South Africa - Diepkloof Project

Research topic

Comparing the transition from the Middle Palaeolithic to the Upper Palaeolithic in Western Europe with the transition from the Middle Stone Age to the Later Stone Age in Southern Africa, allows us to test the hypothesis of independent technical and cultural progress with regard to anthropological change.

Site overview: 180 km north of Cape Town, the Diepkloof rock shelter rises 100 metres or so over the Verlorenvlei river, on its left bank, 18 km away from the point where this small river in the Eastern Cape Province flows into the Atlantic at Elandsbaai.

Landsat image of the Elandsbaai region and location of the site on the left bank of the Verlorenvlei

Rock shelter

It is a plateau-area outlier of siluro-devonian quartzitic sandstone where two significant shelters have formed: the east-facing Diepkloof Rock Shelter (DRS) and the south-east-facing Diepkloof Kraal. A sounding carried out at DRS by J. Parkington in the 1970s revealed the existence of an interesting and possibly long MSA archaeological sequence in a region where chronological and palaeoenvironmental data are particularly lacking.

Diepkloof karst

Diepkloof Kraal outlier and shelters (left) and Diepkloof rock shelter (centre)

Purpose of excavations: the main purposes of resuming excavation work at the Diepkloof Rock Shelter were to determine an accurate MSA archaeological sequence and establish a time frame. At the same time, it involved developing the archaeological reference framework of techno-complexes represented on the site, so that it would be possible to distinguish behavioural features in terms of culture and technique that would both technically and symbolically herald the modernity that became apparent after the Late Stone Age (LSA).

View of excavations in progress at the intersection between frontal and sagittal sections	Quartz fragment with oblique truncations from the DRS HP complex still with large patches of adhesive residues, which would have been applied in fitting a handle.	Ostrich eggshell fragment from the DRS HP complex with a criss-cross pattern

Expedition overview: history and scientific partnerships

The Diepkloof project is based on the excavation of one of the last major intact Middle Stone Age sites along the coast in SouthAfrica, in partnership with the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cape Town. Originally led by J-P Rigaud (Institute of Prehistory and Quaternary Geology - IPGQ - Université de Bordeaux I), from 1997 and in its preparatory phase, the project received assistance from the Aquitaine region, and in 1999 it received the financial backing of the French Ministry for Foreign and European Affairs, the CNRS (the French National Centre for Scientific Research) and the South African Foundation for Research Development (FRD). Currently led by Pierre-Jean Texier (Mixed research unit 6130 - the Centre for the Study of Prehistory, Antiquity and Middle Ages, CNRS, Sophia-Antipolis), the project operates with the financial backing of the French Ministry for Foreign and European Affairs (Social Sciences and Archaeology Division) and the Provence-Alpes-Côted’Azur region (International Scientific Cooperation).