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<< Our Photo Pages >> Spitzkloof - Cave or Rock Shelter in South Africa

Submitted by bat400 on Wednesday, 10 October 2012  Page Views: 4647

Natural PlacesSite Name: Spitzkloof
Country: South Africa
NOTE: This site is 89.673 km away from the location you searched for.
Type: Cave or Rock Shelter
Nearest Town: Port Nolloth  Nearest Village: Lekkersing
Latitude: 28.87S  Longitude: 17.050000E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
 no data Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
 no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
 no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
 3
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Spitzkloof
Spitzkloof submitted by bat400 : Spitzkloof Rockshelter A. Source: AMEMSA, http://www.amemsa.com/Spitzkloof.html, 2010 Photo Gallery, http://www.amemsa.com/Spitzkloof_files/DSCN0571.jpg. Site in South Africa. (Vote or comment on this photo)
Rock Shelter in South Africa.
Excavations by the AMEMSA Project (Adaptations to Marginal Environments in the Middle Stone Age) beginning in 2009 have found stone tools, hearth sites, and decorated ostrich egg fragments from 60,000 years ago.

Located in the Richtersveld - an extension of the Namib Desert. The rockshelter is one of three dome shaped hollows eroded from an outcrop of quartzite, near a dry tributary of the Holgat River.

Note: the location given is only aproximate.

Ref:
AMEMSA.
Genevieve Dewara, Brian A. Stewartb, "Preliminary results of excavations at Spitzkloof Rockshelter, Richtersveld, SouthAfrica", Quaternary International, Vol. 270, 23 August 2012, Pages 30–39.

Note: Hunting for the world’s oldest decorated eggs from the Middle Stone Age in South Africa.
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20130704_12 Near Bakkrans Cave_002

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Nearby sites listing. In the following links * = Image available
 128.5km N 2° Apollo 11 Cave* Cave or Rock Shelter
 340.4km NE 46° The Lost City of Kalahari* Ancient Village or Settlement
 413.5km SSE 161° Diepkloof* Rock Outcrop
 577.2km SSE 167° Iziko South African Museum Museum
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Hunting for the world’s oldest decorated eggs from the Middle Stone Age in S.Africa by bat400 on Wednesday, 10 October 2012
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South Africa’s Richtersveld coastal desert is a thirsty place. Some rain falls in winter – but not much. Most of the year plants and animals depend on the coastal fogs that develop as the warm desert air meets the cool upwelled waters of the southern Atlantic. To work there, we needed to take all our food with us and relied on a 500-litre plastic water drum strapped to our 4×4, driving two hours to the nearest town to refill it every ten days.

Yet hunter-gatherers survived in this and other arid regions of southern Africa for tens of thousands of years without conveniences like Land Rovers or plastic containers. How did they do it? This is what our team of archaeologists from the Universities of Cambridge and Toronto travelled to Sub-Saharan Africa to find out: how early members of our species, and perhaps even earlier hominins, colonised and made a living in marginal environments like the sub-arid Richtersveld.

The answers lie in the fragments of ostrich eggshell buried in 60,000 years’ worth of silty archaeological deposits trapped by the natural rock-shelter – called Spitzkloof A – that we excavated. Each day we uncovered hundreds of pieces of shell. Ethnographic research teaches us that recent and modern hunter-gatherers in another arid environment of southern African – the Kalahari Desert – use ostrich eggshells as water flasks.

Kalahari Bushmen empty the contents of the egg through a hole drilled in one end and use this opening as the spout through which to pour water for drinking, transport and storage. Ostrich eggshells are brilliant flasks – they’re robust, not too large (1 litre on average) and breathable, so water stays cool. As such, they were valued objects for both Kalahari Bushmen and prehistoric groups.

Clusters of whole ostrich eggshell flasks (with grass or beeswax stoppers to prevent spillage) have been found stashed in the arid landscapes of southwest Africa and, as at Spitzkloof, fragments are found in the earliest archaeological deposits to occur in these areas. Although spout rim fragments are rare, it is probable that the innovation of using ostrich eggshells as water flasks allowed humans to live in sub-Saharan Africa’s driest areas, such as the Richtersveld.

Ethnographic research teaches us that recent and modern hunter-gatherers in another arid environment of southern African – the Kalahari Desert – use ostrich eggshells as water flasks.

Flasks were sometimes decorated with patterns engraved or painted on their surfaces. In the Kalahari this typically denotes ownership, but over the great depths of prehistoric time these patterns may have held many meanings. Once the flasks had broken, fragments were ground down and perforated to form beads (or pendants) to be strung as necklaces and bracelets and sewed onto clothing. Among Kalahari Bushmen, these beads become the focus of intricate and often long-distance exchange networks that bound people together in an uncertain landscape.

Ostrich eggshell beads made their appearance in the southern African archaeological record some 40,000 years ago, but decorated eggshell fragments have an even older pedigree. The Spitzkloof fragments, including those from the earliest levels, came in many colours, including black, beige, yellow, orange, teal and even bright red. Much of this discolouration was certainly unintentional, but some may have been purposeful.

At a site called Diepkloof, about 500 km south of Spitzkloof, archaeologists have uncovered 60,000 year-old ostrich eggshell flask fragments with clear engravings. Precisely what they meant for their makers is unknown, but together with 60–90,000-year-old finds from other African sites, these eggshell fragments are among the world’s earliest evidence for abstract thought, and thus ways of behaving that resemble our own.

Thanks to coldrum for the link. For more, see Read the rest of this post...
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