This groundbreaking project is a continuation of a brief excavation by Peter Beaumont in 1968. The current archaeologists are using his original 6.35-metre deep excavation for their research.
Dr Guillaume Porraz, University of Aix-Marseille, Dr Aurore Val, post-doctoral fellow, Universität Tübingen, Germany, Louisa Hutten (Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town) and JP Celliers (curator, Lydenburg Museum) are the team leaders this year.
Val said the site drew their attention while doing elaborate research at Bushman Rock Shelter (BRS) close to the Echo Caves in the Ohrigstad Valley, near the Blyde River catchment.
The sites are approximately four kilometres from one another. This area, on the eastern margin of the Great Escarpment, connects the interior plateau of southern Africa (Highveld) with the Lowveld and the Mozambican coastal plain.
“In 2018, we reopened Heuningneskrans to expose and sample the profiles, contextualise Beaumont’s data, and evaluate the site’s potential and its complementarity with BRS. The excavation exposed a finely stratified sequence illustrating the action of various sedimentary agents. The last use of the site is associated with Iron Age groups, but most of the sequence documents human occupations that predate 27 000 cal BP (calendar years before the present), until 8 000 cal BP at the latest. The results of this first excavation campaign, together with ongoing investigations at BRS, highlight that this area is instrumental for the study of Middle and Later Stone Age developments in southern Africa,” said Porraz and Val. 
“Our aim for the project was always to include archaeology students from other countries. A team from Germany, doing research at the Sibhudu site in Ballito, was also able to visit Heuningneskrans. There are a lot of similarities between Sibhudu and the sites we excavate here,” said Val.
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The Heuningneskrans site reveals so much about people’s daily lives. Studies can for instance reconstruct daily diets from the bone analysis. Val explained they can also identify whether the bones belonged to kudu, duiker, bushbuck, baboons or porcupines.
They have also found thousands of fragments of the giant African snail, tortoise shells, ostrich eggshells and dozens of beads. One of the other astonishing animals they identified through carbon dating is a water monitor. “The first inhabitants of this area were nomadic people who lived together in small family groups and relied on hunting and the gathering of food for survival. The most recent populations occupying the rock shelter are 2 000 years old.
They brought metal and mixed farming of cattle, sheep, goats and crops into southern Africa, and settled mainly in the eastern part of the country to take advantage of the summer rainfall needed for their crops. We are finding abundant evidence of human presence from more than 100 000 years ago at Bushman Rock Shelter,” said Val.
