaZulu-Natal region of South Africa has been a rich source of archaeological knowledge about Stone Age humans because of its well-preserved stratigraphic record. Wadley et al. now report the discovery of grass bedding in Border Cave, dated to approximately 200,000 years ago. The bedding, ident...

This study focuses on two early Pleistocene Australopithecus sediba hominin specimens and associated fauna from Malapa, South Africa. These specimens have been interpreted as having fallen through a shaft opening into a cave, where they died and likely mummified, before being washed into a lower chamber. In order to better understand the taphonomy...

A horncore feature was encountered during excavations at Border Cave, in Member 2 BSL, dated 60–49 ka. The basal half of the horncore lay towards the centre of a combustion feature and was calcined. The tip half lay on a mat of burnt grass bedding towards the edge of the fireplace. It was covered with a black shiny residue, which was also present o...

Middle Stone Age cooking Early evidence of cooked starchy plant food is sparse, yet the consumption of starchy roots is likely to have been a key innovation in the human diet. Wadley et al. report the identification of whole, charred rhizomes of plants of the genus Hypoxis from Border Cave, South Africa, dated up to 170,000 years ago. These archaeo...

New excavations at Border Cave use high-resolution techniques, including FT-IR, for sediment samples and thin sections of micromorphology blocks from stratigraphy. These show that sediments have different moisture regimes, both spatially and chronologically. The site preserves desiccated grass bedding in multiple layers and they, along with seeds,...

New excavations at Border Cave use high-resolution techniques, including FT-IR, for sediment samples and thin sections of micromorphology blocks from stratigraphy. These show that sediments have different moisture regimes, both spatially and chronologically. The site preserves desiccated grass bedding in multiple layers and they, along with seeds,...

The bow and arrow is thought to be a unique development of our species, signalling higher-level cognitive functioning. How this technology originated and how we identify archaeological evidence for it are subjects of ongoing debate. Recent analysis of the putative bone arrow point from Sibudu Cave in South Africa, dated to 61.7±1.5kya, has provided...

A fossilised large mammal bonebed was discovered eroding out of a gully in the Free State of South Africa. The bonebed is ~1.5 m below the modern land surface, and extends over an area 35 × 13 m. Surface scatters of stone tools occur in a 1 km radius of the site, and a large fire place associated with spirally fractured burnt bone is preserved to o...

Wonderkrater, a Middle Stone Age site in the interior of South Africa, is a spring and peat mound featuring both paleoclimatic and archaeological records. The site preserves three small MSA lithic assemblages with age estimates of 30 ka, >45 ka and 138.01±7.7 ka. Here we present results of the pollen analysis of a core retrieved from the middle of...

The Malapa site has yielded unusually abundant and well preserved fossils of Australopithecus sediba. While some elements were found in situ during excavation, others were recovered ex situ from blocks of clastic, calcified sediments collected around the site. We have refitted the ex situ elements from Facies D, the sedimentary unit represented by...

Here we present the results of a techno-functional analysis of 17 bone tools recovered from strata 6, 5 and 3 of the Palaeolithic site of Ma'anshan Cave, Guizhou Province, southern China. Stratum 6, dated to c. 35 cal kyr BP, has yielded three sharp awls. From Stratum 5, dated to c. 34 cal kyr BP, come six probable spear points, awls and a cutting...

Discussion about early projectile technology typically includes criteria used to distinguish artefacts used as hafted points from those employed for other purposes, associated faunal and lithic assemblages, palaeoenvironment, age of the material, associated hominins and their cognitive capacities, criteria used to identify complex technology and co...

Electron microprobe analyses of spots in fragments of samples UW101-SO-31, UW101-SO-34, UW101-SO-39 and DB-1. Note that in each of the tables totals below 100% reflect volatile content or porosity of sample, or both. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.09561.018

Summary table listing surface modifications on all morphologically informative specimens. A total of 559 bone and dental specimens were examined for surface modifications. This sample includes all of the larger specimens and most of the complete elements in the collection, from both surface and excavation contexts. At low magnification (7×) most of...

Here we provide a multiproxy record of climate change and human occupation at Wonderkrater, a spring and peat mound site situated in the interior of southern Africa. Recently extracted sediment cores yielded a number of Middle Stone Age (MSA) artefacts, prompting exploratory excavation of the sediments to understand better the geomorphology of the...

After attending this presentation, attendees will obtain knowledge on the application of whole-body forensic taphonomic analyses (focussing on subterranean weathering patterns, insect-bone modification, skeletal disarticulation patterns, and postmortem and post-fossilisation breakage patterns) of two exceptionally well-preserved early hominins. The...

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2014. Hair morphology of some artiodactyls from southern Africa. Annals of the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History 4: 26–32. We describe the scale pattern and cross-sectional morphology of the hairs of seven southern African artiodactyls: Aepyceros melampus (impala), Connochaetes taurinus (blue wildebeest), Connochaetes gnou (black wildebees...

a b s t r a c t This research focuses on scale pattern and cross sectional morphology of hair to identify an expanded sample of fossil hairs from Parahyaena brunnea coprolites from Gladysvale cave in the Sterkfontein Valley, South Africa. The coprolites are part of a brown hyaena latrine preserved in calcified cave sediment dated to the Middle Plei...

