Border Cave is a rockshelter located near the crest of the Lebombo Mountains between South Africa and Swaziland, in Kwazulu Natal, South Africa. Discovered in 1933 and excavated first in 1940 by W. E. Barton, the site deposits include Middle to Late Stone Age Transition (ca. 30,000 to 50,000 years ago), and Middle Stone Age Howiesons Poort occupations (45,000 to 75,000 years ago).
The cave includes approximately four meters (13 feet) of deposit laid down between 200,000 years ago and the present. A long debate and attempts at several different dating chronologies (particularly electron spin resonance (ESR) and amino acid racemization) were resolved in the early 21st century, with most scholars accepting the current chronology.
Anatomically modern Homo sapiens skeletons as well as stone tools and chipping debris were found at Border Cave. Scholarly debate continues about the age of the human skeletal materials, some of which were recovered from the Howiesons Poort levels. The most recent electronic spin resonance dating puts at least one of the human elements at 74,000 ± 5000 years before the present, which is very early for an anatomically modern Homo sapiens.
Sources
This glossary entry is part of the About.com Guide to the Middle Stone Age in Africa and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Bird MI, Fifield LK, Santos GM, Beaumont PB, Zhou Y, di Tada ML, and Hausladen PA. 2003. Radiocarbon dating from 40 to 60 ka BP at Border Cave, South Africa. Quaternary Science Reviews 22(8-9):943-947.
Butzer KW, Beaumont PB, and Vogel JC. 1978. Lithostratigraphy of Border Cave, KwaZulu, South Africa: a Middle Stone Age sequence beginning c. 195,000 b.p. Journal of Archaeological Science 5(4):317-341.
Grün R, and Beaumont P. 2001. Border Cave revisited: a revised ESR chronology. Journal of Human Evolution 40(6):467-482.
Henshilwood CS, and Dubreuil B. 2011. The Still Bay and Howiesons Poort, 77–59 ka: Symbolic Material Culture and the Evolution of the Mind during the African Middle Stone Age. Current Anthropology 52(3):361-400.
Lee-Thorp JA, and Sponheimer M. 2003. Three case studies used to reassess the reliability of fossil bone and enamel isotope signals for paleodietary studies. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 22(3):208-216.
Miller GH, Beaumont PB, Deacon HJ, Brooks AS, Hare PE, and Jull AJT. 1999. Earliest modern humans in southern Africa dated by isoleucine epimerization in ostrich eggshell. Quaternary Science Reviews 18:1537-1548.
