Faculty Opinions recommendation of Pinnacle Point Cave 13B (Western Cape Province, South Africa) in context: The Cape Floral kingdom, shellfish, and modern human origins.

Abstract Pinnacle Point (PP) near Mossel Bay in the Western Cape Province, South Africa, is known for a series of archaeological caves with important archaeological finds. Extensive excavations and studies in two of them (PP13B and PP5-6) have documented alternating periods of anthropogenic-dominated and geogenic-dominated sedimentation. A variety of caves do not bear evidence of anthropogenic remains. We have studied in detail the remnant deposits of three of them, Staircase Cave, Crevice Cave, and PP29, which have been formed under the same geologic and sedimentary conditions with those with anthropogenic contributions. Their remains are small and patchy but have extensive speleothem formations (as do most caves at PP) that were isotopically analyzed for paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental reconstruction. These caves also offer the opportunity to understand the purely geogenic signature of the PP locality and thus offer a geogenic baseline for the anthropogenic caves. Archaeologists normally focus only on sites with strong anthropogenic signals, but by building cave life histories we “raise the bar” (Goldberg 2008, p. 30) on our contextual knowledge.

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The stratigraphy of the Middle Stone Age sediments at Pinnacle Point Cave 13B (Mossel Bay, Western Cape Province, South Africa)

Journal of Human Evolution ◽

10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.07.007 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 59 (3-4) ◽

pp. 234-255 ◽

Cited By ~ 57

Author(s):

Curtis W. Marean ◽

Miryam Bar-Matthews ◽

Erich Fisher ◽

Paul Goldberg ◽

Andy Herries ◽

...

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Middle Stone Age ◽

Western Cape ◽

Stone Age ◽

Western Cape Province ◽

Pinnacle Point

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Continuous vegetation record of the Greater Cape Floristic Region (South Africa) covering the past 300 000 years (IODP U1479)

Climate of the Past ◽

10.5194/cp-18-1-2022 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol 18 (1) ◽

pp. 1-21

Author(s):

Lydie M. Dupont ◽

Xueqin Zhao ◽

Christopher Charles ◽

John Tyler Faith ◽

David Braun

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Vegetation History ◽

Modern Human ◽

Cape Floristic Region ◽

Human Origins ◽

The Past ◽

Modern Human Origins ◽

Last Glaciation ◽

History Of ◽

The Last Glacial

Abstract. The Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR) of South Africa is a biodiversity hotspot of global significance, and its archeological record has substantially contributed to the understanding of modern human origins. For both reasons, the climate and vegetation history of southwestern South Africa is of interest to numerous fields. Currently known paleoenvironmental records cover the Holocene, the last glacial–interglacial transition and parts of the last glaciation but do not encompass a full glacial–interglacial cycle. To obtain a continuous vegetation record of the last Pleistocene glacial–interglacial cycles, we studied pollen, spores and micro-charcoal of deep-sea sediments from IODP Site U1479 retrieved from SW of Cape Town. We compare our palynological results of the Pleistocene with previously published results of Pliocene material from the same site. We find that the vegetation of the GCFR, in particular fynbos and afrotemperate forest, responds to precessional forcing of climate. The micro-charcoal record confirms the importance of fires in the fynbos vegetation. Ericaceae-rich and Asteraceae-rich types of fynbos could extend on the western part of the Paleo-Agulhas Plain (PAP), which emerged during periods of low sea level of the Pleistocene.

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