The last decade has witnessed remarkable discoveries and advances in our understanding of the tool using behaviour of animals. Wild populations of capuchin monkeys have been observed to crack open nuts with stone tools, similar to the skills of chimpanzees and humans. Corvids have been observed to use and make tools that rival in complexity the beh...

DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2

Recent archaeological discoveries have revealed that pigment use, beads, engravings, and sophisticated stone and bone tools were already present in southern Africa 75,000 y ago. Many of these artifacts disappeared by 60,000 y ago, suggesting that modern behavior appeared in the past and was subsequently lost before becoming firmly established. Most...

The transition from the Middle Stone Age (MSA) to the Later Stone Age (LSA) in South Africa was not associated with the appearance of anatomically modern humans and the extinction of Neandertals, as in the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition in Western Europe. It has therefore attracted less attention, yet it provides insights into patterns of t...

Recent archaeological discoveries have revealed that pigment use, beads, engravings, and sophisticated stone and bone tools were already present in southern Africa 75,000 y ago. Many of these artifacts disappeared by 60,000 y ago, suggesting that modern behavior appeared in the past and was subsequently lost before becoming firmly established. Most...

The transition from the Middle Stone Age (MSA) to the Later Stone Age (LSA) in South Africa was not associated with the appearance of anatomically modern humans and the extinction of Neandertals, as in the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition in Western Europe. It has therefore attracted less attention, yet it provides insights into patterns of t...

A few pieces of worked bone were previously reported from Sibudu, a site from KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa featuring a stratigraphic sequence with pre-Still Bay, Still Bay, Howiesons Poort, post-Howiesons Poort, late and final MSA cultural horizons. Here we describe an expanded collection of worked bones, including twenty-three pieces. Technologic...

While quartz is the most used dosimeter, it has been shown that feldspars provide many advantages over quartz, essentially in terms of reproducibility and sensitivity. Unfortunately, they also suffer from instability in their luminescence signal, known as anomalous fading, which leads to an underestimation in age if no correction is applied in a sp...

Three geographically dispersed Middle and Later Stone Age cave sites in South Africa, and a Middle Stone Age cave site in Ethiopia, share a similar taphonomic signature that includes destruction of bones associated with variable forms of star shaped features, clusters of microscopically visible sub-parallel striations, edge gnawing, pits, and etchi...

Villa et al. 2012 Border Cave SI

References (Text)

Wonderkrater is a spring mound consisting entirely of peat in excess of 8 m thick. It has yielded a pollen record extending back over 35,000 years, which has provided one of the very few proxy climatic records for the interior of southern Africa in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. The current investigation of the morphology and sedimentology of t...

The bone fragments of the Australopithecus Africanus from the dolomitic cave in the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa have been studied by the use of several spectral techniques. The aim was to establish their degree of preservation and possibilities of inferring the life conditions from them. X-ray diffraction studies revealed the transformation...

A variety of insect taxa have been shown to modify bones with their mandibles, including the larvae of Dermestidae, Tenebrionidae, Calliphoridae, Tineidae as well as some known Families of termites, of the Order Isoptera. Bone modification criteria are well documented for a number of these taxa, largely due to the fact that such studies have a wide...

An in situ fossil latrine is reported from Gladysvale Cave, South Africa. The latrine area is c. 1.5 m in observable horizontal length and varies in height with a maximum of 20 cm, indicating that deposition may have occurred over a considerable period of time. The size of individual coprolites in the latrine varies, with larger specimens > 30 mm i...

Bone tools from early hominin sites in southern Africa continue to intrigue researchers interested in the development of early human technology and cognition. Sterkfontein, Swartkrans and Drimolen have all yielded bone tools dated to between 1 and 2 Mya associated with numerous Paranthropus robustus and few early Homo remains. The bone tools are de...

Until now, the oldest known human hair was from a 9000-year-old South American mummy. Here we report fossil hairs of probable human origin that exceed that age by about 200,000 years. The hairs have been discovered in a brown hyaena (Parahyaena brunnea) coprolite from Gladysvale cave in South Africa. The coprolite is part of a hyaena latrine preser...

Australopithecus robustus is one of the best represented hominin taxa in Africa, with hundreds of specimens recovered from six fossil localities in the Bloubank Valley area of Gauteng Province, South Africa. However, precise geochronological ages are presently lacking for these fossil cave infills. In this paper, we provide a detailed geological ba...

The earliest use of bone tools is a topic of ongoing debate that concerns the criteria used to identify utilised or minimally modified bone tools, and if verified, the implications for hominid adaptation and cognition. Here we present the first description of 22 possible bone tools from the early hominid site of Drimolen (Gauteng Province, South Af...