Dominic Stratford’s research while affiliated with University of the Witwatersrand and other places

The broader Drakensberg is an important region for understanding population dynamics and adaptation between the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. Here, we announce our campaign to re-excavate Strathalan Cave in the northeastern Cape of South Africa. Strathalan Cave sits at the foothills of the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg at the edge of the Great Escarpment of southern Africa. Well-known for its organic preservation, the site is important for understanding the archaeology of the region. People have occupied Strathalan Cave intermittently from ca. 29 000 years ago (ka), so exploring occupational patterns at sites such as these is a valuable means of understanding Stone Age behaviour during glacial Marine Isotope Stage 2 (ca. 29-14 ka). In this paper, we provide the first detailed description of the geological, geomorphological, sedimentary and environmental context of Strathalan Cave and review previous studies conducted on the site and region. We also introduce the goals of our re-excavation project and present a detailed map of the three cavities that make up the Strathalan Cave complex as part of a new, comprehensive, spatial control system established on site. Given the remarkable preservation of organic materials, Strathalan Cave may provide an important and rare source of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental data for this period. Future work at Strathalan will likely contribute to our understanding of the links between settlement patterns and environmental change. This is especially important given that Strathalan sits at the juncture between different environmental and geographic regions.

Mwulu’s Cave is located on the eastern escarpment of the Makapansberg Mountains in the district of Mokopane (Limpopo Province, South Africa, 24.17° S, 29.24° E), close to the Makapan Valley. The area hosts several well-known Plio-Pleistocene sites (Fig. 1). The cave is accessed directly from a mountain pass, informally and locally called the ‘Monkey Nek’. The site lies in the middle beds of the Late Archaean and Early Proterozoic quartzites of the Black Reef Formation, which are considered the basal lithostratigraphic unit of the Transvaal Supergroup exposed around the margins of the Transvaal basin (Eriksson et al., 1995; Els et al., 1995). The heavily fractured, south-west tilted Black Reef Formation quartzites represent the highest points of this landscape, c. 2040 m above sea level, exposed as a scarp following the erosion of the overlying dolomites. It is in these dramatic cliffs overlooking the Springbok Flats (500 m below) that Mwulu’s Cave formed. Mwulu’s Cave is located 30 m below a north facing overhanging quartzite ledge, and about 15 m above the base of the scarp. The small, narrow, tapering cave (about 10 m long and 3 m wide at its entrance) opens 5 m below a compound fracture that splits into two diverging joints above the roof of the cave. It is most likely that the cave formed through localised collapse of the cliff face as a result of the development and exposure of this fracture complex.

Olieboomspoort, in the Waterberg Mountains of South Africa, 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 discovered and 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. Later work at the site lead by Maria van der Ryst focused on the Holocene layers, which preserve abundant archaeological material associated with the final Later Stone Age and the contact period between hunter-gatherers with herders and farmers in the region.In 2018, we initiated new excavations at Olieboomspoort to clarify site formation processes and conduct new analyses on the MSA archaeological material. The MSA deposits contain abundant lithic artifacts and ochre; faunal remains indicate the presence of open grasslands. U-series-ESR estimates on fossil teeth place the deposits within Marine Isotopic Stage 6. Our reappraisal of site formation processes highlights the critical role of water and suggests that the archaeological assemblage is strongly time-averaged.

Namib IV is frequently cited, as it is one of few Earlier Stone Age sites in the Sand Sea of the Namib Desert. The site was first investigated in 1978 by Myra Shackley, who described 582 artifacts on the surface of a pan as representing an Acheulean butchery site. Descriptions of the artifacts, their number, and area were inconsistently reported. Recently rediscovered, the site of Namib IV is a rare example of a tool-rich and fossil fauna-bearing pan system in the Namib Sand Sea. This project aims to investigate when, how, and under what environmental conditions hominins utilized these landscapes. This article presents the first archaeological research conducted at the site in over 40 years. Typological and technological data was collected from surface-exposed artifacts and large cutting tools (LCTs) and compared to Shackley’s assemblage. Data demonstrate that her collection is representative of the Namib IV site and raise many new questions about the original research and the site.

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 occupations dating to~60 ka. These members contain complex successions of vertically overlapping, interdigitating light brown sediments, plant bedding and combustion features of various sizes. The complexity and distinctiveness of these deposits provide an excellent opportunity for the study of plant exploitation strategies and their associated human behaviour. Our taphonomic assessment inferred, through the variability of phytolith properties and minerals composing archaeological layers, that specific occupations suffered more physical weathering than others, for example in the form of trampling. The preservation of fragile and highly soluble phy-toliths (eudicot leaf phytoliths) and the high frequencies of articulated phytoliths indicates that some bedding deposits experienced little disturbance after their deposition. Not all bedding layers dating to ⁓60 ka show, from a phytolith perspective, the same plant composition, which could be explained in terms of changes in human preference for the use of plants over time to construct bedding or because distinct types of living floors are represented. Finally, the systematic application of phytoliths and FTIR to the complex archaeological sequence of Border Cave confirm these analyses can be used in the future to identify bedding deposits not visible to the naked eye, and behavioural patterns obscured by diagenetic or biased processes during sampling.