Boomplaas Cave (South Africa)

Definition: Boomplaas Cave (Tree Farm Cave) is located in the Swartberg Range of South Africa, near the southern most tip of the continent. Site deposits dating between 70,000 and 1500 years ago in a thickness of some five meters of human occupations, dated between the Middle and Late Stone Ages (Middle and Late Paleolithic).

Boomplaas's Howiesons Poort occupation is located near the bottom of the site stratigraphy. It has anatomically modern human skeletons, and an abundance of ostrich shell. This level dates to about 65,000 years ago.

Boomplaas was excavated by H.J. Deacon in the 1970s.

Sources

Binneman, Johan and Janette Deacon 1986 Experimental Determination of Use Wear on Stone Adzes from Boomplaas Cave, South Africa. Journal of Archwologicul Science 13:219-228.

Deacon, H. J. 1979 Excavations at Boomplaas Cave: A sequence through the Upper Pleistocene and Holocene in South Africa. World Archaeology 10(3):241-257.

Miller, G. H., et al. 1999 Earliest modern humans in southern Africa dated by isoleucine epimerization in ostrich eggshell. Quaternary Science Reviews 18:1537-1548.

Thackeray, J. Francis. 2002. Comment on the age of Late Pleistocene cave deposits associated with the "Howieson’s Poort" stone tool industry in South Africa. Published online at the Transvaal Museum (not currently online).

This glossary entry is part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.