The Later Stone Age of Welgevonden Rock Shelter, Waterberg, Limpopo Province, South Africa

Abstract

Welgevonden Rock Shelter and its surrounds were used intermittently from the Earlier Stone Age to the Later Stone Age and perhaps by Iron Age farmers. We report on Later Stone Age occupations that probably began in the last few thousand years and persisted until at least 270 years ago. The rich lithic assemblage contains a variety of backed tools and small end scrapers made on quartz, chalcedony and siltstone together with a large assemblage of ground stone. Most chalcedony artefacts were probably manufactured elsewhere, whereas quartz and siltstone lithics were made on site. The excavated rock shelter lacks rock art, but two sites with fine-line paintings are nearby. The north-eastern site has multiple painting events and both sites have paintings of metal artefacts made by Iron Age farmers. Recovered farmer artefacts include Eiland ceramic sherds, one Letsibogo sherd, several iron beads and a fragment of a glass bead. People may have worked with rain near the excavated rock shelter on the hillside which bears several rock cisterns that fill with water after rains. Plant identifications made from seeds and charcoal indicate that the savanna vegetation of the area was essentially the same as it is presently. Spatial segregation of domestic and ritual behaviour, of the kind recorded in some ethnographies, is suggested by the proximity of the occupied (unpainted) rock shelter to unoccupied rock art sites.