Beginning about 6,500 years ago, the coastal areas of the Western Cape province of South Africa were occupied by fisher-hunter-gatherers. About 3,000 years ago, and lasting for some 1,200 years, the hunter-gatherers intensified their use of marine shell, and created these immense mounds of shell.
Timeline of the Later Stone Age
- 7800-4000 years before the present (BP) absence of occupation at Eland's Bay
- 4000-3000 BP sparse but increasing populations living in coastal caves and on open sites of the sandveld.
- 3000-1800 BP, abrupt change to amassing huge open shell middens located near the most productive rocky intertidal platforms. Some middens are nothing but shell; others are mixed with other food waste, including terrestrial animal bones (stable isotope analysis shows primarily marine-based)
- 1800 BP, another abrupt change. Ceramics and domestic sheep appear in the assemblages; living areas appear as small sites scattered across the landscape, on rocky koppies (small hills). Subsistence evidence includes plant food debris, stone tools associated with digging stick manufacture and the bones of tortoise and hyrax. Coastal middens created during this period are smaller and more numerous; stable isotope analysis and tooth wear shows the people had mixed diets
Sources
A bibliography has been collected for this project.
