This important archaeological site, Heuningsneskrans, is close to the well-known bushman rock shelter, Echo Caves. These sites are approximately four kilometres from each other and located in the Ohrigstad Valley, near the Blyde River catchment.
“The ancestors of the current Bantu-speaking population are about 2 000 years old. They brought metal and mixed farming of cattle, sheep, goats and crops into South 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 life 30 000 BP,” said Dr Aurore Val.
The team of archaeologists is led by Dr Guillaume Porrazi, University in Marseille, and Dr Aurore Val, post-doctoral fellow, Universität Tübingen, Germany. The curator of the National Museum in Bloemfontein, Dr Bridgette Cohen, Dr Vida Schmid from Austria and Dr Giulia Ricci are also part of the team. The team is considerably smaller than previous years due to Covid-19 travelling restrictions.
“My great-grandfather bought the farm just after the Anglo Boer War and throughout the years we have found interesting objects like teeth and possible tools from the Stone Age,” said farm owner, Marnus van der Wal. Heuningsneskrans means “the cliff with honey nests”. The Van der Wals’ house is also built uniquely into the cliff with the excavation area just next to it.
Their work sheds light on the middle and late Stone Age and reveals so much about people’s daily lives. Studies can reconstruct daily diets from 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, shells, ostrich egg shells and thousands of beads.
This ground-breaking project is a continuation of a brief excavation by Peter Beaumont in 1968. The current archaeologists are also using his original 6,35-metre deep excavation for their research.
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, and last until 8 000 cal. BP (calibration OxCal 4.3 SHCal 13).
Lukas Mphogo and Shai Excellent Makalang sift and extract material.
“We have a rare opportunity to explore the extent to which climatic and environmental conditions have contributed to shaping human evolution. To understand the southern African region, it is critical to explore human behavioural and technological responses in distinct ecological settings, on a local and regional scale. Our first field campaign has produced several promising results that help in clarifying Beaumont’s excavation. First, it allows us to revise some of his stratigraphic observations. Our field observations question the presence of the bedrock at the base of his trench and postulate the existence of older deposits. Second, the sedimentary sequence of Heuningneskrans represents a series of extremely well-stratified deposits linked with various gelogenic and anthropogenic events. Beaumont’s excavation favoured artificial spits that cannot be firmly positioned within the natural stratigraphy, but which do follow the general horizontality of the deposits. Finally, the high resolution of the sedimentary events is combined with good preservation of archaeological remains. Although the site has suffered in the past and still suffers from water infiltration, this does not seem to have significantly affected the stratigraphy and archaeological material,” Val continued.
In 2019 the archaeologists found a big flat rock used for napping. Indents on the rock clearly show it was used as a platform to pulverise grain and other materials.
The archaeologists’ passion for their work and love of South Africa was evident during the visit from Steelburger/ Lydenburg News. A few hours there is just a drop in the proverbial bucket of archaeology, anthropology and the history of humankind.
