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Human Skeletal Remains from the Southern Cape Province and Their Bearing on the Stone Age Prehistory of South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

G. P. Rightmire
G. P. Rightmire*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, State University of New York, Binghamton, New York 13901 USA
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Abstract

Substantial numbers of human skeletons have been recovered from caves and shelters of the southern Cape Province, South Africa, and these constitute a valuable source of information about evolutionary change and population movement during Upper Pleistocene and Holocene times. A few fragments from Klasies River Mouth and Die Kelders are firmly associated with Middle Stone Age cultural assemblages, but most of the material is probably linked with the Later Stone Age Albany and Wilton industries. Unfortunately the largest collections of relatively well-preserved remains have come from earlier excavations (Matjes River Shelter, Oakhurst), and the stratigraphic provenance of these burials is frequently in doubt. Other skeletal samples are small, and paleodemographic approaches are diffcult to apply. However, Bushman- or Hottentot-like individuals can certainly be identified, and this is important to the questions of Bushman antiquity or origins. Other problems concerning early Cape populations can also be examined, and this work on the human skeletons should complement ongoing cave sediment and other geological studies, faunal and plant analyses, and archaeological investigations of associated cultural remains.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , March 1978 , pp. 219 - 230
Copyright
University of Washington

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