Abstract
Bolt’s Farm is a Plio-Pleistocene fossil site located within the southwestern corner
of the UNESCO Hominid Fossil Sites of South Africa World Heritage Site. The site is a complex of
active caves and more than 20 palaeokarst deposits or pits, many of which were exposed through the
action of lime mining in the early 20th century. The pits represent heavily eroded cave systems,
and as such associating the palaeocave sediments within and between the pits is difficult,
especially as little geochronological data exists. These pits and the associated lime miner’s
rubble were first explored by palaeoanthropologists in the late 1930s, but as yet no hominin
material has been recovered. The first systematic mapping was undertaken by Frank Peabody as part
of the University of California Africa Expedition (UCAE) in 1947–1948. A redrawn version of the map
was not published until 1991 by Basil Cooke and this has subsequently been used and modified by
recent researchers. Renewed work in the 2000s used Cooke’s
map to try and relocate the original fossil deposits...